The two women left Dr. Yu's laboratory behind, walked through the Eradicator Autoturrets set up to defend it and found themselves once more in the brightly lit corridors. Tan painted walls ended at a kind of dull yet lustrous grey-streaked red flooring. Down a branching corridor, carpets were laid out on the central pathway between a lab entrance and a stairwell, likely to minimize wear and tear from frequent traffic. Or maybe to reduce accidents when transporting something heavy or dangerous.
Carolyn felt grateful for the sound-dampening white cloth tiles angled from above. They were positioned enough to block acoustics from carrying while doing little to obscure the pipes and support beams running the length of the ceiling. Doors were intimidating, solid grey reinforced architecture. The INL facility had the feeling of functional, with just enough dressing up to pass as acceptable for corporate sensibilities.
And directly ahead stood Luis Martinez.
"Dr. Yu," he said, with a respectful nod to Morgan. The young man had black hair and eyes, with a deeply tanned face that suggested a lot more time outside than his job would suggest. He looked fit in his TranStar Corporate Uniform. He also looked a bit impatient. "Are you done with Ms. Wheeler?"
"Do you need her?" Morgan asked, glancing at Carolyn and betraying her surprise only with a single tug upwards of one eyebrow.
"That's a good question. I was hoping to catch up with her on her agenda here."
Ah, that was the reason for the stiffness. Luis was INL's Facility Coordinator, after all. Carolyn should have been logging her schedule with his office every day, yet she'd missed updating him. Given how pushy she'd been with the foreign Neuromod, no wonder Luis looked like he'd bit his tongue when his eyes flicked her way. She'd made his job quite a bit more difficult.
"Walk with us, Mr. Martinez," Morgan said.
And then Carolyn found herself trailing behind slightly, just as surprised as Lius was when he immediately fell in step. "Dr. Yu?" he asked and it didn't take an expert in public relations to pick up on how nervous he was. Very likely this was more contact with TranStar's CEO than he'd ever had.
"I don't suppose you have the schedules of TranStar executives handy, do you?"
"Dr. Yu?"
"What's Alex up to right now?"
Luis frowned at the question. "With respect, Dr. Yu, I'm not his admin."
"I'm asking where he is. His location. When he's expected back."
The Facility Coordinator brightened at the question. "To be honest, he hasn't apprised corporate scheduling on his location since he left Yakima. But that's not unusual for him. We're expecting him here in 5 days, however. There's every reason to believe he'll keep that schedule. He generally does."
"I'd like a plane prepped for departure this evening. I'm taking Ms Wheeler with me. You're welcome to apprise corporate scheduling that I'll be arriving at Uscilla Inc holdings in the morning. I should be back in time to catch Alex."
"Very good, Dr. Yu."
Luis Martinez took his cue to peel away, giving the two ladies their privacy and presumably going about his job. The two walked for a minute before Carolyn took the opportunity to speak.
"That was quick thinking, Morgan. I'm surprised you knew he'd be aware of executive scheduling. Lucky guess?"
The Mimic flashed her a sideways smile. It reminded Carolyn that this wasn't the original. For the original never smiled that openly, that honestly. It was a fetching look and one the Public Relations officer had never expected to see.
"Lucky guess," Morgan affirmed.
"So you're not remembering things?"
"Nothing to remember. I did, however, have a chance to do some reading while you slept. I already knew Alex was coming here in 5 days. It occurred to me that a facility coordinator would be apprised to make certain that his room was prepared and the appropriate escort scheduled to receive him. Mostly, I just wanted to give Mr. Martinez something to do. I'll use your TranScribe soon to confirm which plane he's allocated for us, so I can remote into its cockpit and plot its destination."
"You say that like we're not going to be aboard. You're not proposing we stay here, are you? Neither member of the Yu siblings is here and the longer we are, the greater our risk of exposure is."
The conversation paused as their journey took them to the doors of the facility. Morgan managed to nod towards the security on assignment and walk straight for, and through, the Eradicator field of fire. Carolyn hardly had time for her stomach to clench when she realized nothing had happened. She cautiously followed and, to her surprise:
"SCANNING TARGET: TYPHON CONTAMINANT ON FILE. STANDING DOWN."
"Morgan…"
The Typhon turned, even as one of the security officers swept his psychoscope over her profile. Horror struck, then stuck as Carolyn waited expectedly for disaster to fall.
"All clear, Dr. Yu."
Morgan acknowledged the signoff with a tip of her head, not even looking his way. Instead, she made straight for a waiting shuttle car. The heat of Idaho beat down on them both but the Typhon didn't seem to mind. Come to think of it, Carolyn scarcely noticed it either now.
