The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

Crossing in permanently from now on:

Martin Mystery cartoon 2003/06 only; written forms ignored.

The real adventures of Jonny Quest cartoon 1964 & 1996/97 only; written forms ignored

Thunderbirds TV animation 1964/66, live film 2004 and cartoon TAG 2015 only; written forms ignored

Kong; the animated series cartoon 2000/01 only; written forms ignored

Capital OCs of my creation Labarre Clan, Brennan Family, Andrews Family, Bannon Family, Evans Family

This chapter is based upon the canon SQ season 2 episode 'Playtime' in which the ship is dragged through an artificial space/time gateway to reach circa 2300 in Earth's future. While the time mechanics and World Management Grid are used, the rest is vastly AU and OOC with the reasons being obvious in the story line.

The magical system in use is the result of taking the fundamental principals of the multiverse, dimensions, crystal spheres and Yggdrasil's fruits from RoleMaster & SpaceMaster then concatenating into that baseline organization Dungeons & Dragons, D&D Spelljammer, The Cthulhu Mythos, Harry Potter, FullMetal Alchemist and the psionics abilities seen in the StarGate, Star Wars and Star Trek series. Don't worry, it runs smoother and more seamlessly than you could think at first glance. Also remember that SeaQuest had its share of magic, ghosts, psionics, primordial beasts and genetically engineered freaks and let's not forget the time travel. So do each of the series that I crossover into the main story plot and that's why it all gels together seamlessly; they all have between four and six common elements to mesh and build with.

Eighth chapter; The 'not so great anymore' adventure

Brotherly interlude

(SeaQuest - season 2 opening theme)

Tuesday December 25th of 2300 - deep night

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Administration tower

"Of all the bloody apostollations of Lucifer Morningstar, fucking Anti-Christ and Lord of UnderVerse and the Depths! May the Knaves have their guts for garlands in the Sarabande Macabre! Das schweinen arsch!"

Older Lucas looked at his younger brother with a brand new tick above his left eyebrow. Where in all the navies of the world had the little guy learned to swear like that? Even at 19 years old after almost four solid years rubbing elbows with sailors he didn't have a mouth like that, especially not in public. He was seriously thinking about his little tyke needing some parenting or at least some urgent brothering in the very near future.

"Do you have any idea of the meaning of this find? Do you realize that you have been the puppet of a computer's ghost for the last half of your life? Do you understand that the reason you reneged your life, health, welfare and your very spirit and soul was because some vestigial programs that hadn't been erased or clocked out kept trying to foist their bitchcrap down your gullet like a farmer fattening a goose?" the child barked.

Ah! The Older Sibling now had a clue as to why the child was kvetching a good one in front of him. They really were alike in that respect. The older male was suddenly overcome by a wave of positive emotion that he hadn't felt in more than a decade; true love. Someone loved him truly and unconditionally just because he was alive and that was enough to be pissed off at the injustices and violations done upon him. He counted himself lucky for what little pride and ego he had left that he was already sitting in a comfortable chair or he'd have probably gone down face first into the floor out of sheer shock that anybody would ever care about him even if they were blood related.

"I swear that I'll use that counterfucked time gate to drop an army of genetically engineered plague laden, disease spewing, horny rats into their churches that will burrow up their arses straight up their chest and finish in their heads where they'll make a bloody nest and spawn more of the same until there's only rat controlled human corpses traipsing around! Teufel in Flammen der Holle!"

The older male was now wondering if he should calm the boy or take out a notepad and consider this a language class. It looked like it would last a while. Note to self: do not give Little Brother a mixture of tea and pills before bed; it acts as a booster on him.

Deciding that the blowout had in fact lasted long enough, Older Lucas grabbed the gesticulating and overly verbose sibling and plopped him on his lap with a firm embrace wrapped around him. The child stopped cold all movements and noises before turning his head creepily slowly towards his brother like an evil doll in a Z movie. "I hope for your sake that you don't plant a slobbering kiss on my head or we will have words this night." The boy threatened in a low, menacing voice that sent shivers down the spine of his older relative. As he remembered the many sheathes filled with hard steel the child carried around all day, he decided that challenging his very reasonable request for some personal space was not necessary and quickly nodded.

They sat there for a while, the oldest holding carefully onto the youngest until they both yawned at the same time. Looking at each other, they exchanged a few facial expressions and convened that sleep would be a good idea. They had both been up for almost 24 hours by this time and needed some shut-eye to recover. The older male was surprised, but not much, when his little baby brother got up and took his hand to guide him into the bed he had used for the last decade and a half in this timeline. Once the adult was lying down in the covers, Younger Lucas did a last tour of the three rooms to silence anything he missed the first time and then came back to snuggle under the covers with his big brother wrapping his arms around him. They fell into sleep almost immediately, staying deeply asleep for almost 17 hours straight before a combined need for a toilet and food made itself known.

Breakfast among siblings

(Star Wars –Lake Varykino country)

Wednesday December 26th of 2300 - afternoon

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing - restaurant

"The services offered in this place are really something!" commented playfully Younger Lucas as he sipped his coffee at the table in the dining nook they had built for themselves the night before.

The Older Lucas had decided to cook them breakfast and since he had someone else to see to, he planned on making an effort. The bratty little runt offering to give him cooking classes if he failed may have been incentive to keep a closer eye on the grills and pans than he would have if he were still alone.

"Now if we could get you a uniform to make it look professional, we'd be in business!" the pasty little gremlin continued teasing his brother, wearing a shit-eating grin wider than a Garfield cartoon. The joke was aimed at the fact they were both wearing a new set of generic blue scrubs and planned on visiting the laundry service today right after the meal. They both had a pile to wash and Younger Lucas refused to move around town without his battle gear which needed a real good wash all on its own. Even if there were no humans, there would be wild animals since the city wasn't walled and there was now plenty of vegetation overgrowth and smaller animals to attract predators.

"I'm thinking spandex and lycra; a burgundy base with golden piping and details to accentuate the forms. Or in your case, move attention away from the flab from the lack of exercise and efforts in the last decade."

Yes the tyke was in fine form this afternoon. The older male unceremoniously dropped a plate in front of the verbose little plague in his life and then sat with is own. Maybe some solid food with coffee would make the headache go away and at least it would force the runt to keep quiet for a few minutes.

"Tsk! We really need to work on your deportment and customer service. I was almost wearing that meal the way you dropped it next to me. Oh well, we have time don't we? And it's not like there's an appointment for us."

With another tick above his left eyebrow, the older man concentrated on eating and drinking lest he do something to encourage the blasted little troll into another bout of teasing. The kid knew close to 15 languages and all of them very fluently. He could become really annoying if he put his mind to it and keep it up for a very long session to boot. Deciding to reroute the conversation to something useful for a change, he asked the kid how good at healing he was; Older Lucas himself wasn't completely useless but not far from it. The very basic first aid classes they had given him in boot camp had not been stressed and they had never been refreshed since. He was fully into computers, programming and electronics with only some very small incursions in other fields in their mathematics-based sections. He could work in a chemistry or biochemistry laboratory because he had memorized the periodic table and read through a few books about elemental interactions but his interests were not at all in those 'not computerized' domains. At least, that's what he remembered of his life and preferences.

"Well you see, I don't want to be a doctor but I do plan on boosting my survival and first responder capacities by a lot when I get back home. Right now I have a paramedic grade-1 license but that's the lowest of the bunch, it's barely the level above trainee. With that you get some instructions for climbing, rappelling, firefighting basics, finding or locating victims in debris and other stuff for immediately getting out of harm's way. There is precious little in terms of medical knowledge or know-how in this grade. You would be limited to driving the ambulance, doing inventory and paperwork, carrying the bags and placing the equipment for the other guy or assisting the senior medic on hand. You never decide anything truly medical by yourself if someone with a better license is there."

"At Grade-2 you have what people expect from the actual standard first responder or search & rescue. Taking vitals, setting limbs or broken bones, field dressing bleeding injuries for transport, field sutures when a ruptured artery is bleeding out, etc… About what people see when you call an ambulance to a car crash or home accident."

"At Grade-3 you have a full senior paramedic capable of emergency field surgeries, defibrillating a person's heart and giving first necessity medications in the field. This person is trained to deal with allergies and poison like snake bites or eating spoiled stuff. Has been trained to deal with gunshot wounds, trauma from attacks, attempted suicide, industrial spills and explosions, the whole works, and then some. But always from a manual know-how point of view."

"At the highest rank which is what I want to reach, Grade-4, you are the equivalent of a motorized surgical nurse or what some schools and hospitals call a 'physician's assistant'. You can do a lot of important delicate surgeries, administer medications over prolonged therapies and supervise lower ranked paramedics and nurses through an emergency or hospital shift. You can't prescribe anything; only react to what is in front of you in an emergency setting like urgentology or traumatology, allergic reactions, poisonings, etc… Only a full doctor or pharmacist can prescribe anything or make a legally binding order of protection, confinement, take away a driving license, etc…"

Younger Lucas was happy to talk about his studies, hobbies and goals in life. It had been a while since anybody had been genuinely interested and not laughed at his face about his many diplomas. He was actually very proud and very emotionally invested in becoming a fully qualified paramedic because any fool could set fire, detonate a bomb or pull a trigger. It took dedication and care for others to patch them back in working order and he desperately wanted to be able to save his few true friends when the inevitable problems showed up.

Older Lucas frowned in thought; the kid had many good points and while he wasn't medically inclined himself, he should have taken the effort to learn if only to insure his own health and survival. He guessed that the WMG was controlling him through the wearables and had decided it could heal him well enough, why let him waste time on this when a more pressing matter needed resolving.

"Well, we can drop our laundry off on our way to the medical blocks in the main wing's upper levels. There are a few tests that I would like you to put me through and I really want those contacts and ear buds taken out. Today or tomorrow, but certainly before we go back in town and anywhere near that blasted substation. I have the feeling it was programming me over the airwaves to do stuff and to forget other stuff and I really don't know my own mind or personality anymore."

Younger Lucas stayed silent as he chewed his food. It was actually well done and tasteful. His sibling had a good future as a cook if computers ended up annoying him. As for the tests, he was uncertain of how that would end. The WMG controlled much of everything and could have re-written all the patient files and basic medical texts to keep Older Lucas from reading and finding things he could use to escape that control. He also doubted that the automated medical devices would give reliable data. They would need to do a lot by hand.

"Hey, bro? I checked something when we got up this morning. Where are my hotels? They don't seem to be on the map."

"You don't have anything in this place little guy. You're not actually in the future of your timeline. You are not only in MY timeline, but also another realitive arbrissure different from your own. This is the basic theory of the multiverse: there are infinite possible versions of reality because each moment someone makes a decision or action spawns a new timeline or 'causality chain' so decision 'A' will cause events 'A1', 'A2', 'A3' but also 'B1', 'B2', 'C1' etc… to be generated and linked both vertically along the chain and also laterally by logical determinisms between themselves."

"This is going on along the other aspect of Material Reality; there are dimensions and realities coexisting alongside of each other at the same moment that the temporal causal chains happen. What that means in practice is that dimensions are normally an elemental or spiritual domain like the Plane of Earth or the Plane of Light where almost everything not the basal element is limited in quantity and quality."

"By comparison, a reality is like this: you would have an Earth with 72% water mass, continents and oceans, the UEO happened and such. But a small detail would be that every man you know is a female and every woman you know is a male. Their characters and lives are almost identical because in this culture, it's the women that are physically stronger and mentally more capable compared to men. So that would be the initial point of that 'Realitive Arbrissure' or root of logical and causal chains. It could be that blacks were the dominant race, that there is only 10% water on earth or worse 96% water and no large land mass. Do you follow?"

Younger Lucas nodded blandly while trying to absorb the confirmation to what he had suspected. "I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi so I know about the 'space – dimensions – time – realities' theory of nestled universes and pocket dimensions and subspace realms, and all that. I had hoped that it was real like everybody does because it would be cool to have that many opportunities to find stuff and new peoples and cultures. But to get sucked out of my own reality and into another where I don't exist and everything about my alter is weak, meek and menial really isn't pleasant. We are going to change a lot of things if I get my say so."

Older Lucas couldn't stop the wince of hurt at the harsh words from his sibling but understood where they came from. The little guy had in just one year turned himself from a simpering child to a strong minded person that would take no shit from anyone. The 33 year old really was ashamed of himself even though the implants, drugs and lies had a lot to do with it all. He needed to get his brain back in gear to escape this mess.

