The Speed of Darkness
Chapter 12 - CIES

Those penguins got away again.

Alice sat in her office watching the tape play on a small black and white television sitting on her desk. She leaned back in her office chair, her masculine features and red hair illuminated by the glow of the television. Her hands were folded on her chest and she contemplated what to do next.

She knew that they were up to something, although she didn't know what. She had caught glimpses of them outside of their exhibit on more than one occasion. She would just see them out of the corner of her eye, and she would swear she saw them doing acrobatic flips and swinging around lampposts. Once she even thought she saw one of them in the gift shop, but she figured it was just a stuffed animal.

She needed to find out what they were up to. If word got out that those penguins were roaming around the zoo at their free will, all hell would break loose. If the annoying little kids saw them outside the exhibit, they would freak out, scream, and run all over the place. They would tell their mothers and fathers about the penguins, who would call animal control. Animal control would come to the zoo and capture the penguins. Then the even more annoying animal rights activists would claim that the penguins just want to be free and ship them off to Antarctica.

Those animal lovers had done it before with her zebra, lion, hippo, and sickly giraffe. They broke out once, and suddenly her zoo becomes public enemy number one. The people demanded that the zoo be shut down and the animals be returned to the wild. Unfortunately they got their way. She had hated that day. She missed out on three months of city funding. Thankfully the penguins had returned not much later, followed by three new lemurs, a new otter, and a new kangaroo. The city allowed her to reopen, but with much stricter animal guidelines that she hated even more than the animals themselves.

She returned her attention to the video. She had hired Green to keep track of the penguins twenty-four-seven. He owned a surveillance company and, apparently, had been providing security cameras and recording equipment for big businesses and banks for years. He had not once caught those penguins on one of their escapades, though. "I'm sure it was just a video glitch," he said when the video blanked out for a few crucial seconds. "That was just a newspaper that got stuck to the lens," he said when the view became obstructed. "Must have been one of your zoo guests," he accused when he stumbled upon a smashed camera on the ground. It was never his fault when it came to his cameras, it was always something else.

Even though, he had been making his cameras more and more concealed and harder to detect. They moved from the top of lampposts to thick bushes and in false bottoms of garbage cans. It had worked to some extent; there were fewer 'camera glitches'. Alice doubted that the guests even knew where the cameras were anymore. The first big success came about a month ago. They had nabbed two minutes of footage of the penguins doing the most acrobatic flips and tricks she had ever seen out of an animal of that size. She kept the tape close to her in her office and watched it every few days. The more she watched it, the more that she thought the penguins were actually fighting. She tried to shake her head of the thoughts, though. Penguins don't fight, well except with their beaks, right?

After that lucky video, nothing appeared on the tapes anymore. There were obstructions and obscured the video every now and then, the most recently being just a few days ago, shortly after the zoo had closed. The next morning, she had found her computer tampered with and she knew that the penguins were outsmarting Mr. Green. They were up to something, she was sure of it. She had wasted much time, energy, and way too much money on trying to catch them in the act before they got her zoo shutdown again. She was head zoo keeper, and frankly, she wanted to know everything that went on around the zoo.

Suddenly, the door to her office opened. A tall man wearing a zoo uniform stood in the doorway. Her assistant. He hesitated a little after seeing that she was all alone, in the dark, watching her penguin videos again.

"Alice," he said, "Mr. Green is here to see you."

"What? Why?" She responded, hitting pause on the tape player. She had forgotten that Andrew Green had called a few days ago to schedule a meeting with her today.

"He said he's got a huge preposition for you."

"Send him in," she said plainly, removing her feet from her desk and straighting a few papers. Her assistant nodded, then left. He returned a few minutes later with a short, stout man. He had round cheeks, a large smile, and eyes that were too close together. He wore a casual suit and his hair was combed over his large balding spot. He carried a heavy looking, large briefcase.

"Andrew," she said, unenthusiastically, "how nice to see you again."

"Please, call me Mr. Green." Alice never understood his need to be called a formal name. She figured it had to do with his self-confidence issues from being fat and bald. Either way, he was Andy to her.

