PROJECT ARCHIMEDES
A "Way of the Gun" Sequel

6. FIRST STEPS

Early January, 2011
Eureka, OR

The call came in during the Christmas break. It had been so long since the agreements had been made that she was starting to wonder if the call would ever come, but those people never forgot a favor owed, a debt yet to be repaid, a kindness done, or a betrayal.

As the coded message had promised, the requisite materials to do her job were located where they should have been, delivered by an equally isolated operator that she would never know or contact. In many ways the whole affair felt like a spy movie, and there was a certain amount of excitement to going along with these clandestine orders. The thrill of evading capture, and the satisfaction of achieving your goals with the enemy none the wiser.

Who gave those orders? She would never be sure. The voice was pitch modulated and sent over multiple spoofed identities and phone lines routed about the entire world. Sometimes the old tricks were the best, but that didn't mean that the consortium limited it's operations to old tactics, not by a long shot. No, the consortium as a whole, as near as she could tell, used whatever means were necessary to achieve the ends of its directors, whoever they were.

As she worked according to the instructions, mixing the apparently innocuous chemicals in the delivery to their appointed solutions, she reflected on the bigger questions beyond the who, being the "why". Why did she do this, why did she acquiesce to the will of another human she had never met and likely never would meet. Why she would submit to the bidding of shadowy people in far away locales who could just as easily hide their motivations in other ways.

The answer was simple: She believed.

In the end it came down to the ideology she'd learned as a younger woman. The depths of science that Eureka plumbed were vast and wide, their results intriguing on so many levels, but always in the end it was short sighted fools who didn't understand or appreciate their work that wound up using the fruits of their labors. The inherent injustice of working baby killer grants so that she could get funding to do real lifesaving work chafed with a severity that was hard to keep hidden from her co-workers and friends. So many of them seemed content, bought off on patriotic pap. The good of the nation, and all that rah rah. More like the good of the State, though that wasn't a phrase one could use openly and expect to still be taken seriously.

Still, some of those people were friends, and in her heart she wished them no ill will. Being misguided and believing that the machine told you didn't make you evil, even if it did make you complicit. She hoped that one day they'd understand, assuming they ever found out about the heroic measures she and others had taken to free them from the shackles of the military industrial complex. Such fools as controlled that had no clue how to properly run a place like Eureka, let alone a country. It was a sad but true fact that no matter how right and just she and the other faceless members of the consortium were, they'd always be viewed as traitors.

She finished the solutions, packed everything into their delivery ampules, and tried to get some sleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day, and the students' food would arrive before 5am.

Kevin Blake sat at the lunch table with his best friends Dre and Connor. The three boys were an inseparable bunch; fierce, independent, daring, troublemakers to a minor degree, and all unquestionably brilliant. Each had a given field of expertise, but the three of them complimented each other well. Kevin's understanding of robotics was second to none, and he regularly showed up his professors. He recalled with a certain amount of pride the frustration of a few of his more rigidly minding professors and his Mom's reactions to them. Dre, on the other hand, was a fantastic social person. He knew people, how they ticked, especially his fellow students. He tended to talk about it too much, so less self-aware students generally labeled him "word nerd". Connor, the third boy, was a new addition to their circle in the last part of last year. His area of brilliance lay in math, his ability to crunch raw numbers rivaled Kevin's, and probably exceeded it. Connor was already studying advanced placement math theory at age 15.

Dre was regaling Connor with his and Kevin's exploits the previous night on "Way of the Dragon Warrior", a limited release multiplayer online game that both boys were in limited beta testing for. The game had been developed by a team of the VR interface specialists there in Eureka, all members of Global Dynamics Commercial Development labs, with an eye toward taking the gaming world by storm. Kevin wasn't as thrilled with the game as Dre was. The expansion they'd had a few months ago, even if it was kind of a cheap rip on World of Warcraft, had been better than both WoW and this latest chapter. The story was more epic in that one. This one felt derivative and shallow, but it was fun playing with Dre. The other boy's social brilliance transformed their experience online into something amazing, and he had this ability to get the other players to work together that was astounding. Already their principality, this game's version of others guilds or fleets, contained a number of adults who gladly listened to Dre's thoughts on how they were to tackle every obstacle that came in their party's way.

"Darnit!" sighed Connor, pushing up his glasses. Kevin thought it was a funny habit. In this town choosing to wear glasses like that was almost a statement, there were so many ways to correct vision problems! "I signed up for the beta but never got anywhere. I wish you guys could invite me!"

Kevin chuckled a little and glanced at Dre. Dre smiled like the cat that ate the canary. "Well considering that of the players in the beta my principality is the best, I can probably get one of the guys in Commercial Dev to open up another slot for the beta, you know... for a price."