Medical necessities

(MacGyver – Opening theme)

Wednesday December 26th of 2300 - afternoon

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing – Level 2 medical testing rooms

After spending an hour touring the consultation rooms, diagnostics bays and physical effort testing gymnasium with its limited tools, both siblings were regrouping in the reception area at the second floor juncture between the admin tower and main wing. Sitting in the dingy thinly padded chairs of the public waiting area, they began a conversation about the options and obligations they faced.

"We are going to have to go through a lot of equipment with several laptops and many boxes of tools and parts to get things how they should be." Younger Lucas spoke in disgust at the state of things. All the machines in the diagnostics block of the hospital were all hard-wired into the WMG and also had antennae to receive or broadcast. The whole system was made so that doctors could not deviate from the pattern of politically and religiously determined action without an alarm sounding in some surveillance office. It also meant that the diagnostics and cures explained to the families were not always relevant to the actual injuries or diseases if the Ecclesiastes perceived a threat in the patient's attitude or knowledge.

Even the most basic devices like the stethoscopes, thermometers and sphygmomanometers had been 'upgraded' to electronic versions and had wireless capacities to keep the doctors from rendering any assistance under the radars of the CSA and the corrupt Military Police who were collaborating with them. They would need to work for several days to clean up the equipments; rip out antennae and network cabling, strip down the programming and rebuild at least one of each device so as to have a clean suite of diagnostics tools. Then they would have to do it all over again with an operating theater so as to finish repairing and healing Older Lucas once and for all.

"Listen Old Guy, this isn't gonna work for either of us. You aren't a medical device engineer and I can't program anything but the cheat codes in my Playsation. We don't have the knowledge, skillset, tools or time to do this. I say we just get the minimal done to get the damned contacts and ear buds out of you and then move on to preparing for the time gate and our way out of here."

"I ain't old, I'm just more experienced in life than you, pipsqueak! But for the sake of survival, I can see that my last 14 years here haven't been a gold mine of results and hurrahs. We both need to either get out or make a long term plan for the next five years or so cause I have the feeling that any schedule shorter or less involved will not accomplish anything but bits & bobs that won't work together in the end. The worst of it all is I don't think we can really do much of anything in this timeline or even in this realitive arbrissure anymore. It's like the universe is saying 'Lucas sweetie, it's time to pack and leave. Be a big boy now and go into the world to have a life at long last' and you're the final signal that I'm gonna get about it. If I stay here, I'll go nuts and commit suicide inside of a month alone or I'll let the damned grid take over my soul and dive into cybernetic oblivion to forget my loneliness."

The two brothers from different worlds sat in silent rumination for another half hour before the child asked a rather pertinent question. "You came here on a phat-assed barge didn't ya? That means we should be able to pass the same size back the other way. Why don't we find an empty cargo ship and fill it with medical equipment, industrial machinery, power tools, brand new computers and all the stuff we want that we can get our hands on. Just bring it all back with us to my reality and time. If we keep everything inert, unpowered and we take out the antennae as we pick them up and pack them for shipping, we can stop the damn WMG and its control modules from spreading. Once we're back in my homeland we would have all the time in the world to do a really thorough strip down and reprogram before lighting up any piece of equipment. There shouldn't be any problems if we do this like a quarantine against biological spread."

The Older Lucas was rubbing his chin in deep thought. Firstly, they would need to review the time and reality travel protocols to make certain that he could send him back with more than he came, especially with more people. Then, the question of whether he had to appear at the same location and time or could appear elsewhere and then travel to his point of origin to intersect with the original causal chain and maintain his place in the progenitor timeline. That meant going back to the substation and working directly in the mainframe and transit calculators. Oh joy.

"You have some pretty good ideas and points kiddo, but acting on them won't be easy. We're gonna have to go back in NCQ to stay at the substation to work in the programs to get the calculations done and find out the answers to whether we can send back more than came through. It's gonna be some damned hard time for both of us and I would prefer to avoid the place for a few days more, at least until the wearables in my head are offline and we know what's happening to me for real."

"No we don't; you're over thinking things. Firstly; your time portal was able to change size from a child target to pass the girth of SeaQuest II in it. It will adapt if we program it to take the target we want. Secondly; the portal is an energy ring, no a fixed structure of metal and plastic so it is by its very nature adaptable. Thirdly; the ingoing and outgoing points of the portal are completely free-float coordinates and not necessarily in the same place. I was in my private armory in basement 4 in BVL Buffalo when I got taken but I appeared in NCQ's grid substation. Your boat was near Mexico when it got taken and reappeared at the mouth of the NCQ harbor. Conclusion: the portal's size and apertures WILL adapt to what is programmed in its targeting apparatus. The proof is material and already in hand."

Older Lucas wanted to bang his head on the wall behind him; the pasty little gremlin had just answered questions that would have required weeks of testing and calculations just by using his eyes and the facts in front of him. OF COURSE the damned energy ring could be morphed and adapted to whatever suited the target's situation and locality. He even had the option to generate the gravity flux to pull in the target or let them move into the gateway by their own power. How the hell had he been so bloody blind as to forget something so basic that it was practically screaming at him. It must be another of those functions implanted into him to make him subliminally discard anything that didn't help along his obedience or working on the job he was tasked.

"Okay kid, we need to prioritize getting my head junk-free and rebooting my mind so it can work right. After that, I'll be a lot more help in planning and organizing our going away party."

Younger Lucas pursed his lips and said "I want to go back to the Icehold Vault. I want to see with my eyes every sibling we have and read each medical file before we do anything to you. If there's a medic or pharmacist in the bunch, maybe we could convince him to help in exchange for a ride to freedom with us. Besides, since it's now determined that we can leave when we want and we'll appear in the reality and time of our choosing anyways, why the hurry? As long as I'm not more than a few months older, nothing will be apparent to anybody."

Extending maintenance and planning

(Frederich Chopin – Funeral march)

Wednesday December 26th of 2300 - afternoon

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Mortuary edifice

"Here we go again. I always feel like a scavenger or a scurvy rat of sorts when I come here. There is only pain, shame and wasted lives in the Vault, Little Brother. Nothing good will come of this." Older Lucas followed the child's idea and went to the Vault with him mostly to avoid loneliness, not because he thought the plan a good one. Every person in cryosleep had been physically unable to live unassisted, had been insane or had tried to kill him until he subdued them and brought them here to sleep. No, there would be nothing good from this idea, just more awful memories of failures, of family let down that died or went to sleep in his arms while he cried his useless existence. Mea culpa frater cruore; Mea maxima culpa frater esspiritu aeternam.

"I don't believe one bit of that spiel. The WMG fed you lies for years until it lost control about three months ago and that was after an event where it had obtained practically penultimate control over your body and soul 24 months back. What happened two years ago and again three months ago? Those are two of the most pressing questions for our survival right after getting your head screwed on straight and finding out if we have some support on ice in the cellar. My belief is that the grid is afraid of losing control of the only human with enough potential to rebuild humanity biologically and then repair what went wrong psychologically and sociologically. However, the strictures of human reality are that you grow old, you tire, you get injured and need recovery time. All of those make a project slow down or even abort. A careful manager would tend his workforce and equipments kindly but also have spares and replacements in the wings just in case the unthinkable happens."

Older Lucas stopped cold with his winter jacket half-on as he stared at the child in abject horror. "You mean to tell me that the people in there could be perfectly healthy and functional but kept on ice in case I get too slow, too hard to control or just too busted up to bother with fixing? That they're just spares like tires for a car?"

Younger Lucas answered with a shrug that served to both show his emotions and pull the jacket onto his black armored form. The back-pack for the filtration system and power plant of the armor wasn't all that slim and the jacket had never been cut or shaped to fit such a bulky figure, even if it was the size of an adult. And the damnable thing went down almost to his ankles like a trenchcoat. Bah! It was a bad job done with. He angrily took the superfluous jacket off and yanked it back in place on its wall peg. The boy pressed a button hidden in the rim of his left gauntlet and then spoke his command to the voice recognition processor built into the life-support systems of his defense suit. He upped both the temperature and the airflow to keep from getting heat stroke and passing out. That was a bad experience that he would no repeat. You had to be careful of your metabolic rates and limits when wearing airtight armored suits or you could harm yourself as bad as the enemy would just by accidentally not hydrating enough or not having sufficient air to breathe during heavy efforts.

"We will see soon enough. First thing we do is disconnect all the cameras, microphones, glassworks and speakers to get the place isolated from the WMG. Then we unplug the computers from the networks, both the Internex's WAN and the hospital's LAN. We need to check for a dedicated DARPA link as well. After everything is clean and set in ivory tower configuration, we start pulling out and reading every file on every person in that vault, even those that aren't one of our blood and kin. Help could come from anywhere in any shape and we need all we can get. Now is not the time to be selective or arrogant."

"Fine then, you tetchy little moppet; how do you want to go about it?" asked Older Lucas with a grin. Teasing his sibling never got old. He should have bribed Lawrence into having other kids when he was younger just so he could have fun with them. It would have made a real family as he would have cared for them and kept them safe, loved and educated like he never was. Oh well (sigh) if everything works out, maybe he could have his own kids in a new timeline or reality.

"Oy! I ain't no moppet, you geriatric crud! We need to pre-sort the files into piles about who is from the past and who is from a future temporal zone equivalent to the one we're in. Then we are going to separate by degrees of differentiation using the identity first because Lucases are the most important somehow, followed by race, gender, age, specialties. After that we categorize the non-Lucas persons according to who they came with through the vortex. Patients that were normal residents from this timeline will be analyzed in the very last batch because they are probably damaged beyond repair anyways so they aren't a priority to spend efforts on. Is that sufficient for an organization? Also, we should print out the patient files in case we lose power or the computers try to re-write the files at some point, just in case we missed a cable or antenna when we cleaned up."

"I am not elderly, munchkin! And you didn't protest your smallness or tetchiness; that's something! But I agree with the whole plan. I suggest we both work on the strip down then we get a hot meal upstairs in the mortuary's cafeteria. When we come down again, we should bring some of the small portable hotplates and a few bags of non-perishables to snack on while we work so we avoid the stairs and airlock. Also, I understand that the Vault has to be cold, but there should be a way to heat up this control room or at least not make it so cold. We need to find the damned manual and read it to see what the maximum temperature has to be to keep the sleepers safe. If there's one lesson that I'm retaining from your presence it's to take care of myself better if I want to get out of this modically healthy and supposedly sane."

"I'll have you know that I am eleven years old; being my size is normal so why be upset? As for being tetchy? Meh, it's the truth and I don't lie without a valid reason. Besides, since I'm eleven, it's also expected that I bitch every now and then. And did I remark you not contesting your crudness? How honest. The teamwork, yes, it's a good idea. The temperature we will look into during our meal upstairs, but bringing something to warm our hands like a hotplate with a pot of coffee on it would be a good idea and no threat to the system if we keep it next to the outer wall. Keeping it away from the control consoles is just good sense anyways; less chances of a spill like that. And I suppose we could print the files but work in the outer waiting area where the coat rack is. There are a few dingy chairs we could switch out for better ones from upstairs and bring down a couple of tables as well. The service lift covers all levels and is easily accessible as it's not in the cold zone. Moving furniture down here or printing everything and going topside; which do you think?"

"I think we would be better above ground, but the rooms we clear out of spyware are all here next to the freezer so do we want to take time to clear out another zone above? If it were just me, I would really prefer to work above ground and away from the cold. However, if we can make a hot zone, I could tough it out a few days in a row to get the job done right and see if my zombie state did hide away a couple of allies we could awaken. Even if we get all negative answers, having a clean confirmation would help my mind a lot and be worth enduring the dreary setup."

"Well, at this point with your health the way it is, every little bit helps. So I guess we're just going to have to double the work. We clear the control room to print out stuff and then clear out a room above for a permanent work zone. We can choose which one when we go up to eat. We'll just stay above until we're done stripping it down. Tell me something; I just had a brain flash about those humanoid robots like those that drive the cars. Are they capable of minute work like assembling and welding a circuit board? Could we program a few to go around independently from the Grid to rip out stuff in our stead? They could work at night even and we would have the complex cleaned up in a few weeks. We could then go and strip down the scrap out of the substation so we can have a better work environment when we start camping there to check out the temporal gateway."

Older Lucas knelt before his sibling and wrapped him in a loving hug for his thoughtful consideration of his health and preferences for the work conditions. After a few minutes of recharging both of their emotional batteries, they separated with a grin and happy playful forehead bump.

"I think your idea about the bots is splendid! Those things can actually do surgeries in the ambulances if the patient is crashing before they reach the hospital. Among the many things they are programmed with are bathing the elderly, handicapped or comatose; maintaining all the machinery and perfusion tubes in hospitals or with actively mobile patients; doing the samples and analysis in the field or hospice and quite a few other jobs. Getting one, stripping the CPU clean and rebooting it without any network would be easy since we'd actually take out a lot of job by simply having the voice recognition and native language interface to worry about."

