Part Three
Mechanical Control

"On the table, between the chips and bowls of raw veggies, was one of Bobbi's contraptions. The batteries were hooked up to a circuit board that were in turn hooked up to an ordinary wall switch. Gardener saw himself turn this wall switch, and suddenly everything on the table—chips raw veggies, the lazy Susan with its five different kinds of dip, the remains of the cold cuts and the carcass of the chicken, the ashtrays, the drinks—rose six inches into the air and simply held there, their shadows pooling decorously beneath them on the linen."

—The Tommyknockers

Intermission—Gibbs

[1]

This wasn't right.

This wasn't happening.

He wasn't in his body. His body was completely gone. He couldn't see, but he could see, and the world was a rising wall of twos and fives and there eights in between them like sprinkles on a cake. And the Numbers were blue, and they ran across his view from left to right.

It hurt...

It hurt so bad...

He could feel. His neck was at Point Nemo. His fingers were in the Gulf of Mexico. His shoulders touched the coast of Oregon. His guts sat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His legs were near Cape Canaveral. Vessels of different shapes and sizes moved across his toes, his fingertips, his body. But not human Vessels...oh no.

He opened himself to them. His toes and tips and shoulders and neck. They went in and out of him. He breathed in and a Fleet Supply Vessel entered an immense metal door that was his mouth. The door opened with a smooth and terrible sound. The choice was not his. The Numbers made him do it. He had to obey the Numbers.

It hurt...

It hurt so bad...

The numbers in front of him raced from right to left. At times—very few times—they would cease, and the world became a long bright blackness. The Black was pure and wonderful, as sweet as midsummer nights. It would last for a second. Sometimes longer, but usually not. But he hoped.

Then the Numbers would return. Shooting from left to right so violently that it hurt again. And more doors would have to be opened. More learning arrays would be plugged into subjects. And the images sent into the Footmen made him scream.

More reanimation centers would be turned on, to reverse the hibernation process.

And it all hurt...

So bad...

If he focused, and blinked once or twice, the Numbers became pictures. A pair of eyes began to form. Big and brown. Then a large nose. Then a pair of fair lips.

Rita. Mendoza.

It was her.

He smiled at the thought of her. And somewhere in the Pacific Ocean a massive door slammed shut on a Fleet Supply Vessel as it was trying to exit it. The ship was durable, but the door weighed over 1,000 tons and clamped down with five times as much force. The sub was sliced in half, and then exploded. And twelve hours later, a big tide at hit one of the beaches of Hawaii, nearly submerging it.

He held her face in his...mind. If that's what this was.

He turned his focus outward.

And the Numbers came again, as a Vessel was constructed in a Colony in the Indian Ocean. The Numbers were red and black. The wall of Numbers in front of him was part of something larger: a trail of Numbers that went into a juncture. And from that juncture, Numbers spread out in all directions.

One of the directions led to cameras around this particular base. It wasn't a Colony, but a Relay Site. They would need to be activated in order for the Great One to awaken.

And it hurt so bad, but Rita's face made it better. He didn't think that he loved Rita. Not even now. But he had liked her. He had liked her a lot. She was tough and mean and beautiful.

There would come times when anomalies happened in the Numbers. A Vessel would go to a Sector and be engaged by what his masters called the Foreign. New Numbers would come, as evasive maneuvers were done, and sonic weapons were fired.

And there would be times like now, when there was a Vessel knocked down, touched on the sea floor. He followed the Numbers to the learning arrays of the Vessel. There wasn't too much hull damage. Only two Engineers had been killed in the crash.

He followed the Numbers to one of the Engineers fighting outside the craft. Just as he did, the Engineer was killed. A magnetic bolt had cut through the water like it wasn't even there, and the creature's Numbers were abruptly halted.

He retreated, found new Numbers. He walked them to one of the higher ranking Engineers. They were trained to see the Numbers, as he himself could.

The alien seized the Numbers of the tank. It was far behind the group of the Foreign. They did not see it. They would not know something was wrong until it was too late.

And it was.

The turret jerked erratically, then moved with an oily ease through the water.

And before it fired its torpedo, Peter Gibbons closed his "eyes."

AN: Another short chapter. Life is busy and a pain, but what else is it supposed to be? Looking for jobs, getting a book published with these people over in New York, writing two novellas when my ass should be focusing on one. Didn't want the story to not have an update for two whole months. So here you go.