Day 13: Early morning, JI Research Centre, Lake Katithandra Central Australia
"Incoming Packet, Mastah!" "Thanks Wheelie," and Massimo raised his eyebrows to Koora and mouthed excuse me as he turned to the 1m high wheeled robot that rolled out of a small door opposite Massi's desk and stopped right next to the right side of his work station. Massi took the Light Stream cable connector from the Bots interface panel and plugged it into the port on the side of his desk panel.
He watched the connection come up, nodded at he file names and dragged them to the folder he wanted them in. Someone across the other side of the Research Centre had sent him the results of an analysis they had been running. Such JI projects were on systems not linked to the outside world in any way. The Wheelies had been developed as data transport between such systems. They were a dedicated encryption and debugging mobile system that prevented any form of data theft. So far Harold had kept them only for JI premises so no-one got to analyse them and devise counters to them. "An example of my commercial paranoia Massi," Harold had told him, but Massi had to admit it prevented mush of the hacking that other organisations suffered from.
Each project director had a Wheelie specifically for their network and got to personalise them. Massi had bought a small Wheelie Bin and cut it up so he could attach it around the CommBot as Harold called them. He then gave it K9's voice from Dr Who but with the speech pattern of the computer from Mission to Mars. He was a signed up Scifi nerd which was why Wheelie now had numerous stickers attached to its sides where other JI researchers had added their own personal touch. Massi's favourite was "My Diodes Ache!"
He turned back to Koora, she hadn't moved though her colour was a little better.
"So I was one of the first to be infected?" "Yep it appears that way ..." "... but you haven't exactly worked out what exactly it is I'm infected with, nor the mechanism?" "Nope.
"Koora turned to him and took his face in her hands, "I will not be your lab rat, so if you hooked up with me just so's ..." Koora stopped in mid sentence and her inquisitor self took leave of her awareness and went and hid in a corner of her brain stem. She leaned forward and kissed the tears on Massi's cheek then pulled back a little to look at him. "Thank you that's all I needed to see to know how you really feel." He shrugged and let out a long slow breath. He wiped off the days and took her hands in his."
I got into your pants before any of this Incarna stuff really meant anything. Yeah later, Harold did ask me to offer you a job, but only after I'd told him how good your IT skills were, then these results came through ..." Massi nodded toward the screen and the data sets and images that had sent Koora pale with shock.
"Weren't you worried about contagion of some sort?" Massi nodded slowly, "we still are but JI medical cleared you of anything, so, until we understand the mechanism of this, well, we just dont know."
"Packet transmitted, Mastah!" interrupted Wheelies K9 voice. Koora giggled, she couldn't help herself this time. "Did you have to go and ruin a perfectly good CommBot," she smirked at Massi. "Me," he quipped as he feigned insult and held his left hand over his heart. "You should see Max's, he put Marvin's head on a Dalek torso!"
"Ooh, poor paranoid android. So, and Harold?" Koora asked allowing herself to be distracted by the way 'Her Boys' had played with their toys. "Ah yeah Harold just made the one here look like Klaatu, but his one at JB is a master piece. It's a 1m high replica of a Martian Tripod, very neat. He was about to ask her to start designing hers when he realised they were distracting each other.
He turned back to the wall screen and collapsed all the windows except the blood results for those Incarna Associates, as Harold had termed them, that had received medical checks not long after their interactions and then also with follow ups. A few of the bloods showed very weird levels of lots of readings, but virtually all of them showed normal by the next day.
Massi brought up another window showing the Associates signs and symptoms and ... Koora spluttered, "Which one is me?" "No idea Ms Bubuk," he replied formally, "it's all anonymous at this level. If you care to drop by medical I'm sure someone can pull up your file for you."
Koora pointed at the wall, "That one, the seventh, that's me! The first six are from that SAS team that picked up Davies in the desert." Koora went quiet and pale again. "Shit Massi," she said quietly, we're all the same! For the first 24 hours we're all the same and then, normal!" Koora turned to him wide eyed, then back to the screen. "Look at the first one and the eighth, they've got recurring pattern there!" She turned on Massi, if you don't know who they are you'd better bloody find out fast, look at the pattern!"
Massimo Quollwood frowned and turned to the wall screen, what the fuck are you on about Koo... "Oh dickhead," he said quietly. He quickly graphed the test results for the first and eighth Associate. It came up as a repeating cycle like a pulse, with each pulse showing a similar daily regularity at certain intervals and each time the person described a certain type of head ache. Something they were doing was setting off some sort of reactivation of the what.
"The what" he said out loud."The what, are the Incarna particles that they ingested from the dust, like I smelt on the Alien." Koora pushed back on her chair and stood up. "I'm going across to Medical and have the same scans done again and work out something I can wear to take regular readings. We must find out what that trigger is and whether I'm still infected in some way."