"Okay then mein brunder we're going to get ourselves some hired help first of all since it would actually give us a medic to rely on as well as an extra tech. Once we see how performant the thing is, we can think about adding more to our lot. After the first one or two are in service, we come down here and do the strip down. Come to think of it, we can use the strip job upstairs as a way to test our bots and see what kind of quality they can serve."

The two brothers went back up to the surface and toured the ground floor to find the robotics maintenance room. It was located at the back of the building next to the garages and the rear elevator that served only the first floor forensics labs, the ground floor truck docks and the first basement morgue intake area. The robotics room looked similar to some sci-fi come alive: there were alcoves closed off by glass paneled covers all around the outer wall keeping a total of 36 humanoid robots on charge, ready to go out and serve. A touchscreen on the cover and dials above the alcove door showed the status of each machine as it slept, waiting for the call to go pick up another coma patient or dead body for processing.

Both Lucases took the time to look at each robot as neither had really done so before. The machines were completely uniform: body with one head, two arms ending in five-fingered hands, two legs ending in feet with five separate elongated toes to help with balance and prehension in debris fields. The machines were crisp white with a strip of blue glass in the face at eye-height and the golden logo of the WMG on the chest. From the outside, none of the machines looked vicious or particularly useful. Younger Lucas remarked on the lack of integrated tools and weapons. He understood not arming medics or body carriers, but not integrating tools meant that each machine needed to carry a pouch, satchel or box of tools and parts to repair itself or its vehicle in case of a breakdown. He began pondering the uses and disadvantages of limiting the robot's autonomy so severely. Maybe it was to augment the fighting chances of a dwindling humanity in case the robots went crazy like in movies of the Terminator style.

Older Lucas was now asking himself again what was wrong with his head. With the wealth of tools, parts and working robots in this room alone he could have cut his work at the substation by a factor of 30 or 40 and have recovered a few healthy and helpful siblings in the first year he had been in this timezone. Something was definitely interfering with his head and thinking processes. He knew he hadn't had the best, most engaging personality in his youth but he had still made friends easy enough and kept them in his life once he had acquired their affections. He wasn't a 'user and dropper' type of person. Why was it that despite being stable and functional, he had walked around blindly like in a drug haze for so many years?

They decided to do things logically; strip down the room and it's servers, go through the computers to clean away the controllers and spywares that didn't belong to them and then copy on movable medias all the programs from the CPU's OS onwards. After that they would have a clean, safe room to work on the robots all they wanted and could do the whole batch before anything else.

With a few short words and hand gestures, the two brothers agreed on a working procedure; they would disconnect all the robots from the grid and put them on voice control all at once while still in sleep mode. Then they would remove one from it's alcove to strip and reprogram, one unit at a time going by the serial numbers inscribed on their chest under the WMG logo. The job proved simple enough, just tedious even with an expert prodigy-level tech doing most of the effort. Younger Lucas could strip away the antennae and network chipset once he was shown where everything was but could not do anything else. All the programming had to be done by the older male. It was a rather easy thing since the computer in the room was loaded with the archives of the robot's operating systems and utilities modules.

Once the room's CPU's were cleaned out, it took only an hour per robot to make an independent voice controlled machine. Younger Lucas spent his time hunting around the building for items which he used to create belts and pouches for tools to create a set of standard tool-kits for the bots to carry in case of breakage or problems. He had found a few small med-kits which he would place on the first bots to come active in their service.

As soon as the first bot was made, Younger Lucas tasked it with cleaning out the mortuary's enclosed garage to see if it could do so without supervision. He helped his older brother program the bot with software to recognize the sonic, visual and vibrational frequencies of the offending subliminals that the WMG kept emitting throughout all the complex and set the robotic tech to stripping it all out and making a pile of junk parts. Structural elements like the windows and mirrors would simply be disconnected and have their wires bent and tied with fluo colored tape to see where the connectors were.

The robot took about two hours of slow methodical work to do the whole garage by itself but when the humans went in to check out the progress accompanied by their two new helpers they were able to see that every piece of offending or intrusive electronics had indeed been stripped or disconnected and tagged as per the programming. They set all three robots to work on a single room each to see how that would go while they took a meal break in the ground floor cafeteria located in front, just behind the public reception area.

Escorted by their new medic bot, the two siblings went to the cafeteria and puttered around the cupboards, trying to find something to eat to avoid going back to the main wing's restaurant. They really needed to stock up on food and spread it around the complex. They also needed to secure the ground floor entries and windows to keep animals and potential intruders out. The thick, 30 foot high brick wall surrounding the compound was nice but not tightly patrolled and had several week spots, especially around the gates.

Breaking free

(Star Trek DS9 – Opening theme)

Sunday December 30th of 2300 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Icehold Vault – cryogenic sleep & isolation ward

"Well. It took three days of work but we finally got there." Older Lucas spoke with satisfaction. "The entire building and the Icehold Vault have been completely cleaned out of any foreign influence and subliminals that could have affected our minds or health. I never noticed it before but sleeping in our room after you cleaned it has made a big difference in how much sleep I get. I can finally feel truly rested and relaxed when I wake up from a night devoid of noises and problems. Thanks kiddo, for doing that for me."

Younger Lucas was blushing, a bit embarrassed by the emotional display of his older sibling. He'd done the things he did mostly out of personal survival instincts and a desire for control, not all because he wanted to help the other. Helping his relative was a part of the reflection yes, but not all of it. Deciding to switch subjects lest his bigger sibling decide to use his size to grab him into a hug again, the boy went to the Vault computer controllers and began to program the printout sequence to get the patient files for everyone in containment.

"I can't wait to be out of here. This place always gives me the creeps. I know it's just medicine and chemicals at work but seeing so many people plugged to pipes like this always gives me a bad impression that something rotten is about to happen. Maybe I'm becoming superstitious in my old age?"

The Older Brother was guffawing at the child's declarations of his more mature mentality when an alarm sounded in the room. It was the cryogenics controller; it was indicating that a hidden layer of WMG directives had been activated since it was now 24 hours since last contact. Unless the network was re-established, the system would go into a controlled shut down and disengage cryonic and fluidic maintenance to all patients in the Vault causing them to awaken without supervision. Some would die from their injuries, others because they were comatose and unable to feed or wash themselves. The mobile ones would be the problem: would they be friends or foes? The computer was giving them less than 57 minutes to reconnect to the Grid.

"No we don't!" Younger Lucas said with angry determination as he pushed the older male away from the CPU console. "There is an enemy out there! Our activities in the last five days show it! Think dammit! We were able to strip thirty-six robots and they in turn cleaned almost all of the mortuary building's 60 plus rooms! Since we discussed the strip down and cleaning out of systems in rooms that were corrupted and nothing happened at the time or since then, we can rule out some form of AI or automated survival instincts programmed into the WMG or its subsystems."

"If we reconnect the Grid it gives that enemy more methods to be aware of what we did than it already is. Look at the proof! Someone is trying to keep an eye on us and control us from a distance. However, they have to hack into the WMG protocols, then the hospital firewalls and then the new very active and performant layers that you put in place. That's why we were able to plan out loud and neither the buildings nor the robots fought back. It's not the Grid, it really is in manual mode just as you unplugged it 14 years ago! It's a person hiding in a hole somewhere and now they are trying to blackmail us by making us think they can thaw out everyone and kill them or set loose killers inside our house to fight us. I am willing to bet our lives that they aren't that dangerous and not our enemies."

Younger Lucas gesticulated wildly with his arms, trying to convince the older male to listen to reason or he would make a terrifying mistake. "The real enemy is out there, using the signal from the wearables and subliminals to watch you and maneuver you like a programmable puppet but since they check up only sporadically between the jobs they give you to do, they have large tracts of time where they know nothing about your activities. Since that person obviously thought the brain implant and contacts were undefeatable, they didn't check in some time because you had something long to finish for them. Now they have checked and can't find you where you're supposed to be so they are panicking. They reviewed old films of the WMG's security records to figure out what you did and who you're with. You have a new ally they can't control so now they try to slug you into submissiveness again by pulling out the equivalent to a nuclear threat. Since you are a moral person which they know full well, they gamble that if you aren't afraid for yourself then you'll think about what the killers would do to the poor little boy at your side. In order to avoid that, you panic and rewire the WMG interfaces and become their slave again. I am willing to bet my life that if we go near a Grid relay you would receive in your wearables instructions that I am a threat and need to sleep in the Icehold Vault or be killed for your safety."

Older Lucas stood stiff and silent as a stone stele, fists clenched and teeth grinding painfully at the thought that somebody out there was actively trying to commandeer his existence like a remote controlled toy or a video game that they can save and reboot at will. He was bloody well pissed off at the years he had lost, people he had put to sleep instead of helping each other out and maybe he even killed or got raped again but would never remember. No more! Whoever was out there, watching in their monitors, trying to force him into submission again, they would pay. He would find them and insure their suffering.

"No more. No more orders. No more uncertainty. No more memories lost. No more being a puppet on strings for somebody's pleasure that's so much of a coward he won't show his face or let me remember them! NO MORE!"

At that last verbal explosion of rage an aura of brackish energy materialized around the man, pulsed twice and blew outwards in a silent explosion of power that made the young boy next to him shiver with dread and feel queasy in the pit of his stomach.

"What the hell was that? Did you see that? What was that pulse of energy? What kind of energy was that? It came out of you and hovered around like a cloudy shield or misty aura…"

"I don't know but for the first time in years I can think clearly and feel like myself again. We can look at the readings from the medi-bot's sensors when were done with this crap about unfreezing everything in the Vault. That's the priority for now. Besides feeling tired physically like I just worked a whole day, I actually feel better and more alert than before you came through the gate. I think whatever that burst was, it was just a manifestation of me breaking free from some heavy mind control or… I don't know what… But I feel it's not there anymore, whatever it was that had me stupid and uninterested in living a real life."

Younger Lucas pursed his lips in doubt and distrust of the situation but couldn't do anything about it at the present time. They had no equipment to scan or test for these situations and no validated knowledge to base assumptions on. They would have to muddle through and hope for the best. Well, that and plan for the worst possible situations as well; he certainly would not walk along blindly hoping for good luck and kisses at the end of the day. His life simply wasn't like that and every other LUCAS seemed to follow the same pattern and much worse.

Older Lucas moved to the Vault CPU's console and began calling up the machinery's diagnostic displays and technical schematics together, speed reading and comparing the two as they appeared. He then stopped and began typing a series of commands directly into the server via an old style interface that showed green text on a black background without any sort of icons or images. He typed much more rapidly than the previous days and without looking at the keyboard.

"Hey kid, don't panic if the lights start flashing in Morse code or the freezer shuts down or something like that okay… I've gone into the mortuary building's server core through the old UEO-LDW20## kernel backdoor that was installed in every operating system, chipset and motherboard since the 2020's that I helped to standardize in the two years between the two SQ's. The UEO wanted a standard, reliable backdoor into every CPU, laptop, cellphone, MP-player and wearable that was on the market. They ordered me to design and produce the thing for them, on the cheapskate weekly salary they gave me, never giving me credit or a cut."

"They never realized that I had integrated a specially ciphered split-ware program into the malware they wanted. When my cipher is coupled with another program supplied externally it becomes a full program instead of just a dormant part. At that point it activates and creates a back door and also generates a set of basic reports, diagnostics and status indicators about the system where it is. That means that the moment it's online I know what type of machine I am accessing, what its operations and uses are, and I also get a nifty list of all the command codes and passwords it was configured with so that I can access it from the legitimate control panels and leave the access code of a patsy in my wake."

Younger Lucas dwelled for a few seconds on the utter suicidal dumb-assery of using slave labor for creating vital equipment and software in any context but especially national security. Using drug-zombies or implant-controlled flesh puppets was still slavery, just more technically advanced and was still an utter idiocy. Slaves only sought freedom, be it physically, mentally or by dying while causing as much destruction as possible to give the other slaves a chance to escape. You could not build anything durable or reliable with slave labor. And whatever you saved in materials and salaries you would pay for in guards, control methods and the multiple damages caused by rebellions and sabotages that would have to be repaired.

The present case was proof: whatever implant they had put in his older brother had obviously been badly programmed, never been customized to the mental strength of the man and they had not watched over him competently or at all. They trusted their penultimate implant; that a mere human could never go beyond the chemical or electronic impulses from the machine in his cortex. And that was the real reason why slavery would never succeed as a social or state system: it rendered the masters physically and mentally lazy to the point of stupidity, just like too much automation and robotization did.