"What was that, just now?" she hissed once the two women were safely aboard the car. A quick glance at the environmentally sealed passenger car confirmed the only means the pilot had for listening in was via a particular intercom. That same glance left Carolyn knowing it was manufactured by Lycretia Tech, that it had a telltale LED indicator for when it was in use and that it was currently off.
"Did you have another idea for passing security?" Morgan's expression held a look of mild incredulity.
Carolyn shook her head, half in negation and half in just sheer disbelief. "How did you know those Eradicator turrets would clear you?"
"How did the other Typhon have the run of this base?" Morgan countered. "She has admin access to INL's Cyber Security Test Bed. Remember, Eradicators write all logs to their local server. Where do you think that is?"
No further explanation was needed, for Carolyn already knew the answer. Of course INL had a central server for coordinating all of its defensive systems. She knew it all ran autonomously, for part of INL's purpose included creating front-line platforms that could survive modern warfare which included foreign enemies capable of monitoring and hacking wireless signals. But log files had both push and pull. Even as Eradicators could update that server with their cumulative results, so the server could push an iterative list of friendly profiles.
Pyschoscopes wrote to the same server, she realized. Morgan had found a way to bypass not only defensive systems but to counter the primary technology for detecting exotic matter. If the rest of the Typhon managed to claim that knowledge as well...
Carolyn straightened then, peered about and said "Where are we going?"
"The Physical Security Test Beds," Morgan answered, leaning back in the comfortable seat upholstery as she gazed out the window.
"Why ever for?"
"Among other things, INL boasts an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles program, where a variety of semi and fully autonomous aircraft are developed and tested."
Carolyn frowned. "Right. The Shutterflies. The long-range drones TranStar flies to provide footage from the occupied areas and monitor its rate of spread, right?"
"Are they public knowledge?"
"Mmmm, more or less. They were covert corporate intelligence gathering tools at one point but there's not much left to spy on any more. The footage it collects gets put on the tellie but most people don't ask where it comes from. For the few that do, there's no good reason not to tell them it's a drone. Even if we don't precisely advertise the Shutterflies were already in use prior to the end of the world." Carolyn smiled at the confusion on Morgan's face. "Blimey, you have the strangest gaps in your knowledge. You often seem to know so much more than I could imagine, it's hard to remember that you're-"
"New." Morgan smiled slightly and shrugged. "After a fashion."
"So, why are we visiting the UAV program?"
"Easier to show you than explain it, I think."
Thankfully, Carolyn didn't have to wait long to satisfy her imagination. The shuttle car pulled up outside a slat-framed warehouse that bordered an expansive span of land pockmarked by shrubs, sagebrush, and craters. Not difficult to imagine what some of that UAV testing entailed.
With a nod to the driver, the two women disembarked and strode towards the warehouse entrance. No guards at the door but the solid-steel core made entry impossible without an access card or the ability to hack the keycode panel. With a look, Carolyn already knew how to use her Transcribe to remote into the panel and bypass the default lockout.
And with a wave of her hand, Morgan's swipe of the other Typhon's access card made the need redundant.
The air inside the UAV Test Bed Site was markedly cooler than the hot Idaho day. Carolyn blinked at the light transition, for the entry corridor was dimly lit...and staffed by two soldiers behind two Eradicator turrets. Cunning. If a hostile party breached the door, they'd need a moment to adjust to the lower light level. More than enough time for the turrets and the soldiers to open fire.
Morgan plainly hadn't expected the defenses, though. She stood there as the Eradicators scanned the pair, blinking as her eyes presumably went through the same adjustment Carolyn's were.
"SCANNING TARGET: TYPHON CONTAMINANT ON FILE. STANDING DOWN."
A moment later, one of the soldiers said, "Dr. Yu. Did you need something? Should I call-"
"This is an informal visit," Carolyn said, with a gentle wave of a hand. "Dr. Yu and I would appreciate your discretion."
"Of course, Ms. Wheeler," the soldier said, after a moment's pause to read her corporate ID. She had the credentials and the company to make such statements. Morgan, for all of her remarkable abilities, seemed hit or miss when it came to social skills. Thankfully, that was squarely in Carolyn's wheelhouse.
"I don't understand," Morgan said a minute later as the pair walked down a gunmetal gray corridor.
"What would you have done, if I hadn't spoken up?" Carolyn asked, with an inquisitive life of an eyebrow to accentuate the question.
"I would have explained that I needed access to the UAV Test Bed. Then I would have erased the Eradicator logs and their own daily logs and hope no one interviewed them about my whereabouts today."
"You'll still want to catch those Eradicator logs, I expect." Carolyn paused at the end of the hallway, letting Morgan pull the door open and reveal a vast interior. "But this way, they'll assume we're here for a surprise inspection or because someone's in trouble and they'll likely keep quiet if asked about it later."
