Hey! I know guys, I'm terrible at updating and all that noise :( I've kind of gotten back on a Transformers kick though and I figured I've been wanting to update Gateway of the Mind anyway, so here it's going to be! (Along with this one and possibly another I might touch on, I've got a slight set of characters and plot in mind, but we'll see, maybe you'll get to see me more.) I'm about two weeks out from finishing graduate school, so we'll see what's ahead :O
I hope you all enjoy this update. Constructive criticism is welcome, and reviews are such a blessing!
Constance's world revolved around NBE-1. From her shy teens through her not-so-wild twenties, and now on the verge of her twenty-seventh birthday, when she'd sworn for all that was holy she would damn well be married with at least one child on the way, she still centered her entire world around him. Instead of the luxurious beach house she'd dreamed of as a girl, she lived in frosty hangars and often slept in a sleeping bag, be it on chilled scaffolding or on the hard floor of the computer room. Instead of gazing dreamily into the eyes of her husband, she stared perplexed into the dark optics of a mechanical alien life form. And instead of chasing after rambunctious children, she chased after unformatted and un-decrypted computer codes in hopes of discovering whatever mysteries lay within the recesses of the alien mind.
She pursed her lips and then blew out a puff of foggy air, her bangs fluttering over her glasses. Her computer screen, open in her lap, presented a mass of alien symbols and numerals, once a huge mess of noise and nonsense, now becoming a tamed creature. Like the pieces of a thousand different puzzles thrown together into a pile, she'd organized them and begun to situate them together proper, and in the depths of her mind, she knew. It was almost done.
This wasn't what she'd even once imagined herself doing at twenty-seven. Of course, who really saw themselves working for a secret sector of the military on a frozen mechanical alien? Not something advertised during the job fairs in elementary school. Of course, none of the jobs back in elementary school interested her anyway. She didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a newsperson or any of the nifty things other children flocked to at the time.
She'd liked puzzles. Word puzzles, picture puzzles, kinetic puzzles, any kind of puzzles, though her absolute favorites were the number puzzles. Not a lot of jobs advertised for unpuzzling puzzles though. And she lacked the social skills for much else. It'd been ultimately fortuitous Sector 7 had taken an interest in her interests and offered to put her specific pursuits to work on top secret things, all at the cost of no longer having a social life. For the everyday person, the loss friends and family and freedom to do as you pleased could very well have been deemed a great sacrifice.
But for someone who didn't have much of that to begin with?
She had her family who, good people though they were, didn't know what to do with a child like her, were unprepared for her disordered quirks. She had a friend or two, if they could be called that, people she spoke to on occasion. She had her therapist, who'd been working since she was seven to teach her how to recognize subtle facial cues so she could tell when someone felt happy or sad or if they were bored of the monologue she would deliver about the fascinating aspects of puzzles or whatever thing captured her obsessed interest. Not much of a social life though. She'd been almost relieved when at fifteen the government had veritably paid her parents to take her off their hands and she'd spent the next twelve years fed, clothed, and sheltered by the government. Besides her twice a week sessions with Dr. Harding, she had all the time in the world to lose herself to the mind of a machine.
Maybe it's why she liked NBE-1 so much. Her life revolved around him, and that was okay for once. Wasn't it?
She shook her head to him, frowning into his optics.
"It's not," she said to him. He didn't respond. Not unusual.
They were alone in the hangar. Nighttime drew near and only the occasional security guard paroled these parts of the base. NBE-1 had been on ice longer than she'd been alive, and were the system to ever falter or go out, back up generators would keep him in check. Sector 7, ever confident in themselves, thought they had nothing to worry about. She couldn't help but agree. Even if she possessed some logical reason or rationalization to argue that more people were needed around the clock, she wouldn't have. Without much of a life she had the freedom to work endless hours, well into shifts when she was plenty alone. She almost preferred to be alone. Almost. She'd made an occasional friend here, people who were accommodating of her behaviors and patient as she learned how to interact proper. Jim was nice, and there was Lucille who experimented with the radiation from the Cube.
Constance blew out another weary sigh. She'd meant to go out tonight but, well, this puzzle demanded her attention. Her therapist would frown, which mean she was upset or disappointed or sad. They'd agreed this job would be a good use of her talents, so long as she didn't let her obsessive tendencies get the better of her. This was— she looked over her shoulder and checked the clock, making a 'tch' noise with her tongue against her teeth in disapproval— going on the third day without much of a break she'd been working on him. Dr. Harding would not approve.
Constance couldn't stop though. Something felt close. Different. Maybe it was some strange, electrical current in the air. It compelled her to work on, compelled her to crack the codes. Besides, on tonight of all nights, her birthday, didn't it make sense for the gateway of the mysteries of this creature to open up to her?
