Three days and four hours after the New Event
Greenville, Ohio
The silence lay heavily upon the room, broken softly by the rhythmic tapping of the keyboard coupled with infrequent clinks and rings coming from the tools being used. The lights flickered intermittently, illuminating the spent figure crouched over the mechanical monstrosity on the floor.
The exhausted man took a step back from his work, getting a good look at the device he had constructed. He looked at the tangled mess of wires and chips disgorged from the heart of the beast and Granted, it would not be winning engineering prizes for tidiness any time soon, but it was finished, and it was perf– Is that flux responder in front of the switchboard? His arms quivered as he corrected the sequencing.
Van Kleiss shook his head. His vision was blurring, and his fingers had taken to twitching involuntarily if he lost focus. To make matters worse, his functioning mind seemed to be asleep already, as it had allowed him to make a completely amateur error. This level of incompetence was unacceptable.
Soon I can relax – once I've finished my work. That, of course, takes priority. After all, if I don't ensure my continued existence, then it's all for naught, he thought, too weary even to berate his mind for talking to itself. He'd forgone such luxuries as wasting time rebuking himself: indeed, it was all he could do to keep his muscles moving.
Kleiss was utterly exhausted, a state of being that he had grown rather used to during his frantic run through time from the tachyon field that was Breach. In that time, he'd excused practically every breach of etiquette he'd committed – from talking to himself, to singing, to writing poetry, and going insane during his more boring decades. Still, talking to oneself was the first sign of madness after all, and should not be borne in a scientist of his caliber.
However, for the last couple of centuries, sometime in between being a Viking raider and a Spanish conquistador (he forgot which), Van Kleiss had done some soul-searching, which obviously required talking to oneself. Besides, he'd learnt the hard way that a millennium of just thinking in stasis with one's neural pathways active could get boring fast. Talking to himself was one of the least insane things he could have been spending his time doing (he tried going mad once, but got bored of that eventually). A few dozen decades ago, sometime during the course of one of his inner dialogues, he'd realized something very important.
He was losing direction.
When he was younger, Van Kleiss had been ambitious. It was all so simple – he'd take control of the world someday, after a few years in high school. After all, he'd studied the existing government structure, and had decided that it could use some adjustments. Accordingly, he threw himself into his studies, which naturally were extensive and varied. By the age of twenty-three, he'd mapped out his life's course very practically – he would join a government funded research organization, work his work up the ranks, enter the higher superstructure, and secure a position of power. From there, he could manipulate the machinations of the system like a puppet-master and truly fulfill his dream of total control.
Of course, when the outcast had grown up some more, he found a more realistic way to make his dreams a reality, signing onto the Nanite Project at the first chance he got. This was beyond his wildest dreams – placed in charge of a project that could make him the most powerful being in the universe.
He'd done so well: he'd hidden his intentions from everyone, had played the part of a good researcher, and had completed work on the meta-nanites. He even managed to get rid of those two nosey parkers, Rafael and Violetta, although he couldn't get their son. Both their sons, in fact.
And look where that got me, Van Kleiss sighed mentally. On the run from every functioning government on the planet, trapped in inter-dimensional limbo with a bunch of soon-to-be extinct creatures, doomed to an ignominious death unless I can complete this machine, and with no signs of ever seeing the meta-nanites again in this lifetime.
Which led him to the present: trying to restart his legacy desperately so he could resume…what? What was he working for? If his plan came to fruition, he would rule the EVO nation, but what was the point of that? He'd nearly had control of time and space not too long ago. Was this settling for less? Going from the Universe to a small country loathed by everyone…didn't seem like a reasonable trade. Where was he supposed to go from here?
Van Kleiss was broken out of his existentialistic reverie by a loud crashing outside the room, followed some shrill screeching and low grunting that he identified respectively as Keeper (as they had decided to call her) and Skalamander brawling again. Disturbed by his lapse in concentration, he returned his attention to the machine while trusting Biowulf to keep the two fighters away from him and the machine.
The machine – that fragile mixture of alloys and metals that would hopefully prove to be his salvation. He was basically working from his memories of an old prototype he had seen hundreds of years ago, before his journey through time, while he was cannibalizing the now-defunct Moses Laboratories (closed due to a sudden withdrawal of all funding) for equipment and data. That machine as he remembered it could isolate the bonds holding nanites together and supercharge them, turning an EVO into a super-EVO with enhanced abilities.
He couldn't believe it. A nobody from some cheap research facility had somehow managed to locate the nanite bonds – and had decided to weaponize his discovery! Of all the things he could have accomplished we that discovery, and the fool fell to his greed. Just another example of how poorly EVOs were treated by humans.
Anyway, Van Kleiss combined this with the information he had extracted from ZAG-RS' motherboard before that memory dump he'd committed way back in the desert, and had created a mish-mash of cables and transistors that could hypothetically turn back time – figuratively speaking, of course. If he could isolate the bonds of the currently inactive nanites and reprogram them with ZAG-RS' data while supercharging their bonds…he'd postulated interesting results.
Kleiss had no way to guarantee the planetary reaction when he powered his device up, as he had no prior data to work upon. One did not re-infect the entire globe with a deadly plague every other day, after all. However, he had been able to calculate that every nanite on the planet would be activated once more when he jump-started them, and the odds that any given random person would turn into an EVO would be around 0.06%, which was perfectly acceptable. He postulated that perhaps the nanite bonds in subjects who were EVOs prior to the Second Nanite Event would be more susceptible to his device's call, but that was mere supposition.