Morgan nodded in contemplative understanding, even as Carolyn craned her neck to look around the three-story structure. Thousands of square feet, it boasted no walls or separate floors but instead made room for vast towers of manufacturing machinery of all sorts. Dozens of fabricators were affixed in central positions along the supply lines. Evidently, TranStar had found it faster to fabricate key components and use the more expansive assemblers to put it together on a supply line instead of crafting it wholesale. Industrial fabricators of this size could manufacture anything up to a small airplane or land vehicle...but not quickly.
Why did TranStar need to make so many drones?
"Let's look for a terminal with flight plans," Morgan said. "We need one going to Seattle."
"I don't suppose you fancy just asking someone?" The Typhon made a face at her and Carolyn chuckled before looking towards the end of the assembly bay.
Logically, if someone planned to program a Shutterfly, it would be on completed drones. Carolyn pushed several strands of hair out of her face as she bent over several workstations, only to find them focused on manual retrofitting. There were a couple of screens but they appeared to be part of dedicated diagnostic systems or something else equally incomprehensible.
Interesting. Carolyn knew how to hack a Transcribe or how to repair one of these industrial fabricators if one broke. But she didn't know anything more about Shutterflies than she already had. In a way, she was learning more and more about what Morgan Yu concentrated on learning and what she hadn't had the time or inclination to get into. Of course, even a genius couldn't be an expert at everything.
At last, she turned up an interface at the end of the chassis assembly shute. "I've found it!" Carolyn called out.
"Good," Morgan said, her voice sounding like she faced the other direction and was possibly in a cabinet or something. "How are flight plans filed?"
"They're not," the PR Director said as she studied the hierarchical structure of the menu layout. Dedicated terminals like this rarely had help documentation and this one was no exception.
"What?"
"I mean flight plans and coded instructions appear to be 'fabricated' right into the Shutterfly directly, as an end-product of the manufacturing process. Is that good for us or bad for us?"
"Good for us." Morgan's nebulous voice paused for a moment. A subtle irritation at still being confused was discernible to a certain Public Relations expert when the Typhon finally finished her thought. "Why would they do that?"
"You don't know?" Carolyn said, her tone deliberately teasing as she found coordinates and preprogrammed scenario options.
"Talos 1 didn't carry a lot of drones, no," Morgan answered, and while she sounded slightly annoyed, there was an amused overlay that suggested she didn't mind the teasing.
Which was just as fascinating as this whole little mission, in some ways. There was still no real way to know if Morgan actually thought or felt the behaviors and emotional states implied. Mimics could perfectly replicate a cup, to such a degree that one could hold water and read its logo. Was it such a stretch to imagine a sophisticated Greater Mimic might find mimicking humans to be just as easy?
Except Carolyn had personally witnessed Greater Mimics in testing on Talos 1 be tested under a variety of laboratory conditions. They were terrible at it. Oh, they could replicate an Operator well enough to even perform its functions. That should be at least as complex as a human. But invariably when they copied humans, they made still statues that toppled over...and then moved utterly unnaturally.
"Carolyn?" Morgan asked, reminding her of an unasked question.
"Security, to prevent them from being hacked. Now answer a question of mine. Why are Mimics usually so terrible at imitating people?"
"That's...complicated," the Typhon admitted. Clattering came from nearby, apparently her dissembling something or maybe just rifling through a set of drawers. "Why do you want to know?"
"How recursive do you want this conversation to get?"
"Fair enough," Morgan chuckled. "Solid objects are 'easy', for a given value of easy. I'm sure you've seen a Mimicked cup jerk or leap impossibly. Except what you consider impossible is a function of being a conscious observer. A Mimic can turn into a stapler and it can staple paper as well as a real stapler but it has no way of knowing real staplers don't staple on their own unless it observes one for a really long time."
Carolyn blinked, processing that thought, before turning around to crane her neck, looking for her Typhon partner. "What about people, though? I've no doubt a few Mimics have seen me walk. Why can't they Mimic me walking?"
Another chuckle gave Carolyn a clue as to the location of the other woman. She stepped around a piece of fabricator, only to find Morgan bent over a workstation, evidently tinkering with the inner workings of something. It was...well, it was a nice view. Typhon or not, that was a nice view and Morgan Yu had always made the TranStar corporate uniform look good. The blonde PR Director hadn't realized how good, though, given the scarcity of opportunities in her life to oogle her boss's boss while the CEO was distracted by work.
"Because they don't know what walking is or when they should do it."
"What's that?" Carolyn asked, unapologetically distracted.