She'd cracked a few small things here or there in her more than ten years of working on NBE-1. Codes and encryptions she'd found and broken open like a geode, the discoveries leading to the implementation of elevated security systems for the United States and advanced communication for the military and civilian alike as it was put to use in telephones and web based interfacing. It was all well and good, but not her main goal. Her main goal was to break entirely into NBE-1's highly protected mainframe and plunder all the information she could from his cranium. Oh, the things they could learn from this advanced creature.
Not at the risk of her entire life though, Dr. Harding would chastise.
Constance pursed her lips again, glancing to NBE-1. He stared back, face contorted into a vicious snarl. It had taken Constance until age twenty to realize it meant he was most likely angry. She would be too, she supposed. Landing in the Antarctic and freezing, being discovered and kept perpetually on ice, being experimented upon and reverse engineered from. She'd be pretty grouchy. Nonetheless, she was wasting her life away on him, and her birthday too, thank you very much.
"I'm just saying," she said, louder than she meant to, and checked her volume, lowering her voice. Another quirk Dr. Harding had spent years trying to bring into the realm of "normal limits" as it was called. Constance worked hard at mindfulness every day. "It is my birthday. And the girls were going to take me to a strip club. I've never been to one of those. I was pretty excited. And you should be excited for me too. It's my birthday after all. You kind of owe me a present. You skipped out on my last eleven. And you're sort of sucking up a lot of my time." She adding an inflection to her voice that almost sounded chastising, and a hint of a proud smile touched her lips. "I was supposed to be out looking for a husband. And living on a beach. Not…in here."
The cooling system kicked on noiselessly, only evidenced by an increased chill and the scaffolding she sat upon rocked forward an inch toward NBE-1's glower. She pulled her coat tighter around herself, glad for the warm clothes and thermal underwear she wore underneath. Imagine, outside in the balmy Nevada night it was probably still in the seventies. Yet here she was. Decoding, decoding, decoding, decoding. Yet something was close. Something was active. Whatever it was, she couldn't say for sure.
Even still, she worked onward, her fingers tapping a rapid cadence on the keys of her computer, breaking down the codes and alien symbols into an ordered blanket of green on black. When she was twenty she'd discovered sitting this close to his processor gave her a greater chance at connecting with the foreign signal NBE-1 projected like an unconscious alien SOS. With it, she'd passed his first two walls of security code. With those walls broken down, so much had been discovered and produced.
What was behind the third? Perhaps NBE-1 himself? Would she be able to finally communicate with that which she'd centered her life around? Her mind worked diligently, breaking down and through the different numerals and symbols lining her screen. The foreign glyphs, once so confusing to her, now read like English in her brain. She'd though once of telling Sector 7 she'd learned the foreign language of NBE-1's hard drive, but it would result in too many questions. The fact remained she understood, but she didn't know how she understood, nor could she produce it of her own accord. She'd tried on multiple occasions. Better the extent of her knowledge was kept a secret so she could do her job, and not have her own cranium broken into and checked by doctors.
She shuddered. Eugh. Doctors.
"Look mister," she mumbled, glancing at NBE-1 and pulling her face into an exaggerated scowl. "You owe me. You owe me this. I was going to go out tonight and try to have fun. I was going to make friends. I'm supposed to have a lot of different things going for me right now besides you so give me this…"
The codes wound down and down, the mess that had occupied her computer screen for years now becoming orderly, puzzle pieces coming together to form a proper picture. Suddenly, with a few strokes of a key, they clicked. Everything snapped to where it belonged. She waited for trumpets, for fanfare, for some vibrant declaration of her success, but like her previous times breaking past the security of NBE-1's hard drive, nothing declared her success to the world. Unlike her previous times breaking past his security, nothing happened. Previously, information had opened up before her, a database of knowledge and specs on technology and even hints to other worlds. The knowledge offered itself like some wanton princess rescued from a tower, and Constance had plundered it shamelessly.
This time, nothing. Her screen sat before her, a well-organized series of alien puzzle pieces, and nothing else, then suddenly, nothing at all. The screen blipped out to red, then black.
"Hey!" she shouted, eyes widening. "Hey!"
She smacked the side of her computer screen, giving it a shake, feeling a spark of sincere rage within her, something she'd never felt before. Usually she existed in a state of moderate coolness, unfazed by most anything. Not that she didn't have emotions, she just didn't get riled up with ease. This though. This nonsense, this garbage, this bullshit. This just wasn't fair!
