005 – Acquisitions

Zee's internal display clock read 10:10:43:11 when they entered the base. Easier than they thought it'd be, he heard Ro murmur this fact as she remained a stack of lemon-lime soda crates. He whispered for her to be quiet a few minutes longer. Holding her at the arms, he felt her biceps tense and relax, as though she'd had trouble contemplating being silent.

Once on base, no one bothered them. He'd noticed this fact when they'd been in Little Rock, Arkansas, and had snuck onto the AFB there for much the same reason they were in Dayton. In their premiere design of this infiltration, Zee was supposed to drop Ro off as soon as he could. That meant leaving her in the administration building and to find her own way to Hangar B. An idea that was now completely out of the question. He'd be out of his mind to leave Ro alone on a military base.

Fortune, or whatever it may be called, favoured them yet again. Coincidentally, Hangar B, at its entrance point, had five offices—and a snack room with a soda machine. If he'd entered the offices with a questioning expression from personnel, he would've claimed a mistake and turned around.

Instead, he got greeted with a smile. 'Hello,' the receptionist said, a perky, small young woman with vibrant blonde hair. She indicated the signature pad on the lip of the desk. 'Just sign in right there. Haven't seen you before.'

'Temporary, only for today.' He scribbled an almost illegible name with his right hand, holding to Ro with his left. 'I guess the other guy's sick as a dog.'

'Oh,' she nodded, exuding vague interest. 'Well, the room's right down the hall, third door on the left.' The phone rang, leaving Zee free to 'wheel' Ro ahead.

He sped up once beyond the offices. It didn't look like many people had come in that day; many had only silence behind the closed doors. The hologram disengaged. Ro was herself once more. Zee immediately slipped into a new hologram. He handed Ro her own holographic emitter. She anchored it around her wrist then hit the engage button. Zee had programmed it for her last night, and Ro's only request, as usual, was that she have slightly larger breasts than she did in reality. It had become something of a game with her. She sorrowed that the hologram only made her chest normal-sized, though Zee saw no blemish in the holographic Ro in front of him. Ro took out thick, blue-rimmed glasses from the front pocket of her tweed blazer and put them on her nose, pushing them up in the middle.

'Geeky enough for ya?'

'Geeky enough.' He bobbed his head to indicate the end of the passage. 'I think the room we want is on the other side of that door.'

'Don't they have cameras in this place?'

'There are four in the hangar itself, but none in the rest of the building.' He worked rapidly, data cord extended into the security panel, to allow them clean access.

'That's a bit risky. I thought you said this place is high security?'

'They also have a high amount of civilian employees. And in a hundred years have suffered no consequences of poor security.'

The door clicked and Zee held it open long enough for Ro to enter, then let it shut silently. The lights came on after detecting motion. Ro halted, flabbergasted at the sight.

'This must be the place.'

She looked at Zee. He, too, found the line of debris mesmerizing, rising piecemeal from floor to ceiling on thick shelves of wood and metal. All spots on the shelves were numbered and dated, computer-tagged to allow a slimmer chance of human error. Ro observed the parts for signs of the familiar, something they could use. She darted towards one, taking Zee's sleeve.

'Here. Will it work?'

Without an immediate way to be sure, he let the data cord slip again from his wrist into the machine. It booted a familiar operating system. 'Seems fine,' he said. 'Will you watch the door?'

She put a hand on her hip. 'What's it going to do? Tricks?'

'Ro, this is important. If we're caught breaking into this place, reading files on computers that are not even supposed to exist, taken from the remains of a place that wasn't supposed to exist—we'll be treated like terrorists. Go on. I'll be done in sixty seconds.' He pushed her away to show his assertiveness and seriousness. Finally, Ro went to the door and put an ear to it.

The computer's processor ran at a speed just slightly slower than his own. And, anyway, that equalled beyond fast. He enabled a hard drive scan for 'Selig'. There were 453 matches. All were files Selig had created, or he was mentioned in them in some way. Zee rapidly downloaded these to his system. The entire process was done in fifteen seconds. With time to spare, Zee initiated other searches. One for Dr Boyle: 82 matches. One for Dr Arroyo: 39 matches. One for Infiltration Unit Zeta: 126 matches. When he'd used up forty-six of his sixty seconds, he shut the computer down, detached himself, and met Ro at the door.

'I still don't hear anything.'

'Good.' He held her shoulders, moving her aside so he would be first to exit. Ro never went first, if that could be helped. Yet, once or twice, she went ahead without telling him.