Connor's face fell, and Kevin nudged Dre. "I'm kidding, Connor!" Dre said, laughing. "We're friends, 'course I'll see if one of my minions can do something for ya!"

Connor was pretty new at Tesla, he'd fallen in with Kevin and Dre easily enough, but he wasn't much for getting along with most everyone else. The two continued to talk while Kevin continued to work.

Right at that moment, as he shoved food in his mouth with one hand, he was using his other to pry into the code running his character, Korath the Unstoppable, in the game. If he could figure out a few of the code tweaks he might be able to exploit a few of the games flaws. He knew it wasn't strictly allowed, but it wasn't outright stated as a rule either. Getting the code had been a bit of a trick, but sometimes it wasn't so bad to have one of the department heads of Global Dynamics for a mom, even if she was nuts his last year.

The way she'd practically melted down on his 14th Birthday was embarrassing, but he kept it a little secret that it was awesome to have a mom that really cared. A few of his peers in Tesla didn't have nearly half as much interaction with their parents; Dre for instance. Oh if asked he'd say it sucked hard core, but inside he had a little bit of an idea how special his relationship with is mom really was. The events several months ago had be a real lightning bolt in his life. Almost losing her had nearly driven him insane, and he wasn't anywhere near as upset anymore if she felt the need to be so involved in his life. She seemed to have gotten over whatever temporary insanity had ruled her after Founder's day last year.

Part of that, he supposed, was Jack. He'd been pissed as hell when Jack had suddenly announced he "liked" Kevin's mom. He damned well knew what it meant when a guy "liked" a girl, and the last thing he wanted was Jack, cool as he was, to use his mom. That just wasn't cool at all! He'd thought of Jack as the adult buddy, the guy he could hang with and do cool stuff with to get away from Mom's occasional bouts of lunacy, especially after Nathan had died, and he'd been a safe factor with his deep involvement with Tess Fontana.

It wasn't the first time he'd thought the town went partially insane after that day. It still kinda sucked that Tess wasn't here anymore. He kept in semi-regular contact with her still, her being a sort of aunt figure to him as close of a friend as she was to Mom and all, but he hadn't yet broached the subject of Jack and his mom getting together only two months after she left. First of all that was girl stuff, and talking girl stuff with a girl was just… wrong! Secondly, though, Jack mostly made his mom happy. Possibly happier than Nathan had. It wasn't like Nathan wasn't cool or hip, the dude had been about the coolest guy in town, but there'd been almost no relating to the man. Kevin had always had the feeling that Nate only gave everyone maybe half of his attention, because the rest of his was too busy with important stuff. Jack had never been like that.

Jack though. Like a few other folks Jack had changed last year. There was something about him that Kevin didn't have the experience to name, but the man that had come out from within him in that whole crisis, how willing he'd been to put his life on the line for Kevin's Mom… Well if he'd doubted Jack after giving his blessing on dating his Mom, Kevin knew the dude was serious now.

Another thing too; even though she was a princess sometimes the idea of Zoe Carter as a step-sister, especially as cool as she could be, wasn't a bad thing. It meant he'd have to stop thinking of her a certain way, but there was always Jo, too. She was pretty smokin' hot.

"Aha!" he said suddenly, then smiled at his buddies. "Eureka, Dre! I cracked it!"

The other two immediately crowded over his tablet to look at the computer information displayed on the screen. It really looked like nothing so much as a bunch of random colored text and numbers, but all three of them understood every line of it. In triumph Kevin popped the last of his taco in his mouth and munched happily, basking in the glow of his buddies' admiration.

Another figure was surveying the scene while taking apart the lunch line. Skilled as she was at covert surveillance, no one noticed the temporary lunchroom worker smile in satisfaction as Kevin Blake continued eating. As difficult as it was to put a tailored chemical into the food of a specific person, she had to admit that this solution was far more elegant; flood all the food with the tasteless chemicals that would only react to one specific DNA trigger. They would bond with existing markers in the target and begin enacting the desired changes.

Now to sit back and watch.

Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, it's characters, or its concepts, I'm just playing for fun and an educational experience.

Author's Notes: And events continue. Writing for Kevin is interesting. While I'd like to say I haven't thought like a 14 year old boy in way too many years, the truth is that attitude is still in the back of my mind somewhere, so this was pretty fun. Even (especially) if I'm a mean drug pusher trying to infect Eureka's youth! Boo! Hiss! twirling of mustache ensues

Let me know what you think, and as always feel free to speculate. I really appreciate reviews, as they help me keep my focus on the story and let me know what you all like and don't.

Thank you for reading!