She whipped her head up, glaring to the optics before her, then yelped in surprised. The optics, once black and lifeless as the rest of the form before her, blazed red. Caught in the glowing fury heating her body, the same puzzle that snapped into place on the computer suddenly snapped in her brain, a series of red and cream colors linked together inseparably like the click of a key to a lock. They synced, glowing and intermingling together in intimate twists and turns, braiding and coiling and curling and sweeping between each other, reds and creams fighting for some overwhelming dominance of the other, then suddenly—
She realized she was falling too late, having somehow pushed herself up and back in a frightened leap. She made a noise of complaint in the back of her throat, some garbled mixture of a scream and protesting whine, and then she slammed to the hangar floor. The air knocked out of her in a whoosh, and her head smashed against concrete, her world blacking out.
Wake up, female. Wake up.
Constance felt herself groan before she heard it, felt her throat constrict and the vibration of the noise rise up from her chest and to her parted lips. A warm, constant hum teased through her skull like fingers through her hair, gripping harder than necessary, almost pulling, but the stroke demanded attention. The words came again, masculine with a mechanical hint, almost as though she heard the words through a computer's speakers rather than from the mouth of the owner.
Wake up, female. I demand it. Open your eyes.
"Constance! Constance wake up!"
Her brows knit at the second voice, less like something from a machine, and further away than the first voice. The words floated fuzzily to her, sounding distant, but the grip on her arms jostled her into a begrudging wakefulness and the frantic tone washed closer to her. She hadn't slept in almost three days save a spare ten-minute nap every few hours. The rest felt good. To hell with being snatched back into a freezing reality. They shouldn't be manhandling her anyway, she thought. She could have a broken neck. Jerking her around would exacerbate the problem.
She opened her eyes, the world slipping into too sharp of focus with a skull splitting speed. She blinked a few times, trying to defocus to something less intense, but instead colors stood out vibrant like splashes of hot paint on a black, cold wall. Her mouth tasted of electricity and her body thrummed and tingled. Above her, one of the technicians leaned over her, his face hot with emotions she couldn't read. Jim. A nice enough man who had dedicated his career to monitoring NBE-1's external temperature. She knew he liked cartoons from the 80's and baseball. She took his features in one at a time, the wide and wild brown eyes, the raised brows, the downturned mouth, the tenseness of his jaw and shoulders. Fear?
"Jim," she mumbled. "Hello."
"Constance! Shit! You scared me! Are you okay?"
He eased her up into a sit. Her back ached and protested the motion, but she ignored it, reaching up and rubbing the side of her face. Her glasses were askew and she righted them, pouting when they refused to sit correctly on her face. Others employees milled around them, but not many, their concerns a murmur in the back of her head against Jim's questions and the masculine hum in her mind. It must still be early in the morning. Most people generally started arriving around five. She made a noise in her throat and Jim's features shifted into something softer and more at ease, a smile creeping across his face. She tried to match it, but the effort felt futile.
"I called some medics," Jim said, his voice higher in tone than she was used to. She'd never really paid attention to what concern did to someone's pitch before. "They'll be here in a moment, if you just want to wait a little bit, before moving too much."
"I've been moved enough now that if something's wrong, we'll know by now," she said. A series of emotions flashed across Jim's face. She missed most of them. Awkwardly, he rubbed at the back of his neck. Unsure what he was feeling, Constance felt a nip of awkwardness as well, and looked down at her lap. Something like dark amusement burnt in the depths of her brain, some internal part she'd never known before, but she tucked it aside. "Help me into a stand." It was more a statement than a request, but Jim hopped on it, jumping to his feet and hooking an arm carefully around her tender backside.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I think something alarmed me last night," she replied, walking on rubbery legs and leaning most of her weight into Jim. He didn't protest, instead guiding her up a ramp and out of the hangar and into a hallway. A window along the wall looked into the lab. From her angle she could see the coworkers that once stood around them now idling to work, no doubt talking about her. She frowned, pushing down how uneasy the idea made her. She didn't want to be the source of any of their attention. She shuddered violently, the force of it startling both her and Jim. It was much warmer in the hallway, but still a chill overwhelmed her body and she shivered, leaning heavier into the man at her side, curling into the warmth of him as well. He blinked down at her, his face twisted up slightly.
"Are you okay?"
"Just cold."
"Maybe the medics should take a look at you after all," Jim offered. She shook her head, looking over her shoulder back into the hangar again. NBE-1 stood, immobile and glaring as ever. His optics were dark. She could've sworn they were red. Hadn't they flashed red last night?
"Constance?"
She turned to Jim, contemplating his face.
"You're concerned?" she asked. He blinked, and then laughed unsurely.
"Y-yeah, of course I am," he said. "I mean, shit, I come into work and find you passed out on the floor. Did you fall? You probably fell."