With a truly magnificent sneer of loathing for the implant, its creators and users, Little Lucas came to stand by his older sibling and snorted in contempt for the idiots implied in the periphery of the situation. "Let yourself loose man, whatever you do, the cock-shakers had it coming at them for long time. Show the damned dogs that nobody pisses on a LUCAS and gets away with it, not in this world or any other."

With a grim smirk of anger, the older male began coding in earnest, digging through layers of protections that were suddenly rather paltry before his skilled mind. If this is the best that the 2150's and later were capable of in computer programming then it was no wonder the WMG was such a freaking mess that a bunch of half insane kids could hack it to shreds and take command of the large legged tanks to tear the planet apart.

"There! I isolated the program that popped up the warning about the freezer shutting down if we don't reconnect the Grid in less than an hour. It was actually a localized autonomous subroutine that didn't need any external prompting to activate, it really did just measure the time elapsed since the Grid was last pinged. The problem with the little piece of crap was that it actually was connected to the refrigeration units and could have shut them down, but not the fluid nutrients or anesthetics. I am looking to see if anything else would have triggered to actually wake up the people but I'm not finding anything. I think that this program was put in as some sort of fear mongering or threat against me just like you thought."

"I still think somebody out there is watching and controlling you from a distance. I certainly don't think for a second that you're the one who put that little program into the system to emulate a crisis. And if you truly were in an altered state because of the implant or drugs then I don't think you would have been able of such refined work. The quality and quantity of work you just did in 45 minutes is about as much as what you had done in the last day. No, I believe that what triggered is one of many booby traps put in place by the outside enemy to scare you into voluntarily reactivating your wearables and the WMG link-up so that you would ping the Grid and send a signal that would alert this person that you needed a human-made readjustment to your mind and attitude. I am now pretty sure that the World Management Grid is in fact well and truly dead and that there are no system-wide automatisms in place to control or guide you."

Older Lucas leaned backwards in his chair, a thoughtful frown on his face as he remembered a few things that had been blocked until an hour ago. "I agree with you. Every event, alarm and job that I lived through for the last 14 years seems and feels like they are going towards a goal and I don't think that Humania, the Grid's automated modules or any sort of vestigial programming is behind this. Some of the tasks I got were too precise, the timing was too strict to let me any time to recover or maintain myself and thus have any leisure time to think and want more. Only a living being would understand that by overworking me and keeping me fatigued I would be depressed, morose and too damned tired to think straight about having a better health and a better life."

The child joined his hands behind his back as he walked to the large viewport into the freezer and stated calmly "It's an easy guess brother; we Lucases seem to all be workaholics and perfectionists along with a strong streak of putting the needs of the group or society ahead of our own welfare. With a psychological profile like that, it wouldn't be hard for someone to use the contacts, ear buds and the blasted subliminal messages from every piece of glass in town to convince you that you had a duty to help solve the crisis and that waiting or slowing down would be reprehensible and shameful. They pushed your mental buttons and it worked but sporadically you got loose and something happened to put you back under the control. That is what we have to find out and fast."

"Fast, yes, but not as fast as going through these medical files. Now that we know the Vault was rigged, I am wandering what else was rigged and what other nasty surprise we are going to get when the guy doesn't get his puppet back on its leash when he pushes the recall button. We need to get as many of these people back up and running as we can manage. I have a gut feeling that our answer and salvation is in these people."

Extended kinship

(Frederich Chopin –Funeral March)

Sunday December 30th of 2300 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Mortuary edifice

Both Lucases were looking at the vidscreens and tackboards set up on the walls of the ground floor conference room they had chosen as their research base to analyze the files of their kin. It was actually the morticians' formal amphitheater for when they did a report on an autopsy of an 'interesting' or classified case. The room was composed of a rising multi-leveled floor with 5 columns of two seats over twelve rows for a seated total of 120 attendees. There was a main presentation zone between the front seats and the raised platform with its two large tables which were both fronted by a quad of fixed vidscreens. A trio of video flex-screens each 6 feet tall by twelve feet wide could be unrolled from the ceiling when needed. Several rails around the ceilings and walls allowed moving the many tackboards around until they were placed at the presenter's liking. A full scenic lighting array and computerized sound system completed the efficient but rather generic setup. This did after all resemble what most Ivy League universities and high level secondary schools used in both Lucas's timelines.

Now the important stuff: they had 139 LUCAS in deep freeze but also another 104 people had somehow come through the gateway at the same time over the many attempts. These accidental ride-alongs were complicating things but at least they had been near a version of LUCAS at the moment of the transit so they at least knew of the guy and what he did. There were even in these persons a few mis-targeting cases where only the bystander was grabbed and brought to the advanced alternate reality, unwittingly leaving the LUCAS selected behind.

Then there were the other occupants of the Vault; they had presumed these were regular soldiers on duty who became patients after one of the many ordinary accidents or combat injuries damaged or polluted their brain and spine as that was the hospital's stated mission. This was a lesson in the truism that they should 'Never trust a politician to speak true' even when naming a medical facility. Most of the people on ice were not actual soldiers but rather family members of important military leaders and politicians who had deemed these people to be too liberal-minded or even (gasp of shame!) not religious enough or even had spoken out against the rule of the church over America and the World at large. So these leaders had conceived, commanded and paid with tax money the construction of the biggest secret warehouse of political prisoners in all of America's history.

People were brought here to be kept asleep until drugs, surgeries, implants or brain-connecting computers became advanced enough to reprogram the infidels into the docile, obedient servants of the White Painted Cross that were desired by the Ecclesiastes. The many regular soldiers that were convalescing in the surface levels of the facility were systematically chosen from two groups according to the desired end. Whites were admitted so as to heal them and garner support from their rich and politically powerful families. All others were admitted publicly but kept in a different wing than the good pedigreed people. Their use was as testing subjects for new drugs and procedures. That's why most of the non whites were orphans or ex-members of street gangs trying to leave the criminal life behind by joining the service. No one would miss them enough to complain to the media when they died from complications, allergies or from the systematic campaign of removal from the service that the hospital was tasked with carrying out.

This institution was proven to be another of the CSA's concentration camps by several deeply hidden ghost servers that Older Lucas uncovered during the preparation work to find the patient files and validate them. The complex was just better built and much better hidden than the others had been. And since it was for adults, not kids, nobody thought that a connection existed and so the hospital continued operating unchallenged even after the CSA was disbanded and exposed for the Nazi-inspired network of perverts and monsters that it was. Right until the end of humanity's time on Earth when they were too old and sick to be autonomous, the scientists were trying to find ways to influence softly or control invasively and harshly the human mind.

That's why there were so many structural elements pushing subliminals and subsonic messages: the patients were being tested throughout the entire facility, not just the labs or bedrooms. All the electronically connected equipments were wanted that way as they made controlling the patients easier and tracking the surgeries and treatments much less paperwork-intensive. It also alerted the medics right away when a person was managing to fight the drugs or implants instead of finding out when the patient blew a fuse and attacked personnel in an attempt to free themselves.

The two Lucases managed so far to order the people they had in cryo thusly. All people in the freezer were actually from the past as the oldest on hand was 23 years old and from their birth dates, it placed them in the past, behind the current timezone, whichever reality they were from.

17; Lucas, white, male, adult, hetero

14; Lucas, white, male, adult, gay

21; Lucas, white, male, teen, hetero

13; Lucas, white, male, teen, gay

14; Lucas, white, male, child, hetero (supposition)

03; Lucas, white, male, child, gay (supposition)

12; Lucille, white, female, adult, hetero

06; Lucille, white, female, adult, gay

19; Lucille, white, female, teen, hetero

05; Lucille, white, female, teen, gay

13; Lucille, white, female, child, hetero (supposition)

02; Lucille, white, female, child, gay (supposition)

03; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, adult, hetero

02; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, adult, gay

04; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, teen, hetero

02; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, teen, gay

01; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, child, hetero (supposition)

01; Martin Ludovic Mystere, white, male, child, gay (supposition)

02; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, adult, hetero

01; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, adult, gay

03; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, teen, hetero

02; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, teen, gay

01; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, child, hetero (supposition)

01; Martine Ludoviane Mystere, white, female, gay (supposition)

03; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, adult, hetero

02; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, adult, gay

04; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, teen, hetero

02; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, teen, gay

01; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, child, hetero (supposition)

00; Thomas Benoit Labarre, white, male, gay (supposition)

02; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, adult, hetero

01; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, adult, gay

03; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, teen, hetero

02; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, teen, gay

01; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, child, hetero (supposition)

00; Thamara Beatrice Labarre, white, female, gay (supposition)

02; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, adult, hetero

01; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, adult, gay

02; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, teen, hetero

01; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, teen, gay

02; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, child, hetero (supposition)

00; Jonathan Benton Quest, white, male, gay (supposition)

02; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, adult, hetero

00; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, adult, gay

02; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, teen, hetero

00; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, teen, gay

02; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, child, hetero (supposition)

00; Joanne Rachel Quest, white, female, gay (supposition)

01; Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, adult, hetero

01; Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, adult, gay

03; Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, teen, hetero

02 Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, teen, gay

01; Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, child, hetero (supposition)

01; Alan Sheppard Tracy, white, male, gay (supposition)

02; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, adult, hetero

01; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, adult, gay

04; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, teen, hetero

01; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, teen, gay

02; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, child, hetero (supposition)

00; Alana Sheppard Evans, white, female, gay (supposition)

03; Diana Eveline Lombard, white, female, teen, hetero (half-sister of Martin Mystere)

07; Jenna Mylene Labarre, white, female, teen, hetero (birth sister of Thomas Labarre)

05; Jessica Imelda Bannon, white, female, teen, hetero (spiritual sister of Jonathan Quest & Hadji Singh)

04; Tanusha 'Kayo' Bellegant, asian, female, adult, hetero (spiritual sister & fiancée of Alan Tracy)

03; Jason Randall Jenkins, white, male, adult, hetero (cousin to Jonathan Quest through mother)

05; Lua (orphaned foundling), white, female, adult, hetero (spiritual sister & girlfriend to Jason Jenkins)

This gave a total number of medical cases to review spread as such:

139 LUCAS

104 allies of LUCAS

583 other people not related to LUCAS in any ways

The Icehold Vault's total population was 826 out of a maximum 1,000 sustention beds available.

There were no instances of any non-white LUCAS having been brought over even though the temporal and inter-realitive scan results showed the existence of several hundred mediterranean, asian and black occurrences of each person they had inventoried in the freezer. Also, according to the records taken automatically by the WMG substation's scanners at each event, all the LUCAS that came through were deemed immediately serviceable by the Grid's medical modules. Any injuries would have happened afterwards in this timezone. Given this, they both began to have an inkling as to who or what was behind the mind control of Older Lucas and what their endgame was supposed to be.

The other people brought through were also proven to have transited in relative good health with no injuries or illness that the scanners thought untreatable. In short, the entire justification that some were broken or handicapped and needed cryogeny to keep them alive was pure fiction. Putting them on ice was simply the default answer to anything that irked the mastermind behind the entire situation. Apparently, the guy either had major qualms about killing or he was keeping as many living humans as possible in case his primary worker became damaged or rebellious.

"Would you look at that!" Older Lucas exclaimed "The files don't make any mention of criminality, aberrant behavior or destructive tendencies. No diseases or injuries at time of arrival either. Not for a single person that was pulled from the timestream. Well, that certainly puts things in perspective."

"And it confirms my theory that a living person is masterminding the whole thing behind your back. Since none of them are sick physically or mentally, there must be a strategic reason for keeping them alive but asleep. What interests me is the fact that some of them have familial or conjugal bonds in place. They all knew LUCAS and each other in some fashion. It's a group of interconnected people, that's why the gate kept pulling in the same people over and over again. And that's probably why they were put asleep fast; with our psychological profile we wouldn't have tolerated that friends be stuck here with us and we would have become uncontrollable right from the start."

"Good deduction, it matches my observations as well. Did you notice that the most represented people are centered around a group of five boys; LUCAS, Martin, Thomas, Jonathan and Alan and their relatives?"

"Yes I did and that gives me hope that I was already in the right direction. I had begun business transactions with Martin but never met him in person. I had conversations with the fathers of Alan and Jonathan as part of my work as Senior Personal Assistant to my dad, Lawrence, at the WPP village last year. It was just passing messages along and couriering stuff, it was never personal and I didn't get to talk to the kids themselves. I have no clue who Thomas Labarre is and the name is completely unfamiliar. I plan to remedy that ASAP, starting with the people here and then back in my reality. If I have friends out there, I won't let them pass by me in silence like that."