"Whatever. So, what's on your mind?"

Andrew glared at her for a moment, and then continued. "Well, I know you're getting frustrated with my state-of-the-art surveillance system always malfunctioning, right?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"I know tracking these penguins is important to you, for whatever reason that might be."

"Get to the point."

"Right," he said, putting the heavy briefcase on Alice's desk with a loud thud.

"What the heck is this?" she asked.

"This, my friend, is the Cyclops Invisible Eye System, or CIES." The chubby man flipped open the briefcase to expose a fancily arranged set of LCD monitors, several wound up cords, a few styrofoam boxes, and a few antennas all secured in foam. Andrew continued, "This technology is still in the prototype phase, but it is ready for a test run. It's really quite simple. There's a few very tiny cameras in here." he held up a styrofoam box. "they're very small, almost too small to be seen by the naked eye. These little cameras can take high resolution photos, transmit live video and audio from anywhere via satellite to these monitors, and also contain GPS tracking chips."

Alice reached a grubby hand and grabbed one of the monitors out of the box. It was small for her hands, with a few tiny buttons on the side and a screen only a few inches across. "So how will this help me track those penguins?"

"Thats where the tininess of the cameras becomes handy. They can be put virtually anywhere, and they will last about a month on their microscopic lithium batteries. You can put them on a wall, inside a locker, or maybe you could even place one..."

"Wait," Alice interrupted, "won't these just screw up like your other junky cameras?"

"The inability to detect these cameras will make sure those guests of yours don't break them."

"My zoo guests don't mess up your cameras, those damn penguins do."

"If you say so. Anyway, the great thing about these is the fact that they can even be implanted into a living thing, without said creature even knowing about its presence.

Alice thought this over for a second. "Wait, are you implying that we drill mini cameras into the penguin's foreheads?

"Yes. That's precisely where the CIES gets its name, believe it or not."

"Won't that, I don't know, kill them from lead poisoning or something?"

"In lab tests, rats implemented with the CIES were able to live fully functional lives without hindrance from the camera itself."

"So we'd be able to see everything the penguins see, and hear everything they hear?"

"Yes."

"Well, you've got me interested, Andy."

Andrew shot her a look of annoyance and irritation, but he quickly replaced his large smile upon his face. "Mr. Green, if you will."

"I've been paying you way too much money for a year now, Andy. I'll call you whatever I want to call you."

The stout man shook his head, regretting ever letting the redhead know his first name.

"But anyway," continued Alice, "when's the earliest time I can plant these suckers into those penguins?"

"Soon, but there's just one problem with that," Mr. Green responded, "It's not technically breaking the law, but implanting these into the penguins comes very close to bypassing animal cruelty regulations."

"Why's that?"

"I said those rats lived on unhindered. I never said they did so painlessly."

"So it's going to hurt like hell?"

"Precisely."

Alice thought about her giraffe that had gotten shipped back to Africa. Animal advocates, trying to stand up for the sickly mammal, had made her spend thousands to care for its every need. She didn't want to know what they would do if they found out she would be purposely causing penguins pain.

"I don't care. I want to see it done."

"I knew you would."

"How would those animal lovers find out?"

"They wouldn't."

"Alright," said Alice, her tone growing more serious. "How much do you want for this whole setup?"

"Well it took me several hundred of thousands of dollars to develop this technology. But, since you're doing Green Industries a favor by letting us use the prototypes on your penguins, you can have them for free. That is, as long as your veterinarian can administer the CIES without delay."

"I'm sure he won't care," responded the burly redhead, "as long as he is convinced he's not hurting them."

Alice checked her watch. 2:30 PM. Dr. Punjab would be leaving in about an hour. If she wanted this done, she would have to capture those penguins and get the CIES to him as soon as possible.

"Well for once, Andy, I'm confident in something you've got planned," chuckled Alice.

"I'm glad you think so." returned the stout businessman, whose smile seemed to grow even wider.

AN/ This chapter might seem off topic, but its nessisary for later chapters of the story. And FYI, CIES is pernounced sort of like SIZE is, not SIEZE :p \AN