Perhaps more importantly, the nanite-infused soil in Abysus would be activated again, and he could draw from his reservoir of strength once more and begin to really focus on taking control.
But all of that is in the future, Van Kleiss thought to himself. For now, this machine is of paramount importance.
After double-checking all the soldering points again to ensure solid contact and giving the apparatus yet another once-over to ensure that everything was in the proper order, Van Kleiss stepped back. The programming was finished, and he was ready to go. He decided to conduct a mock trial to verify that all the pieces were functioning properly and that the code ran through the system correctly. However, just as he was about to turn it on, a knock sounded at the door.
"Come in", he called, just as all the lights went out. A curious phenomenon, Van Kleiss thought as his eyes adjusted to the lower level of light coming from the computer screens which remained on for a few seconds longer, drawing reserves from their shallow capacitors, before they too winked out, leaving Van Kleiss in utter darkness.
How peculiar.
The doorway opened slowly, shafts of light filtering past the bulky figure shuffling through the narrow entrance. Floorboards creaking beneath his misaligned limbs, Skalamander sidled in, carefully maneuvering his bulk between the tottering piles of computer parts until he stood in front of Van Kleiss, mumbling and looking from side to side rather guiltily.
"What is it now, Skalamander?" asked Van Kleiss, although he had a pretty fair idea of what was coming.
The green behemoth rumbled, "Master, an…incident involving the pylons has just occurred. The Keeper was throwing some of the ice creams vans around, and one of them, errm, kind of brushed by the generator out back..." Behind the green behemoth stood Biowulf, lurking silently. Kleiss gave him a look, to which Biowulf shook his shaggy head slightly.
Van Kleiss groaned inside, although he kept a straight face in front of the help. There goes the electricity. So much for that test sequence I was going to run… The generator was probably wrecked. No point brooding over it, there were things that needed to be done, and soon.
"Skalamander, help me lift this platform to the open. Biowulf, find Breach and tell her to meet me as soon as she can."
As his helpers scurried to do his bidding, Van Kleiss sank into a cheap plastic chair gratefully, relishing the opportunity to rest his aching legs. His neck ached, and, now that he thought about it, his eyelids felt heavy from over three days of being kept open, staring at bright screens and dark corners. He inclined his head slightly, allowing his eyes to droop slightly, rationalizing internally that a few minutes of rest wouldn't hurt. In fact, they'd probably help. And besides, the plan is already in motion. I just need to power it up. All the work is done, and I finally have some time to myself.
Having placated his over-active upper brain, Van Kleiss allowed his head to rest upon the wall sideways, releasing himself into the eager embrace of sleep. He closed his eyes, and drifted off slowly, feeling a most relaxing sensation of falling slowly, spinning in circles gently, tossed to and from, as his consciousness sailed across the quiet waters of his brain…
Which, of course, is when Breach decided to show up.
xxXxx
A/N: Sorry about the slow updates, but college is murderous. That's a terrible excuse, I know, but it's all I've got. Still, like I said, this is probably the update speed: once around every two weeks, with more if I get a) random, inspirational visits from my Muse, or b) a ton of free time.
Well, now we all know what Kleiss has been working on so feverishly (if you hadn't already worked that out). I don't really know much about the meta-nanites method of reprogramming all regular nanites, but I do know a few things about ZAG-RS's information. Please follow the train of thought: In Gravity, ZAG-RS gained data on how to modify nanite's to self-destruct. Van Kleiss purportedly initiated a memory dump on ZAG-RS (yes, I know it could have been César's doing, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here). Since Van Kleiss also ransacked Moses Laboratories (why not?), he now knows how to program nanites, and how to locate their bonds.
His machine is capable of isolating the bonds (like Moses could), and forcing the nanites to reactive by reversing the programming he received from ZAG-RS. This may be a bit of a stretch, but come on – this is fanfiction!
YellowAngela: Thanks for the info. I wasn't really sure of how to characterize Rhodes, but I'm glad you like it – it was kind of difficult, and required three good, solid re-watches of Gravity. I think it kind of sucks that neither she nor Volkov make an appearance later in the series – Volkov especially, with his dry wit and calm temperament. "It appears we are going to die...again", delivered in a completely deadpan voice.
theWriterunknown: Thanks: César's one of my favorite characters too – his genius intellect and bumbling, innocent personality make for a great character. I think his attitude is perfectly summed up in one dialogue from Haunted: [Rex]: "Oooh...is that some sort of nanite thing?" [César nonchalantly picks it up]: "Mango smoothie...but this is my hyper-electromagnet that can disassemble a tank from a kilometer away. (sips drink) And evidently it can also make deliciously creamy smoothies."
Lily. : Thanks for reviewing! It's nice to know that I'm not the only perfection-maniac out there. Thanks for pointing out the EVO-capitalization thing, which I'd completely missed. I've since corrected both the issues with Captain Calan's and César's names. Thanks for the compliments, and I hope you like where the story is going!
And now, the usual poem. Because tradition is stronger than steel. And yes, this really is a form of poetry.
On a softened chair
In a dim and crowded room
In a quiet town
Having nothing else to do,
Am typing on my keyboard.