Waking up the dead

(Twisted Sister – We're not gonna take it)

Thursday January 3rd of 2301 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Icehold Vault – cryogenic sleep & isolation ward

After taking time to plan and prepare much more in view of the massive task ahead of them, the siblings had decided to take the New Year Holiday in peace as they deserved a break. Younger Lucas was truly adamant about it and even insisted on cooking the New Year Dinner for them. They did some light work around the admin tower's guest area to securize and improve the homestead but kept the 31st December and 1st January on light work only. They took the time for their laundry, finding extra clothing for both, finding and moving foodstuffs for their little cafeteria and for the mass storage of the main wing restaurant. They had themselves a few video games and played cards with an old deck that Older Lucas always kept in his work satchel.

After staying up late into the night, both slept almost through the entire 1st January and agreed to keep the 2nd January as mostly a buffer to start placing equipments and supplies in the convalescence wing for the people to awaken. The robots had been programmed to find, unpack and place in the rooms the necessary fluids, pipes and needles with emergency med-kits and replenished, fully powered crash carts. Thanks to the robots working around the clock, the entirety of the hospital's primary 'good rich people' medical treatment wing totaling some 300 sickbeds spread over six storeys was finally ready to receive patients.

During the semi-holiday while his brother cooked or planned world conquest (for real, it so happens), Older Lucas had been able to hack and code like he hadn't in several years and the hospital received some cybernetic security upgrades for its network. He had begun to slowly upload homemade firewalls, anti-virus, counter-malware and watch dogs into the compound's servers. He installed a set of detection software specifically to find, analyze and destroy the subliminal imagery and subsonic recordings used to mind-control people throughout the hospital complex. All of these programs and applications would be spread out over the landlines and airwaves in direction of New Cape Quest's communications companies, internet providers and cellphone towers in the coming days. The end goal was to establish a control zone where their group would have both wired and wireless networking / telephony independently from the WMG and protected from hackers less competent than what Older Lucas could produce with a sane head. He would also slowly gain control of the World Management Grid and use the ground sensors and traffic cameras coupled with the satellites in orbit to see what the state of the entire planet really was.

They now had in service the very first armed sentinel robots that Older Lucas had programmed to carry guns, knives, a baton and use a few basic martial arts katas like stiff unpracticed beginners. The four patrollers had been repainted integral blue with white piping and details to show they were the beginnings of a police force to protect their vulnerable kin. The next step would be to strip down and reprogram more robots to bolster the defense force and create a permanent watch around the walkways on top of the compound's walls.

On 3rd January morning, both siblings were now standing at the control room with a row of gurneys and robots ready to begin the awakening of the sleepers. They had taken the time to prepare a bed, intravenous nutrients and a set of generic blue scrubs for each person they would awaken. The procedure would take several days to complete for the two hundred forty-three family and friends that needed to be revived in an orderly fashion. They would awaken the most they could at 4 per hour, ten hours per day for seven consecutive days until everyone of their group of allies was out of the Icehold Vault and back on their feet, awake and autonomous.

They began by prioritizing those who had healer or Search & Rescue qualifications in their files, followed by hunters to have both freshly caught food and some security given by living beings rather than the blue tin cans they had reprogrammed. Third line was the technical specialists and then everybody else was a mixed lot that would be roused from the oldest down to the youngest at the end.

The awakening sequence was long and tedious work. Both Lucases stayed at the Icehold Vault's main control console unless it was time to go to the admin wing for the night. Most of the heavy manual work was done by the medi-bots inside the freezer Vault. They disconnected the patient from the wall mounted dialysis & perfusion machinery then connected a temporary IV of saline and moved the person to the gurney for transfer. It was a generic robot unit that moved the patient through corridors and elevators all the way to convalescence wing #1 into one of the 300 single occupant rooms that composed six of the seven above ground floors for that building. Once in the sickroom, another medi-bot would move the patient to the convalescence bed and connect permanent lines of saline, nutrients and medications to combat cryosleep incurred disorientation, fatigue, nausea and migraines. The building's intranet had been completely cleaned up by Older Lucas during the last few days so the patroller-bot at the nurses' monitoring station could see and react to any event in any of the 300 sickrooms, public areas or surrounding exterior patios and balconies.

Wednesday January 9th of 2301 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Convalescence wing #1

It took seven full days to empty out the sector of the Icehold Vault that was dedicated to LUCAS and his allies but now the first to be awakened were slowly moving about the floor they were lodged on, speaking to their neighbors and starting the very light regimen of exercises and soft foods that were prescribed to insure a trouble-free recovery from the frozen slumber.

Then the first major surprise happened all at once. One of the adult women, Jenna Labarre, began a chant in a language that sounded like old celt or Irish. It was quickly answered by several other Labarre and even a few LUCAS and Mystere and everyone could feel energy accumulating in the air all over the building. There was a sudden discharge of pulsating golden energy that lasted about four seconds and left everyone in the structure feeling fresher, cleaner, more awake and less cramped from the long years of not using their bodies.

Thursday January 10th of 2301 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Convalescence wing #1

The second major surprise came when some of the adults without any assigned jobs or credentials, all 5 women called Lua, sat together in a circle while holding hands. They chanted in an olden tongue long forgotten by the men of Earth that ululated and whined and created a nimbus of fluorescent green power in the middle of their group. The ball of energy started at barely one inch in diameter but then grew to almost two feet wide as they chanted and poured the Power and Faith of Yggdrasil into the temporary focus.

They were suddenly backed in their efforts by many Labarre, Quest and Tracy who began an answering chant in formal clerical Latin. The climax came when every LUCAS, male and female, assembled together in a circle wide enough to encompass the five chanting shamans while holding hands. The green energy was released in a controlled manner to guide it to the ring of LUCAS who all began to emit a lambent green aura of six inches thick all around them.

When the center sphere was drained, the LUCAS all took a deep centering breath and added their Power and Faith in Nature, Magick and Life to the healing ritual and then completed the ceremonial by willingly offering to the Living Magick that it take a drop of 'heart blood' to activate the Great Spell of Communal Welfare. The blast wave of viridian energy was so intense and so pure that even in the mid-morning Florida sunlight it was seen up to a hundred miles away. Every thing in a thousand feet of the hand-bound ring of LUCAS was swept in raw Power and embalmed in natural energy that cleansed body and spirit, healed injuries by half or more and purified the blood and humors, removing all toxins and medications to give back to the persons as clean and pristine a body as could be done by such an ad hoc ritual. It was still a masterful example of group casting, ritual mastery and plexing together Sorcery, Faith Channeling of Divinity and the Life Energy of Nature as per Druid and Wicca traditions.

The rest of the day was spent in chaotic laughter as many redundant introductions were followed by quick directions to a printed kit in the nightstands of each room to explain the situation with the time travel, reality displacement, years slept in cryo, etc…

Feeding the beasts

(Little shop of horrors – Feed Me!)

Friday January 11th of 2301 – early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing - restaurant

Younger Lucas, who would really need a new name now, used the public address system in the building to inform the people that they needed some volunteers for the kitchen in the main wing restaurant because they would all pack into the place for lunch and then the big pow-wow about what happens next. The poor kid barely had time to remember the natural reactions of people just awakened when food is mentioned and managed to climb on a nurses' monitoring station to avoid the stampede. What a bunch of mannerless cads, the lot of them! And he included the many variants of himself in there too!

If there was one constant of human behavior, it was the primordial importance of food. Its gathering, preparing and consuming was one of the most transcendent mixture of techniques, tastes, cultures and socializing that never abates, whichever timeline or reality you look at. As the chattering hordes of children, teenagers and young adults descended upon the restaurant and its annexes, a joyful bordello of activity and playful mayhem sort of just naturally developed. People were moving canned goods, bags of frozen vegetables, vacuum sealed dehydrated meats and gallons of oil, milk and juice all over the place. There didn't seem to be any sort of organization or planning to it; humans just moved and swayed and tilted and rotated in an amazingly intricate dance that the two first Lucases couldn't understand.

"Oy! – Whistle – Is there a chief in the group? Do you people know what you're doing?"

All the persons stopped moving and stared at Younger Lucas with interrogative expressions on their faces. Then a few began to look at each other and then small clusters were gesticulating silently in a manner of conversation that seemed a lot more profound than sign language. All at once, all the newly awakened sleepers stopped expressing and turned again towards the first two Lucases that had brought them back to conscience.

One of the oldest male LUCAS in the group came forward and knelt on both knees in front of the small boy and asked with great concern in his voice "Do you mean that you don't hear us? You can't hear our voices in your mind and feel our blood and our souls inside of yours?"

The child was gobsmacked at such questions. He considered them and then honestly shook his head negatively. He had witnessed the two group spells earlier in the day but he had not sufficiently processed the event intellectually or emotionally to have an actual reaction to it all. There were so many things to do to insure collective survival and then find the enemy hiding somewhere on the planet, thinking about weird stuff done by these people just wasn't happening right now.

The oldest LUCAS sighed deeply in sadness and explained to both relatives: "We are in a psionic consensus; that means we are using neural energy to mentally exchange words, images, feelings and emotional support all at once in real time on several duplex channels. Well, in technical detail, a few of us are acting as 'Nexus' for the consensus while the rest mostly employ a mix of receptive and projective empathy to communicate. This is weird because I am one of the nexuses in the group and I can hear your soul-voice just fine. It's beautiful; deep, stable, full of love and care for a group of people you never even met but are ready to share your resources and even of your self to help make them safe. The gentleness emanating from you is equal or above that of the other siblings we have here. Your civility and orderliness shine through like a beacon amidst storm-tossed seas and make me feel safe just looking at it. Why is it you can't hear us?"

The 33 year old Lucas that had brought them all to this place cleared his throat and spoke out: "He isn't the only one; I can't hear or feel anything from any of you. And I know enough about active psionics to realize there is a problem with me. Back on SeaQuest II, the frigid bitch Smith was never able to hide from me that she was scanning my thoughts, even when she hid in another room or the deck under where I was working. I always felt something. It's how I know that Bridger had some latent psy that he never acknowledged and never trained. The man wanted power and dominance over everyone he could reach but he was also bigoted like an old plantation boss in the cotton days so he never admitted to being a different shade of humanity. The little guy isn't the only one with a problem in his noggin, I do to. We both need help in a real hurry."

A young woman in her early twenties came forward. Her long blond hair was gathered in a loose tail reaching down to mid-back and the generic blue scrubs didn't hide anything of her athletic shape and fitness. Her sky-blue eyes twinkled in good humor when the little boy looked at her full of wonder and friendliness. It truly was a miracle that he was still so open and warm, ready to trust and accept people into his life after what the people in his reality had done.

"Hello little brother. My name is Jenna Labarre, I'm Thomas' sister, and I usually serve as healer and counselor for the group when we hit trouble. I would like to do a scan of your body, mind and magic to see if we can determine the problem and heal it. The process is painless and rather boring. You just stand or sit, as you prefer, then I place a hand over your heart and the other on your head, and then I chant a lot. It could take anything from one minute to almost an hour to get a comprehensive diagnostic on each part of you. If we need to start analyzing in detail your body, magic channels, Blood Law, Silver Cord and Soul, then we could need a few hours for each segment of your being. The quick version I want to use is classed as field medicine for use by first responders. It's energy waves only and not invasive like syringes or probes. Would you accept?"

The little boy was open mouthed; no one ever asked his opinion for things like that unless he paid them or threatened them rather viciously to treat him like a full person. After a few seconds of thought, he nodded his head and moved to sit on the closest chair. Thankfully, the restaurant's chairs had padding; cheap minimalist padding to be sure, but some cushioning was better than none. And given the circumstance, every little bit of comfort helped to make him feel less exposed and vulnerable. Sitting on the chair, he joined his hands in his lap, fingers laced together and began a meditation exercise to calm his mind and body. Since this was almost like X-ray or MRI scans, he would need to be immobile and silent for a while so he tried to blank his mind and relax. The last ten days had been physically ordinary but mentally draining and the uncertainty of what they would awaken had gnawed at him since he had first seen the Icehold Vault.

He had lost track of time and the almost non-existent noise around had put him in a sleepy state that was interrupted when Jenna called his name and snapped her fingers a few times to rouse him from slumber. After blinking his eyes, he focused on the woman and noticed something: the light was different, the sun had moved. A quick check on the wall clock above the restaurant's serving counter showed that two full hours had passed and the people had remained in practically the same spots. Looking the woman in the face he frowned and tried to 'push' mentally the concepts of interrogativeness and impatience at her to see if he could get a modicum of control over this type of communication.

Jenna's smile and the groans from the crowd told him he had probably broadcasted his query to the whole complex at large. Oh well, better that than absolute silence.

