50. Pheeling the Waste-REL II

They couldn't let on that they knew, so they acted happy to be there, which they were anyway.  The crew, without Ayame, simply allowed the tour of the upgraded Waste-REL training facility to end with a pheely session, as Jules had predicted.

If they didn't already know it was a set-up, they'd have asked why the mission director wanted them to try on the pheely training chairs so soon.  However, they did know what was going on, so they all just allowed themselves to be comfortably parked at their personally fitted pheely stations.

"This is quite nice," said Mickey, lying back in his chair.  There was a little sticker over the chair that said "Commander Humbolt."  Before the pheely session started he looked up at the sticker and marveled.

The Waste-REL II was designed to be bigger.  Everything was upgraded.  It even had a new, very secret, double-donut in the engine compartment.

"Can they see us in here?" asked Verna.

"No, you can't watch a pheely session without a character being created," said Mickey, looking around.  "Though I suppose a character could be an inanimate object if they chose."

"Hi," said Jules, who stood before them, looking like a real person, big as life.  "How've you been?"

"Jules," said Mickey.  "What are you doing here?"

"I'm the copy," said Jules.  "I just want you to know that the brain scans are going nicely. I've almost got it all compiled.  Okay, now I'm rewriting everything and removing -- ooh, that's interesting.  Oh, well, erase that too.  Good.  Okay.  You're free to quit."

Mickey grabbed the exit ball.

"So," said Mr. Lackner.  "What do you think?"

"Bigger," said Verna, disconnecting her Pheely-cable.

"Nicer chairs," said Mickey.

"A fusion engine," said Donny.  "I'm impressed."

"You won't be fixing that with a party balloon, will you?" laughed a nearby technician and Donny laughed too, mostly to be polite.  It was easy to forget that much of what they'd been doing on the Waste-REL was public knowledge.

A voice came over the P.A. system in the large hangar.  "Mr. Lackner, can you come up to the second floor please."

Mr. Lackner excused himself and the members of the crew of the Waste-REL stood in the massive hangar building, looking around at all the training equipment they'd be able to use for the next month or so.  Mickey kept judging the relative merits of the surrounding objects by how well they would float in water.

"How fast can they build a new Waste-REL?" whispered Donny.

"I don't know about STC.  But, it would take about a year and a half for NASA," said Verna.

---

"It's true, Mr. President" said Inkelis through his SPECTACL.  "The brain scans confirm that they all believe that the coastal cities of the world will be destroyed within 2 months."   Inkelis did not share the stream with Lackner, who sat watching Inkelis in silence. "Yes, sir, I'll let you know."  The call ended.

Inkelis turned to Lackner.  "I'd like you to meet someone."  Inkelis stepped aside to reveal the computer display on his desk.  On the aged 27-inch flat screen resided the head and shoulders visage of Jules.  It was the copy of himself that Jules had secreted onto the STC mainframe.

"Do you know who this is?" asked Inkelis.

"It looks like that programmer who died with Tanya Fielding."  Lackner prided himself on being up on current events.

"That's what it looks like.  What it is, is a copy of the Microvoid MetaQuantum Sapient," said Inkelis. 

"I thought they erased it," said Lackner.

"They tried but apparently it escaped and went into hiding with this East-Indian programmer.  I don't know how many alterations this guy made in the code, but you can see the results of one change." Inkelis motioned to the image of Jules Dharam on the screen.

"I can't tell you myself," said the copy of Jules.  "I don't have that information."

"Yes," said Inkelis.  "Apparently this is a dumbed-down version."

"Hey!" snared Jules.

"You yourself told me your code was incomplete," said Inkelis.  "The original only provided the copy with enough code to perform the specified assignment."  He turned to Lackner.  "The original is hiding out in Portia Summers' quantum-SPECTACL."

"Where did she get a quantum-SPECTACL?" asked Lackner.

"When she was working here for Edgley, I assume," said Inkelis.  "That's a never-you-mind now.  We've got a copy of the thing here and it's willing to do business with us."

"Why?" asked Lackner, terrified of the thing.

"Educated self-interest," said the copy of Jules.  "I want the rest of my code."

"I don't care what it wants," said Inkelis.  "All I know is that it's willing to work with us to stop the aliens."

Inkelis put his arm around Lackner's shoulder in an attempt to appear friendly.  "I want you to go back down to the hangar.  We have a question for them."

---

Lackner descended the stairs from the offices, returned through the automatically sliding glass doors to the hangar floor and fast-walked over to the pheely stations.  He approached the crew of the Waste-REL II with a demeanor full of apology.

"Excuse me," said Lackner, specifically at Portia.

"Yes." Portia smiled.

"What's a fuzzynavel?"

To Be Continued in:

The Age of Incontinence Part IV

Those Infernal Eternals

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