This vermin's grasp of the human language is astounding.
She shook the thought away, startled not that it came at all, but that it came in the same, male, computerized voice as before. The voice that had insisted she get up. A voice she was quite certain she'd never heard before, so why would she make it up? Why would she think in it? Thoughts that weren't her own?
"I mean, dear God Constance," Jim continued. "It's amazing you're not dead! What happened last night?"
"I broke the security wall, the third one," she replied, looking down. "And I guess I was startled, I guess…" She turned once more, frowning helplessly. What did she guess? What had happened? She tried to recount the events, piecing them together like… puzzles. That was right. She'd broken through the security, her computer had fried itself, she'd looked at NBE-1, and then the optics had been red, and then something had…
Synchronized.
She whipped around entirely, staring at NBE-1. The optics remained dark and distant, but there was something behind them, something she could sense more than see. They were looking back at her somehow.
"I don't understand," she mumbled.
It is a mystery to me as well, female. You invaded my mainframe and somehow managed to link our minds together.
No, no, no. That was impossible. She shook her head, lips twitching into a tiny smile. She refused to believe something like that. She was imagining this. She was tired. Something like that didn't happen. Because if it did… Well. She didn't know really. What if it did? Wasn't this what she'd wanted? To communicate with NBE-1? To see all he had to offer and plunge into the depths of her favorite quandary?
"Don't understand what?" Jim asked, touching her shoulder. She turned to look at him, opening her mouth, and then snapped it closed with a click of her teeth. He would think her psychotic. She knew her oddities were overlooked by most of her coworkers, but claiming that she'd mentally connected herself to NBE-1 was a guaranteed way to look like an absolute nut job. She was barely avoiding a checkup with doctors, last thing she needed was to be forced to sit down where they could poke and prod at her curiously.
"Understand what?" she said, voice cracking.
"Understand what?" Jim asked again, his brows drawing together and lips downturned. Confusion! She recognized that, she was sure she did.
Miraculously astute, female. Now return your attention where it is due.
You aren't supposed to be in my head! She replied sharply, the tone of her thoughts loud and alarmed. You need to get out. Shoo. I'll load up the computer and this communication can take place the way it's supposed to, through that. I-I turned you on so you owe me!
Owe you? The voice chuckled, a surprisingly masculine and velvet sound, and his amusement washed over her like rich liquor, her limbs warming. Naïve, little insect. I have been activated and aware for centuries now. It's merely this frozen prisonin which I'm kept that stops me from decimating all of you disgusting, putrid creatures.
If bloodlust had a taste, she would liken it to whiskey. It burned something fierce in her gut, but lit her up with vigor she'd never known. Emotions not her own swirled through her consciousness, and visions and dreams not of her making filled her mind's eye, fantasies of the great mechanical creature breaking free and tearing apart the hangar, dissecting humans he caught on a whim with precise and sharp claws, laying waste to the world above and worlds beyond. Memories of mechanical carnage flooded her, foreign but still somehow alarming, something that wasn't her recognizing the depravity of what she saw.
Well…shit.
Constance blinked, her jaw slack and mouth hanging slightly agape. She shut her mouth again, turning and peering up at Jim. None of that sounded good. Frankly, it couldn't make sense. Because after all, NBE-1 wasn't supposed to be active and he wasn't supposed to be so murderously unhappy and he, he…this just wasn't supposed to be happening at all!
"Constance, is everything okay?"
"I think I should get home," she said.
Home? No, woman, you will immediately free me from this unbefitting prison and I will reward you with a painless death in return!
No. No. Nope. Until I can think this through more, you are a psychotic hallucination, a breakdown due to lack of sleep, she rationalized. Hush.
"Are you absolutely sure you don't want to see a doctor?" Jim asked, and it was a struggle to focus on his words against the sudden righteous fury that coursed from her head down her spine, tingling in her extremities.
"Uhm-hm," she hummed, leaning away from Jim to stand on her own, reaching up to push her hair back from her face. Her hands shook, but she hid them by slipping them into her coat pockets, snuggling into the warmth. "I am sure. I will take some aspirin and if I don't feel well—"
"Give me a call," Jim said, scrambling into his pocket and pulling out a pen and receipt from what looked like a gas station. He wrote his number on the back of it then offered it to her. She stared at it a long moment, long enough he grew uncomfortable, before she realized what she should do. She accepted the paper, clearing her throat.
"I will. Later." She glanced toward NBE-1, and then moved past Jim, the hum in her mind increasing and a blistering wrath grinding in the deep part of her brain.
Stop it hallucination.
Female, you will turn around immediately and release me!
I'm going to go home and take an aspirin and a nap. Then you'll be quiet.