"You will be relieved little brother that you have a situation that we are well aware of and can explain easily. The remedies are also easy and available without much effort. It will be up to you to decide what you want to do with your powers and capacities, or if you even want to awaken them at all. The psionics and magicks are there, sleeping inside of you because they were bound; unlawfully and incompetently by what my spells show. You have a set of wards placed on you that allow your body to produce the energies in all the 10 realms of Power but not exteriorize them. In essence, you were spelled to act and feel like a 'squib'; that is a person who can produce and feel magic or psionics but actually use only about 1% of the total capacities that biology and mental capacity demonstrate you should truly wield. We will explain in greater details later, after the meal and strategy meeting. I can feel from you that this is not something you want to take priority over our collective survival and security. I understand and respect your desire to place our group welfare in first place, but you will understand that I will make time to speak with you and get this situation healed and corrected before the week is out. Clear?"

When the child nodded happily at the agreement, she placed her hands on his hips to guide him gently to his feet and then hugged him, moving slowly to give the boy time to see and analyze the movements and intentions behind them. He was a skittish one, unused to affection and having people touching him or playing around with him. He would adjust quickly enough but right now he needed some space and she would warn the rest to be more calm and slower around him. Given the number of speed freaks and adrenalin junkies in here, slowing down was going to be a miracle! But for the sake of their two siblings, they would manage.

When it was revealed that their smallest benefactor was in fact not only the owner of several restaurants but also an accomplished cook in his own right he was summarily promoted to head chef behind the counter. He would guide the buffet servers on one hand and give orders to the production teams back in the kitchen. The busboy team and the waiters that were chosen to take care of the people that had been awakened less than 48 hours ago were all quite autonomous and the psionic consensus made the entire thing run smoothly.

As everything got put into place, the cooking and baking got underway and the buffet tables got filled with the salad greens, vegetables and fruits. Quickly after that some platters of cold cut meats and sliced cheese were in place for sandwiches or an easy side dish to a meal-sized soup or salad. Said soup was a bit on the cheap side as it was just powdered soup stock with frozen vegetables and bulk shell pasta but it would ensure everyone got a soothing bit of warmth in their system and after so much time in the freezer they all needed it.

Younger Lucas made certain that two very warm main dishes were set to cook to help the recovery. There would be plenty of shepherd's pie with pickled beets and coleslaw for the majority of those now capable of eating solid. For the few dozen still on the soft food diet and needing help to move around or eat he had ordered the creation of a dish of creamy puree composed of potatoes with onions, celery, turnip and carrots in it served with softened rice and freshly baked bread. He showed the kitchen team how to speed up by making all the large batches of puree first and then using it to cover the rehydrated ground beef with cream corn and mushrooms that was the basis of the shepherd's pie and was set to cook at the same time.

The small boy ordered enough fresh bread to have two rolls per person and decided to have half the amount made into oven baked garlic bread made with a compound butter that had ground pickled garlic, chives and green onion mixed together. These spices and herbs along with the vinegar of the pickled garlic would help to rebalance the health and appetites of his family and friends. This thought pattern made him decide to draft some of the less mobile but well awake children into preparing bowls of small mixed salad with pitted olives, dill pickle quarters and pickled sticks of turnip and carrot to go along the garlic bread.

Every person would come to the buffet line and be served a salad with the dressing of their choice to go along with the soup and garlic bread. Once these three mandatory items were taken, the person could get some side dishes right then or go eat and come back for the main course when they started placing them in the display trays. Same with the desserts; several communal quarter-plaque cakes had been ordered and there were bowls of fruit Jell-O or vanilla ice cream available for those who were feeling stuffed but wanted a bit of sugar during the big conference. Since they were all seated in a restaurant, the group had decided that there was no need to stick to a rigid schedule and around the time that half or more of the people had finished dessert was the moment to start the heavy talks.

The 11 year old was well placed to see the interactions amongst the many kin, relatives and friends that moved and worked around him. He was quickly learning the identities of the 'groups' and how they related to each other by blood or friendship. The truly amazing thing was watching the many versions of himself as they seemed to always be central to each cluster. Be it kitchen work, caring for the sick or setting up the dining hall to place the taller people at the outside and the shortest in the middle so that everyone would have a good view when the conference began.

Younger Lucas had to admit that he was completely entranced by the agility of the forty people that worked around the restaurant in what could only be called choreography. He was also mightily amused by the horsing around and laughter that seemed to be the default way of communication between the many multiple variations of each person present. They, cheered, laughed, shouted, whispered not so lowly and always seemed to find a way to express affection and closeness to each other.

He was surprised at the amount of touching they did amongst all of them. There didn't seem to be real separations among genders or age groups as all males and females tried to touch, stroke, caress and pat every person in reach. He saw innumerable hands laid comfortingly on shoulder, arm, nape of the neck or small of the back. There were plenty of side-hugs with a friendly arm draped around the shoulders of the person next to them. Several were clasped tightly in full frontal hug with an arm around the neck and the other around the back or a hand on a hip in support.

There were also a lot of more intimate displays of kinship, affection and romantic love to be seen as time went on and people waited in line for service at the buffet. A few held the other person with both hands cupping their face with infinite kindness to place a loving kiss on their forehead and then hug them as they cried for those dead or not present. A few others exchanged gentle deep kisses, sensuous caresses and quite a few gropes with their established lover who had transited with them to this reality. The child suspected that a few of those not affected to work had gone off for a make-out session or even a quickie in the restaurant's public restrooms.

Many times there were bursts of laughter at a joke that lit up the collective humor. Other times groans of dismay at an off colored comment and a person would extend an arm and give a mild smack on the rear to the 'offending' party much to the amusement of everyone around the event. This was a phenomenon that the young boy observed as time progressed. These people seemed to maintain a sort of collective yet amorphous 'discipline' and group regulation that wasn't anchored to a specific person but was in fact decentralized and shared by all members at the same time. It seemed the method of 'enforcement' was simply that the person closest physically or emotionally to the offender got the job of restoring orderly behavior without regard for age, gender or familial origin.

There did seem to be clearly defined leaders and followers but in a very fluid way and neither seemed crushingly dominant or slavishly submissive. Every person seemed strong, autonomous and quite at ease in their personality and role. As far as he could comprehend, the core of each cluster was LUCAS with their lovers. The second zone was composed of Martin Mystere, Thomas Labarre, Alan Tracy and Jonathan Quest (or their female equivalents) all set around in almost equality. There were also the siblings and lovers of these four central figures. Outside of that was the third zone composed of extended kin and their siblings or lovers. The three zones were quite clearly defined when you took the time to watch and analyze the behavior patterns, positioning when seated to eat and when they moved in groups to change areas in the dining hall.

This social system and subculture would bear a lot of thought and discussions with the many people involved. The young child wondered just how he had become so important to so many people in so many times and realities. He did hazard a guess that it was the same reason for which a LUCAS had been chosen to kill Humania and the World Management Grid. It was probably the same reason, whether by Older Lucas's will or because the hidden enemy wanted it, that all the temporal and realitive extractions always centered on a version of his existence.

After an hour of rushed preparation, it only took two hours of actual mealtime to get all 245 people fed and satisfied before quieting down for the meeting to progress.

Older Lucas got an easy idea to speed up the discussion while integrating himself and the little brother into the mental network. Each would let one of the 'nexus' psychics touch them so as to establish a hard link into the network thus bypassing the containment and restriction wards placed on them. By simply sitting with a person gently laying a hand on the nape of their neck, they could now participate in this wondrous method of communication that was near instantaneous and covered all participants almost equally.

Conversations with our selves; no we ain't crazy

(New Orleans Jazz Funeral March – When the Saints go Marching In)

Friday January 11th of 2301 – noon

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing - restaurant

Everybody was laughing as one teenaged 'Jonathan Quest' was caustically asking one of his female versions, an adult 'Joanne', who was it that had been dumb enough to think it was funny to build an asylum in a place called 'big swollen head bayou'. Even more laughter fused as the woman's instinctive response of 'politicians' came out quickly and without too much thought. It was probably right after all.

"You do know that talking to yourself is a sure sign that your mental faculties are declining rapidly, don't you?" asked one of the many 'Martin' sitting in the audience. The collective groan that answered him just made the other part of the crowd laugh harder. "What? I'm just saying out loud what a lot of you are already thinking about! We didn't read all those psychology and personality development books just to forget a fundamental item like that! We're either in serious need of mental help for our multiple disorderly personalities or we have a hellavu dream to wake up from. Choose!" The satisfied smirk on the teen's face just got more groans as his point hit them all rather personally. Who in the worlds in their right mind would think that an event like this conference would ever happen? Some days it just didn't pay to get out of bed!

"Well now, if we're done kidding around we need to get serious for a while." Spoke one of the adult 'Thamara Labarre'. She continued with a joyful smirk "I call this 1st Annual Convention of the 'Survivors of Friendship with LUCAS Anonymous' or SoFLA to order!" The many said Lucases protested vehemently about the unfairness of being saddled with the blame while the rest were busy laughing up a storm.

After a few more minutes of joshing around, poking, patting and wiping tears of laughter from eyes, the crowd got it out of their system and stilled to attention, for the moment. The convened people were beginning to recognize the potential treasure trove of humor and comedy that the assembly held. This kind of motherload of one-liners, wisecracks and classical linguistics innuendoes just would not go un-mined for all the gold it had. There would be blood and broken egos on the floor soon.

"All right, settle down plebes! We have a lot to cover and people to heal so let's get the show on the road!" one of the 'Jonathan' barked between guffaws of amusement. The poor boy lacked credibility at the moment.

"I agree." Younger Lucas answered from where he sat near the buffet tables. Thanks to one of his older female relatives he was able to understand and participate in the psychic conclave without issues. He really hoped he would learn to do it himself soon. "We have an enemy out there on the planet, or maybe even in orbit since they actually managed to make livable space stations. This person is organized, intelligent and viciously uncaring of the welfare of the people he controls. He shows blatant, inhuman disregard towards the health and life of the beings that he enslaves. He uses cortical implants, drugs and subliminal broadcasts to enact control over the unsuspecting person, then he periodically wipes their memory to keep them from discovering the manipulations. However, I believe that this person is either complacent to the point of laziness or has other pressing matters because his surveillance seems lax and sporadic. We need to track, find and capture this being to get answers from him."

The crowd began to rapidly trade comments and observations about the situation. The two initial Lucases learned that most of the people they had awakened remembered only going through the vortex and being stunned by a flash of blue light upon arrival. They had never interacted with the people bringing them into this reality. They had no knowledge of who brought them, or why. Because of that, they had never been awake enough to get information about the epoch or make an opinion of the situation.

"Well I'm glad to hear that!" The oldest Lucas exclaimed. "I had memories of fighting with most of you, even killing some of you. Others just came through injured to the point of dying in my arms. If all that was falsified, that means that there is a lot less wrong with me than I first thought. It also means that we have a better balanced and more functionnal group than we had feared when we woke you from the ice." His honest relief at not having failed or harmed his relatives was visible to all in the gathering. It also explained a lot of his mental damages and dysfunctions that would need to be addressed soon. The crowd mumbled words of support while the stream of emotions and images gave him a boost of hope and loving familiarity that he really needed to feel to believe and understand. It just wasn't in his experiences to receive such emotions and support free of any cost.

Younger Lucas again attracted attention with a thought. "We need to organize ourselves so we don't fall prey to this predator and his indirect methods of hijacking people's mind. Teams of 4 people minimum, with a mix of specialties as much as possible. I can't believe I'm saying this but; please take the time to use the small app that I am sending an image of to you so you can write out your magical and mental abilities so we can make the teams. For obvious reasons, the WMG and the enemy who ordered your abductions never bothered to check or record your mystical capacities and we need to register them properly to fix teams and job schedules for hunting, surveillance, technical projects and such."

The group slowly deliberated the request and suddenly the child received the information he wanted directly in his mind. Since he wanted to test out how the psionic consensus worked, he began to sift and organize the data to elaborate teams, jobs and a list of critical priorities to take care of in the next five days. As he mentally created flowcharts, organigrams, a blueprint of the sanitarium complex and a list of necessities, the people began to volunteer their names and qualifications to fill up the jobs.

Soon enough every healer was assigned to take inventory, clean up the equipments from the WMG's scrap or start looking for natural alternatives to the harsh, toxic chemicals the hospital used. A group of hunters was dedicated to finding fresh animal protein from the bayou and then would go around foraging to find greens, herbs and other edible stuff. A group of techs was constituted to complete stripping the WMG interfaces and finally break the subliminal broadcast system so the hospital would be completely clean. After that, a full review of the complex's mechanical systems would be carried out. A lot of the non-specialized and younger people were assigned the job of foraging the closets and warehouses to find all edibles, make an inventory and then ferry them to the restaurant pantries and freezers to stock up for long term communal use. The restaurant and the large green lawn next to its wide sliding glass doors would become the town hall for their people for the duration of their presence in this reality.