The hallway was as clear as they'd left it. Zee listened closely for a moment, additionally hearing nothing. Grabbing Ro's hand, he pulled her along, quick strides to the end of the hall, where it turned right to lead them back to the offices and reception area. With no footfalls in the oncoming corridor, Zee paused and brought out the optic camera in his left hand forefinger. The hall remained empty. A wide, pleasingly vacant space. They walked down it, side by side, and were five feet along when one of the office doors opened and a man stepped out, holding an empty coffee cup. Ro thought quickly.

'I think you're wrong,' she said to Zee, pushing up her glasses again. Zee just gaped at her.

'I beg your—'

'The core system's analyst program has gone completely haywire. I think it's a virus, but—' The words quit when the man had gone into the snack room. 'Okay, well, that was a little too close.'

Zee threw a cautious leer at the snack room doorway, to make sure the man took his time filling up the mug. If luck continued her shiny favouritism, he would take cream and sugar, too. In six seconds, Zee had Ro as emptied soda crates on a dolly. In an additional eleven seconds, he had his persona signed out of the hangar and they were back in the sunshine.

Their car, holomorphed to look like a vehicle from the existing soda company they were shamming, waited at a visitor's parking spot that they reached with no trouble. Ro, back to being able to use her own hands and feet, jumped into the seat. Zee wanted the pleasure of driving their 'getaway'. Once they passed through the gate, Ro knew tension had gone. A great swish of relief waved into her stomach. She moaned a lengthy sigh and slipped downward in the seat.

'I'm so glad that's over. If I ever say that I would like to do that again, turn me over to Agent Bennett.'

He hit the key on the dash that undid the hologram. A benefit of having the same car for a lengthy period of time, should you happen to be a fugitive, is affixing it with your own mechanical and technological gizmos. He'd put the holomorph capability into the car one weekend while they were in the South Dakota Badlands, a particularly desolate region where they'd had no trouble seeing the agents coming. Other modifications came soon after: GPS scrambler, a computer to download movies and shows from the internet, a sound system to make teenage boys envious, and the seat in the back folded down on hydraulics to a comfortable bed for Ro. In the last nine months, Zee had plenty of free time. Altering his car was one way of passing time, but he'd also brought slight improvements to himself, whenever he could. But updating an Infiltration Unit was significantly more difficult than updating a car. It wasn't as though he could go to the local Gizmo Shack and buy himself some toes or a replacement phalange. As of yet, he hadn't needed anything so serious; he still had all his fingers, both his eyes, and everything worked as it should. What he did to himself were unnecessary improvements, mere luxury amenities, that increased his value if not his overall usefulness.

What he really wanted and couldn't have was a better sense of touch, an increased sense of smell. Apparently the Infiltration Unit scientists decided their creation would have little cause for such senses. His sense of smell was thirty-six percent less than the average human. His sense of touch was a tenth of theirs. The latter bit infuriated at times.

He wanted to be able to stand in the wind and feel it . . . to feel the fine hairs on Ro's arms . . . to know the warmth of the sun . . . the feel of a sandy beach against his feet.

Having such a limited sense of touch made him so far less than a human, even if, in so many other ways, he surpassed them. He could speak six languages fluently but often wished to know more. He could repeat Pi forever. He could talk to machines. He could look at something broken and know immediately how to fix it. With these capabilities came terrific chasms of inability.

There was so much he could do; but for everything he could do, there were two things he couldn't that someone human could.

'Ro,' he started, after glimpsing at her, 'turn it off.'

'Aww, I was just having fun!' She sighed and the reflection in the visor mirror did the same. She took one last look at the cleavage, hooked the top button, and finally, with enormous reluctance, turned the holographic emitter off entirely. 'Well, there they go.' She handed the emitter over to Zee. 'I hope you're happy.'

'Immensely.' He put the emitter in a body cavity beneath his exterior. 'Should it be some consolation, I like your breasts just the way they are.'

'Please never use that word again. You're not allowed to say words that not even I say.'

He smirked secretively, making her wonder if he would heed or disregard the command.

'Where do we go now?'

'Somewhere out of the way so I may have a chance to analyse the information we've just stolen.'

'Stolen? I know we're criminals and all, but do you have to rub it in?'

'Confiscated? Commandeered? Acquired?'

'I like acquired. Maybe drive around for a while. Let's see what else this place has to offer.'

'Done. Driving around it is. Unless you'd like to drive.'

'No, thank you. I'm still a little shaky from all the danger and excitement you put me through. Were you able to find anything interesting?'

'I won't know the full extent of what I downloaded until I'm able to read the documents separately. I can tell you that I, er, acquired over seven hundred documents, possibly some applications.'

'Were you able to find out if Selig left any sign of you?'

'I don't know,' he responded solemnly, thinking of the 126 files matching his 'Infiltration Unit Zeta' search. 'I hope so.'

'Me too.'