"I'm not sure this is something I know how to explain to you, Carolyn," Morgan said, still facing whatever she was working on. "The Typhon don't...have the same relationship to the cosmology of this universe that humans do. With human eyes, I suppose a Mimic walking on its-", she paused as if groping for a word. "Extensions," she said finally. "A Mimic walking might look superficially like a human walking but only if you see as humans see. To a Typhon, a Mimic walking is the result of them using their projected physical extension to navigate this universe. Mimic movement isn't...psionic, if that's the right word, but it's more like psi than not. Humans walking are inexplicable, there's no obvious-"
At that moment, Morgan turned around to carry on the conversation and promptly caught Carolyn's decidedly inappropriate eye contact. Both eyebrows went up on the other woman's face. Then she smirked, tugged her uniform coat just a bit more snuggly across her figure and tilted her head. "Why, Ms. Wheeler..."
"Right, we're now going to pretend that never happened." Carolyn was thankful her own romantic history had enough embarrassment in it to make this little faux-pas something she could handle with a straight face. "What do you have there?"
"From what I can tell, TranStar's Shutterflies have a 10,000 mile range and take high to medium-altitude surveillance. These are a supplemental payload for on-the-ground reconnaissance. Take a look."
Morgan tossed her a roughly fist-sized cylinder that she caught in both hands. Carolyn turned it over before smiling. "Oh yes, the Apollo Cams. They're little drones, aren't they."
"They have the same Typhon-detection technology the Eradicators have," the Mimic observed. "But I don't see any weapon payloads."
"That's because they're aren't any. These aren't meant to kill anything, Morgan. A weapons platform adds weight. Add ammunition or batteries, even more weight...not to mention arming mobile technology's been illegal since the Gore Act of 2007."
Morgan frowned in a way that suggested a bit of frustration before she finally shrugged once and hopped backwards to sit on top of the workbench she'd been so delightfully leaning over earlier. "It would have been nice to have some defense on the way down but I suppose they'll do."
"Do for what?"
"This is how we're getting to Seattle."
Carolyn blinked slowly, glanced down at the Apollo Cam in her hands, then raised both eyebrows as she looked back up. "Beg your pardon?"
"Eventually, Dr. Yu will trace us here, Carolyn. Right now, she has a lot more options for dealing with us than we do for dealing with her. Going to Seattle and finding a Node can change the field of play, though. If we take a plane, that's predictable enough that Dr. Yu might uncover what we did to her Typhon tool and take us out before we reach our destination. But as you said, there are a lot of Shutterflies. Even if she suspected we might be aboard one, there's virtually no way she could discover which until we arrive."
"How exactly do you fathom us flying to Seattle on a drone smaller than either of us?"
Morgan gave a meaningful look towards the Apollo Cam still resting in Carolyn's hands. The PR Director followed the gaze and peered down at the partially disassembled device. Then she shook her head. "You're mad, you are. Proper mad."
"You were aboard Talos 1," the Mimic insisted, leaning forward on the work table. "You saw the same tests of Morgan that I saw. You know what putting us into your heads can do for you. Why should it be so surprising that putting me into you could work just as well?"
Carolyn shook her head. "I picked up a language, a skill or two. You're talking transformation. No one on Talos ever installed anything like that."
"Besides Dr. Yu," Morgan said. The Typhon smirked then. "I wonder why that is."
"Beg pardon? Do you need a reason beyond 'no one sane injects themselves with something that can rewrite every molecule in their body'?"
"So many questions. At least some of the answers lie in Seattle. We program a fabricator to build us a Shutterfly to fly us there...and we make the trip as Apollo Cams in its payload. Once it reaches the city, it drops us for low-altitude surveillance. We make it to the ground, toggle on the Apollo Cam integrated psychoscopes and go looking for a Node. Nothing could be easier."
Carolyn considered the plan. Were there other options? Oh, probably. But Morgan had a powerful interest in going to Seattle of all places. Eager to rejoin others of her kind? If this was the Typhon equivalent to betrayal, she had a weird way to go about it. Morgan had any number of opportunities to ditch her human companion, up to and including just letting her die. No, whatever the Mimic might be, her character was well established by now. This plan was the best plan from Morgan's point of view.
Was it a better plan than going to Alex? Or had Dr. Yu already made that task infinitely complicated? Possible, but possibly a trap and little way of knowing what strategies on approaching the former CEO might be traps.
"I'm supposed to be a bridge, Carolyn. A way to get the Typhon to see humans as something...not prey."
Carolyn Wheeler sighed at last. "Nothing could be easier?" she settled for saying at last. With an arched eyebrow, the public relations director just shook her head. "I expect we'll both regret you saying that."