The 'Jenna Labarre' were placed in charge of the medical complex as they were trained as green witches in the Wicca and Yggdrasil traditions alongside modern medicine with computerized machines. They would be helped by the few 'Diana Lombard' who would take over the pharmacy and laboratories to set them to rights since chemistry, biochemistry and material analysis were their forte.

The five 'Lua' were all trained as shamans as per the traditions of both polynesians and the Great Ancients of Mu. Thusly they got charged with finding natural alternatives to the chemical remedies and would go around the bayou with the three 'Jason Jenkins' as their escorts, or as the girls said: pack stallions. It was the guys' fault for being so fit and athletic. Since all three young men had their girlfriend partnering in the same task, neither guy complained. Immediately, the jokes flew around about how much foraging in the bushes the couples would do. One Lua's answer of 'just enough to keep till our nightcap" saw more jokes and jeers fuse from all parts.

All of the 'Thomas Labarre' were quite naturally the hunters and would forage the bayou since most of them had dual training as modern forestry conservation officers and also as traditional rangers. Their practice of the Old Ways of magic and their Faith in Yggdrasil would help them in times of urgency.

The many 'Martin Mystere' would take over security and control the patroller-bots due to their experience and competency at such jobs after years of working for CIRPA. They would also help the hordes of 'Lucas' and 'Jonathan Quest' as they went deep into the computer systems to finally shut down the damned population domination programs.

The building mechanics and inspection of the perimeter wall with its gatekeeps and towers would be done by the many 'Alan Tracy' and 'Tanusha' since they had both the experience in heavy mechanics and were used to working together. After the buildings had been inspected and marked for work, they would go through the few vehicles and do the same. Again, several jokes were made about inspecting each other for damages or checking their performance standards. Since all four 'Tanusha' had the Alan they were committed with present, none of the girls denied anything while the four 'Alan' made a show of buffing their fingernails on their shirts and bragging about those performances being very much above standard… Much to the disbelieving shouts and laughter of everyone else.

About a dozen children that had no specialties or advanced training were left to go scrounging around the complex to find, inventory and bring back all of the edibles they could. If they needed something like a jigger or a forklift to move pallets, they would mark down that job on a list and later that day some of the adults would take care of completing those parts.

With every person having a job assigned, they also split down into three shifts to make certain there was always surveillance, hunting, food prep and medical help available around the clock. They began to set priorities for each service department or competency group. In some cases, that meant long term tasks spread out across all shifts over several weeks to come like establishing a wardline and safety perimeter around the complex.

After the basic job definitions and assignations had been done, one of the 'Martin' asked the rather useful question of "Where's the stuff we came with? I had a dimensional trunk shrunk down into a medallion around my neck but as we can see…" he finished as he pulled down the neckline of the scrubs shirt to show the absence of such item. There was a flurry of such questions and all were directed at Older Lucas who looked panicked as he had no memories of doing anything with their equipments. "Oy! - Whistle! – The guy's memories were re-written by the damned implant in his head! He doesn't remember anything. And when we were in the Icehold Vault, I checked the storage lockers where the patients' personal effects are supposed to go and they were all empty. Even those of the patients from this reality were completely empty." Younger Lucas answered to help his older brother against the sudden rush of thoughts and emotions pouring in. The older male was nowhere near ready to deal with such raw feelings, not in his physical and mental state.

"Hey! Give me a minute, I may have something!" one of the 'Joanne' said as she pulled up the sleeve of her scrubs and looked over a colored tattoo on her forearm. With nary a thought, she caused a miniature lesion on the pad of her thumb, just enough to leak a few drops of blood and then swipe the bloody finger across the piece of body art. The effect was immediate: a small cloud of grey smoke with a 'pffooooffing' sound and a large trekking framepack appeared out of nowhere, to drop on top of the table in front of her. The thing was big, like the models used by Himalaya expeditions or professional woodrunners when they went out to harvest the traplines in winter.

"Whaddaya know! My Seal of Storage still works and nobody emptied it! Not that they could; it has a blood locking option in it after all. And hey! My dimensional pack is still full. Humm, what did I have in there?" The young woman plunged head first into the pack, all the way up to her hips, and wiggled around while the sounds of objects being moved or thrown were heard. She came out rather disheveled but holding her prize: a small satchel that was an overnight bag with all her equipment in it.

In the event of theft or being put to sleep involuntarily, all her belongings had runes of Call & Send Item inlaid into them so that all her gear would come back into this nifty little bag if she were separated from them. Since the satchel was in the pack which was in the Seal, she had three levels of safety against theft and also three guarantees that the gear would be available when she needed it. The girl began to promptly pull out clothes and jewelry from her overnight bag and after piling everything in order to check that it was all there, cast on herself a simple Auto-Dressing spell to switch out the scrubs with her regular kit. The snugly fitting blue jeans, sky blue t-shirt and sneakers got her a few wolf-whistles from the guys and many groans of envy from the other girls that didn't have that option for their storage. Something they all planned on remedying soon enough! Heaven have pity on the poor guy that tried to get between a girl and her capacity to put more stuff in her purse!

After a few good natured complains from across all genders and ages about the stupid spell denying them a good strip show, the crowd began to check more thoroughly on the magical or psionic storages they had as well as the more manual versions of the Call & Send Item spell that several did have on their gear. A couple of minutes more saw a pileup of full kits and individual items sprinkled around the dining hall. Almost everyone aged fourteen and above had some form of hidden storage or way to call back their equipments. Several of the 'Lucas' and 'Martin' were paranoid enough because of their life experiences that they had created and put on their gear a Forensic Tracking & Recalling enchantment. The spell called back the item it marked while leaving a Sorcerer's Beacon to show where it had been and it also recorded who and what had stolen it, moved it and in what conditions it was stored. If the storage was warded against teleportation and gates, the beacon showed a mental compass and coordinates of the location of the item to guide manual recovery.

It was because of these tracking spells that it was discovered all the items had been piled up in a room under the World Management Grid substation in New Cape Quest. Their gear had just been stripped off and dumped pell-mell without any real analysis or trying to loot out the good stuff. This proved that someone wanted the living bodies but not the equipment they came with.

One of the adult 'Lucas' had a theory about that: "It's not the equipment they ignore; it's the history, the past experiences. The person guiding the kidnappings wants blank slates to work with, not a living person with a past and specifically not a personality. They want someone they can mold and groom into what they want as a finished product, pretty much like the Christian Spiritual Accompaniment church enforcement agency wanted and tried desperately to make happen." His opinion made many think and nod in agreement while a few frowned, trying to find the deeper meaning behind being taken and then frozen for a decade and a half.

"Well, I could help with that." One of the adolescent 'Martine Mystere' spoke out. "I studied the divinatory arts and information spells a lot and I can find a lot of things from the past or present. Don't ask about the future, that always makes me dizzy and I don't see anything. But if you want, I could try and figure out where this hidden great enemy is holed up and what he wants." Her suggestion started a quick and decisive conversation about risks, necessities and expediency versus the safer methods. In the end, it was agreed that her attempts at divination were not dangerous and would at worse come up with a blank image if the target was shielded against these types of magicks.

The group analyzed its members to find the best divinators to pool them together into a group so as to have more power into the spells and obtain more details from each incantation. It only took about ten minutes of analysis and ten more of moving tables and chairs before a circle of thirteen people was assembled. The initial 'Martine" was in the middle seated on a chair while the others were seated on the floor tailor-style in a circle. The mixed group went through a few calming, centering and harmonizing exercises before synchronization was achieved and they could cast together as a single merged conclave.

The crowd watched calmly the proceedings as it was silent and everything happened inside the shared mindscape of the thirteen participants. Everyone else simply took another round of drinks and dessert or another go at the buffet tables for extra protein like some of the more athletic people did.

After about a half hour of divining and searching, the conclave dissolved and stood, stretching muscles and cracking joints. It was hard work group-casting like that and it drained both body and mind at an alarming rate thus explaining why it was done rarely. Although that would be rarely for other groups of people; amongst these kin and friends, there was enough competency and trust to use this type of thing regularly as long as the situation wasn't hostile and there was food afterwards.

The conclave members were given some time to dish up some grub and start eating before the lead caster began to report what they found. "We saw the WMG substation at NCQ. There is a small room, like a janitor's room or a utilities' closet that is shrouded in darkness and negative energy. It stank of cold humidity and rotten diseased flesh. I think there is a cadaver of a higher sentient being in there. It gives me the same feelings as the time that Thamara found an old dead body from a murderer that was never buried; his ghost had haunted the place for two centuries before we found the place. It was only when the body was disposed of that the exorcism prayers worked as supposed." She finished her verbal report with a few minor details and concentrated on her new plate of shepherd's pie.

One of the 'Lua' began to conjecture out loud for all to hear and think about the situation. "I think that our 33 year old friend here got possessed by an incorporeal undead and that the creature can't leave the Grid Station. That means that when he spends time away he gets better, healthier and more stable, but when he goes there the ghost gets into him and assumes control so completely that he can't fight it and blacks out to protect his conscience. That would explain the memory losses, the dreams, thinking he did things that he didn't, etc… It's the ghost programming him for the next batch of jobs while also making him miserable and self-loathe so he doesn't think he deserves better. It is well documented that your self-esteem and your mental fortitude affect the capacity of an entity to possess you and establish dominance. The more downtrodden you are, the easier to control you are." She finished her speech while gesturing at the assembly with her cup of tea.

Younger Lucas got in the middle of the conversation again. "I think we need to prepare this complex for long term habitation first and foremost. Then heal any injured we have, including physical, mental or mystical illnesses and whatnots. Then, and only then, can we think about doing some sort of strike team maneuvers against a long range target. This thing isn't an immediate threat as we are out of its zone of effect. Also, if I recall my fantasy lores correctly, there should be some blessings and protection spells to put around the bedrooms and individuals to keep foreign influences from taking over our minds. We draw up a plan of mental defense and then apply it by prioritizing the least defended and going all the way up to the most equipped for defending their own mind." He ended his suggestion by looking around the crowd to see if any new opinions would emerge.

One of the Labarre women spoke up and volunteered to gather a group of persons able to use prayers and Faith to mix some holy oils and prepare blessed candles to burn around the clock to create an area of protection. Those two methods were the cheapest, easiest and most resource effective to put in place. After that, they would proceed with carving protective glyphs in the corridors and rooms of the buildings to hold a blessing but that would require a weekly mass to re-energize them. The only full time solution was to dig into the ground a series of pits to place manatites and then anchor a consecration and wardline to make the complex into an abbey; this would allow the establishment of a permanent magical threshold to keep unwanted effluves outside.

The woman's idea was debated and agreed upon for the short-term and mid-term plans. Digging manatites and such was labor intensive, as was the process of making the bloody monoliths themselves. Casting and harmonizing wards was another basket of snakes altogether. If there was only one threat in sight, it would be better to have some personal protections that were also portable and go destroy the damned spirit (all puns intended!) once and for all. After that was accomplished, they could concentrate on getting back to their times and realities as that was the penultimate priority for everyone.

What's up doc?

(Earth Final Frontier – season 1 opening, instrumental)

Sunday January 13th of 2301 – morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing, second floor – medical diagnostics room #1

The day had started rather commonly enough with some exercise in the gym followed by a nice warm shower and some decent clothes that weren't scrubs for a change now that his laundry was all done and sorted out. There really was no replacement for a good pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt when you were in Florida's weather at this time of year. Thanks to the nightly soakings in the bath salts found by his little sibling and a couple of first aid spells cast by a few relatives, the blood vessel congestion in his legs had diminished a lot and he was on the way to recovery. And those everyday events brought him to the here and now, in the main wing restaurant.

Older Lucas was really starting to feel his age and hate the bloody nickname the pasty little gremlin had given him. The fact that now there were some 18 units of the same tetchy little runt going around was enough to get anyone off their breakfast. That particular reality hit him pretty hard right now. Man, was it a mind-twister to see all those boys sat in a bunch in the dining hall, filling three six-seat tables solid and all gabbing a mile a minute about the Great Elders knew what in so many languages at the same time he got a headache just by thinking about it. No wonder that all the female versions and the teen and adult male versions of him all sat spread out. Everybody who wasn't a prepubescent boy-child version of himself understood that any sane person could take only so much of his character before going crazy and reacting violently.

Now what did that say about his social skills and capacity to relate to others at any age, humm?

Heaving a great sigh of long suffering patience, the 33 year old went to serve himself at the buffet tables and sat alone in a corner near the corridor that lead to the restrooms and kitchen's warehouse beyond. It was a safe, quiet little place that people didn't usually sit in because normally there would be traffic in and out all day. With their group cut in three shifts it meant only 160 people walking around the complex while the other 80 slept so the restaurant and facilities were well understaffed and underused. He could eat his meal in peace and think about what happened after.

One of their kin, a Labarre of some version, had approached him and spoken about his health care and wellbeing. They talked for over an hour and then he agreed to an appointment in the medical block to get a full work-up to see what was really done to him in the years since he turned 15. The entire day had been set aside for just that. Oh joy of joys! An entire day of getting poked, prodded and most probably probed by doctors of all sorts like a lab experiment gone horrendously bizarre. All that was missing from that happy picture was the thunderstorm in the background with all 18 bitchy little pests screaming 'IT lives!' at the top of their lungs. Man was this day gonna suck balls, like bull's balls with the hairs and all…

After taking much longer than strictly necessary to finish the rather small breakfast, he dumped the tray and tableware at the busboy station so the cleaners would have a little less work to do. He could only blink in wonder as the tray, plate, mug and utensils all lifted in the air and shone for a second before quickly placing themselves in appropriate bins on a multi-level tray cart. Shaking his head to loosen the cobwebs in his mind, he took a closer look at the busboy station and then the cart until he found what he sought. Someone had etched runic clusters onto the tablets of the station and linked them to matching clusters in the bins so that all the stuff placed on top of the station would get cleaned and sorted automatically by magical energies. It was quite exciting to see such a mundane application of mystical principals but it also showed him how it could work in everyday life if well applied.

After going around the dining hall to say hello to a dozen people and touch base with Little Lucas, or 'Annoying Gremlin #1' as he liked to call him, there was no more setting back the unpleasantness anymore. Walking slowly and dragging his feet like a condemned man marching to the gallows, he made his way to the stairs and climbed up to the diagnostics block, a place that he was far too familiar with for his tastes.

Since they had very few people available, unskilled optional jobs like receptionist were always vacant or occupied by a nifty little spell construct called Image of Self as was the case at the intake desk. While the name of the spell seemed quite explanatory, the actual applications and capacities of the dweomer were a lot better than just making an exaggerated voicemail with a magical copy of the person to speak with you. The Image of Self was a complete copy of the physical presentation and equipments of the person, along with its mind and psionics or spell casting abilities. That meant that the image would have the body and clothes of the caster but not the internal organs as they were not needed for the construct to work. The artificial person so created didn't last long, usually a few hours, and had a very clear limit to what it could do as it could not go further than a few hundred feet from its caster and sapped magic from him to empower all spells it cast. Spell users that were truly competent with the spell could manage to let the Image extend its duration by recasting the spell by itself but the risk was that an Image that lasts too long could become independent and accidentally create a magical clone of the caster.

Here, the members of their group were good at what they did. The Image of Self that manned the reception desk was cast by the doctor on shift and she had managed to make the construct all in grayscale so you would know it was not the real person. Since there was no telepathic link between the Image and caster, the construct had to use the public address system like an ordinary receptionist to call the medic and get instructions for the patient.

Damn! He should have seen this coming! Going into the examination cabinet and lying back on the diagnostics bed wasn't bad, but the damned hospital scrubs again! At least it wasn't the stupid gowns that were opened at the back anymore. Those had really been annoying like nothing else in all medicine. They could have used a poncho-style design that you pull over your head and then fold the flaps to the front to tie it off. But noooo! That was too much intelligence to ask of doctors. And since doctors knew everything and were all powerful, who were they, mere mortals, to dare suggest that the almighty doctors could do something better?

Yes, medical visits did in fact put him in a foul mood. Could you not guess?

The doctor, one of the adult 'Jenna Labarre' came in while pulling on her labcoat and speaking out to empty air, giving orders to someone that was listening through the magical version of a PAL unit that the group's runemasters had put together. The small piece of engraved stone was separate from the computer systems, didn't have any programming and couldn't be hacked. It was essentially like a walkie-talkie system but made with magic rather than transistors and silicone circuits. It was the perfect short term solution for tracking and communicating with team members without an outside enemy cutting into their lines or using their tactical informations to find and ambush an isolated person. This was the reason that the hunting and foraging parties had been able to leave the fort and go rummage around the bayou for food and medicinal herbs. If the only lifeline available had been computerized like the cellphones, the expeditions would have been deferred until safer comms were established.

"All right mister; lets see what's wrong with you. After 14 years and change, I think it's high time you got a good long scan to see what ails you." She spoke with a calm, pleasant manner that immediately put him at ease. He had never been good with doctors of any sorts, even as a younger child. His experiences with Westphalen and Smith had made things exponentially worse and the WMG auto-doc modules were barely better simply because they didn't rape his mind or exploit his body; not that he could remember anyways. Having someone who was emotionally and socially close to him, or a version of himself, made the situation safer and easier to accept. The fact she had let him schedule his appointment, choose his treating medic and explain his past, his fears and his preferences for treatment before even coming into the diagnostics block made this one of the most respectful and least harmful medical visits he ever had in his life.

The young woman was 21 years old, with a fit and athletic figure that even the scrubs and labcoat couldn't hide from anyone. She walked with a steady, balanced gait that spoke of long arduous physical training and a lot of trekking in multiple environments. Her long blond hair was plaited viking-style and reached the small of her back. Her clear sky blue eyes shone with kindness and affection for a person she barely knew but recognized as one of her family. Her skin was white but very slightly tanned in the way of people who spent a lot of time outdoors in the more northerly latitudes. Her entire demeanor exuded professional confidence but in an open, welcoming way that Older Lucas just wasn't used to seeing in the doctors he had met.

The young woman began by greeting him and placed a gentle hand on his forearm to help soothe him into a relaxed state. He never had good experiences when lying on his back on a surgical bed. "Hello there, Bigger Brother." She said with a playful smirk at the person she saw as an older sibling. "You will be gladdened to know that we have a completely clean suite of diagnostics tools and scanners; our kin and allies saw to that. Our younger sister Diana is in the pharmaceutical laboratory, preparing some of the basic meds and tools we need for operations, just in case we might someday need them."

Seeing him nod in understanding, she continued to talk him down into a more restive state. "And don't worry; if it comes to it, we have a couple of trained alchemists and transmuters in the group to create truly complex molecules. Conversely, we have a few of me and the five 'Lua' who are highly capable when it comes to Faith Healing and using Divine Providence to cure the injuries or maladies or any person, animal or plant. For my part, that comes from growing up on a farmstead in the forests of upper British Columbia, near the Alaska border. We had to care for all living things on about a thousand square acres of crops, livestock and family members alike. That you see is why I trained as a green witch since birth and added modern medicine since I was about thirteen years old. I am licensed as a surgical nurse for urgentology and traumatology as well as having the diploma as a traditional apothecary of the old European magical tradition. Whether it be mundane, spiritual or magical, whatever ails you, we will find it, analyze it and get rid of it so you can go back to living a long healthy and happy life."

As the older man gave her a last nod of acceptance and followed her instructions to try and calm enough to reach a meditative state, she joked with him. "Now, as many have heard in the past: just lie down, close your eyes and enjoy it while it lasts…" He opened his eyes to glare at her but she was too busy laughing at him to see it or care. Damn women doctors! They all thought his pain and misery was a bloody joke!

Now in good and proper foul mood, the older male just crossed his arms and pouted mightily at his medic as she proceeded to use voiceless, focus-less spells to draw fluids and extract samples from the skin, muscles, bones and every organ he had. He was so busy death-glaring her that he never realized the samples were done and on their way to the lab for the chemical analysis by 'Diana' and information spells by another 'Jenna'.

"Now that the wetworks are done, we can proceed with the scans. Would you prefer doing the spells first since you won't need to move from the bed? The mundane ones like x-rays and MRI need you to move to the machines in the radiology department." He was both happy that half the job was done and tetchy that she had managed to manipulate him so effortlessly that he disregarded his environment enough to let it happen. Damn the woman and her wily ways! And he couldn't even stay mad at her because she was really trying to help him to get a better health. Blast! When had his life gotten so complicated? Oh, yes! He woke them up, that's when!

After a minute of mental grumbling, Older Lucas nodded about doing as much as possible while in this room before going anywhere else. He still had radiology to go through and then it would be the physical effort tests to measure cardiovascular and pulmonary capacities, muscular strength and limb flexibility and movement amplitude. Might as well do all the peaceful stuff in one go before they tied him to the cart and drove him like an ox.

About two hours later and Older Lucas was back at rest in the examination bed, wiping his face and neck with a white fluffy towel and gulping down some concoction of fruit juice, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes and proteins to help him recover from the exertion tests. Man! Was he really that out of shape at his age? He had started doing his morning exercises again but that had been going on only since the little guy had come through the vortex. He lay back, thinking on how much time he had wasted in useless immobility, slowly drowning in depression and mental blankness.

Jenna walked in while ordering the sheets in his patient folio. Those blasted papers would now determine his future for the coming year at least. He was not happy about it but at least he now had a future that went beyond the end of winter, unlike before.

"I won't lie to you, Lucas; you're a right mess. The good news is that most of what you have can be sorted out by dinner tonight if we push through on everything we can. As long as we don't have an accident with the heavy machines or the building maintenance crew, we should be able to focus solely on you for the next eight to ten hours without too much trouble. Thankfully, a lot of our group took to keeping dimensional storage hidden on their bodies or linked to their life-force; that helped with having a stockpile of potions, healing scrolls and spell books available right from the start. We can treat every physical ailment in about two hours and let you go for lunch. After that we can plumb your mind and try to set your cognitive processes and memories straight."

Seeing him nod in agreement, she continued exposing the plan for the day. "Let me be factually blunt; the mind works like a computer in every aspect that counts. That means since you didn't have a phylactery or another method of real-time backup on your mind, your memories are probably gone forever. We can rebalance your emotional matrix and secure your cognitive system but the raw data, the memories, should be gone unless they were saved up in a repressed fold of your mind. There may also be a psionic bubble or a lore vault in your mind, but I doubt that the being that possessed and enslaved your mind would care about your life, experiences and sanity enough to create such storage for your memories to exist. It would in fact be to the entity's advantage to keep you as blank as possible."

Older Lucas felt very little about her explanation. Since they had all woken from the ice, he had the time to dwell on what he knew and remembered and had come to a similar conclusion. Few people would know that his work on the 'applied sciences of artificial intelligence' that he got a diploma for from Stanford were not geared to creating an android. No, his goal was to create and standardize the neural interface; the link between living mind and machine. His end goal had been to create a virtual bridge between people in a conflict since they could use the interface to connect and feel each other's mind, emotions and truths. His desire was to take the concept shown by the Borg in the Star Trek series but apply it for the real purpose that it had been conceived initially: to bring unity and harmony amongst those people who willingly became members of the community.

Because of all those years of study and research in his childhood and adolescence, Lucas had actually learned a lot about medicine, anatomy, neurology and mental processes. He even studied psychology, psychiatry and pharmacology to comprehend how a mind under influence reacted to stimuli and factual data differently than when sober. He studied the bodies and brains of animals to establish a comparative chart and understand how the morphology of the being influenced its cognitivity of facts and its emotionality. As he stared at the ceiling's tiles, he remembered a lot more of the medical sciences and know-how that he had sweated and bled over in his early years.

Turning his head towards Jenna, he said in a hopeful whisper: "it's there. I can remember things; people, classes, medical research and human brain scanner print-outs from the radiology clinic. My memories are in here, just buried and invisible unless I actively try to find them. It's like, if I don't think about it or don't need it for a job that's right in front of my eyes, then I don't remember it just as if I had never learnt it at all."

Jenna frowned, lips pursed as she thought it through. "Well, its good news if your memories are inside because then you can rebuild your personality and your life from your own experiences and they will take faster and more solidly than artificial one we could implant to start the process. However, we will need to find out by what mechanism or spell those memories were repressed and hidden. Letting an unknown effect or process go around your mind uncontrolled is a recipe for disaster and you've had enough of that in your life."

Older Lucas breathed in a deep calming breath; he now had three reasons to hope for the best. His body was mere minutes from being clean and top shape. His sanity and stability were almost optimal and a few tweaks would make him even better than before he left Stanford for the damned UEO Navy bootcamp. And not least, his memories with all the studies, knowledge and competences he had worked through grueling classes and laboratories to obtain and prove to the world were present and accounted for, just asleep and needing a wake-up call.

Raising eyes full of determination and genuine hope towards the woman who was a sister in any concept that mattered to their group, he nodded resolutely. "Get me back to being my self, I'll do the rest."