The forevers fixer 13, p.5
The Forevers - Fixer 13, page 5
Jayne cleared her throat. The man ignored her. She spoke. “Excuse me.” The man continued to stare at the magnavid. He twisted a knob and the view altered. He did not turn around. She stepped further into the room and repeated herself. “Excuse me.” No response. Finally she stepped closer and was about to tap the man on the back when he straightened, reached behind his ear and touched his skull. He had turned off whatever he was listening to. He turned around and found himself face to face with Jayne. “Oh!” escaped from both their lips. Jayne stepped back.
“Who are you?” Greenway asked.
“Thirteen,” said Jayne.
“No, no. Not your HUB number, your birth number,” he said with irritation.
“Oh,” Jayne hesitated. “My number is 302875106592253.”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I have no idea. This is my first day of Practical TEM. The green arrow directed me here,” she said, “so here I am.”
“Yes, well, close the door and I will find out why,” he said and he picked up his VID. “Mmmm, that is odd.”
“What is odd?” Jayne asked.
“Nothing. They are just being a little more thorough with you. They want the usual - fluid extraction, deep retinal scan and skin biopsy. They also want a partial connectome scan. Now that is very unusual,” he mused.
“What’s a connectome scan? What are you scanning?” Jayne asked apprehensively.
“Don’t worry. I hurts far less than the skin biopsy. It just takes a little longer,” he said. “Now sit here and roll up one sleeve.” He gestured to a chair on the end of one of the lab benches.
Jayne sat and rolled up her sleeve. Professor Greenway took some blood and scraped the inside of her cheek to retrieve skin cells. “Now, I want you to relax. This always works best when you are relaxed. Conscious thought and dreaming can affect the results. Here, drink this,” he said and he handed her a small paper cup with a pink liquid in it. “It’s sweet with a cherry flavor.”
“What are you going to scan?” asked Jayne.
“Your brain, more specifically, a small section of your frontal lobe. That’s right behind your forehead,” he said, tapping her with his finger. “It won’t hurt a bit but it will take a few hours to complete. There are a lot of data connections in there and they keep changing. This connectome scan will mark the static connections and try to determine the pattern of the dynamic ones. Nothing for you to worry about,” he said as he smiled condescendingly down at her. “Drink up.”
Jayne drank the liquid and made a face. Professor Greenway took a circular strap and placed it around her head. He attached two devices to the strap. He stepped over to the large VID he had been looking at previously, and adjusted some settings.
“The thingies on that band around my head are moving,” said Jayne. “One of them is caught on my hair.”
“Oh,” Professor Greenway said and he attempted to free her hair from the scanning device. Her hair was caught on the chain that held the silver star around her neck. He lifted the chain and pulled the silver star into view. “Oh my,” he whispered as he sucked in his breath. He dropped the chain as if it were going to bite him. He became all business. “This will take awhile, so relax. Go to sleep. It will be over when you wake. I have other important things to attend to and I must go. A lab tech will remove the apparatus and send you on your way.”
“How long?” asked Jayne.
“I don’t have time to answer your silly questions,” he snapped back at her. He glanced back at the star hanging in full view on Jayne’s chest. He felt fear well up. “I must go.” He turned and left the room.
Jayne reached up and grasped the silver star between her fingers. It warmed in her hand. She closed her eyes and soon drifted off to sleep. She did not dream. She suddenly opened her eyes. She was alone in the lab. The lights had dimmed. She had a pounding headache, was hungry and had to pee very badly. The devices on her forehead hummed and occasionally moved. Jayne tried to sit up and realized she was restrained with metal clamps at her wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, neck and head. She could not move even if she tried. Suddenly a blue flashing light filled the dim room, followed by a warning klaxon. Jayne started to panic. Just as suddenly, the flashing lights and the sounds stopped. A woman in a white coa, with a stethoscope around her neck, entered the lab and smiled at her.
“I guess you’re done. I will get you out of those restraints. Sorry, I usually have them off before the patient wakes up, but when I checked you after two hours you were not finished,” she said to Jayne.
“I have to go to the bathroom very badly,” said Jayne.
“Won’t be a moment,” she said, undoing the clamps and gesturing at a door. “The bathroom is through there.”
Jayne went and when she returned the woman was putting the devices in a cabinet. “How long have I been here?” she asked.
“Let’s see,” she said, looking at the VID, “a little over six hours. That’s odd. That’s really long for this test. It usually takes less than two hours.”
“I’ve been here for six hours?” said Jayne incredulously. “I feels like only a few minutes have passed, except for the fact that I am starving.”
“Yeah, this test is like that. You can go now,” said the woman walking to the door. “I have to close up the lab.”
Jayne followed and found herself alone in the hallway. She was a little disoriented and her stomach growled. She looked at the floor but there was no green direction arrow to show her the way. She walked to her left a dozen steps. She saw nothing that looked like the door to the PUT pads. There was a door in front of her. It had a small window just above her head and a hand scanlock just below the window. She placed her hand on the lock. Nothing happened. She jumped up in an effort to see if this was the PUT pad room. She got a series of fleeting glances from repeatedly jumping up and looking through the small window. All she could see was a dark room with more chairs like the one she had lain in for her connectome scan. These chairs were different only in that they had straps and steel bands attached. Jayne guessed they were designed to keep the occupant prisoner. She shivered. On her fifth jump a voice boomed out behind her. “Who are you and what are you doing?” She turned to see a security guard standing at the other end of the hall.
“I am just looking for the PUT pad room. I just came from Professor Greenway’s lab, and I have forgotten the way.”
“Well, it is not that way. It is right down there,” he said, pointing at a door at the other end of the long hallway.
“Thanks,” she said and she walked down the hall, past the guard and onto a PUT pad. A moment later she was at her own door which opened as soon as she approached it.
“Come in, Thirteen. I have made you something to eat. There is an analgesic for your headache on the table.”
“How did you know?” asked Jayne.
“I know how grueling a first day in Practical TEM can be,” Lucky replied.
“But I …” she started to reply but stopped. For some reason, she felt that keeping a few secrets from Lucky would not be a bad thing. “Yes, thank you, it was a tough day.”
“I know it will get easier. Something to eat and a good sleep will do you wonders,” said Lucky. Jayne sat and ate and slept.
Chapter 9 – “Secret Heart Cupboards”
The Gravity Generator Suppressor (GGS) was developed. Massive superconducting disks were cooled to just above absolute zero, supported in magnetic fields and set to spinning at high speed. Any object placed above the spinning superconducting platters gradually decreased in weight. Gravity’s effect on the object was lessened. The opposite was also true if an object was placed above the spinning disks with the disks travelling in opposite directions. Gravity’s effect on the object was increased.
The GGS design went through a number of changes. The massive disks, and power required to spin them and maintain the magnetic suspension fields, made their practical application difficult if not impossible. A heli-blade-shaped rod of ultra-cooled superconducting material was used to replace the massive disks. It was spun on a center point in a vacuum. The pitch of the blade could be controlled separately on either side of the center point. It was discovered that an array of these devices, with controlled speed of spin and pitch, could manipulate the force of gravity over a much larger area and to a much greater value. It was as if the device could create dips and bumps in the gravity well created by the planet’s mass.
One of the first applications of this technology was the spavator(space elevator). The spavator was conceived in the 1950s, but was found to be impractical and unsafe given the strength of earth’s gravity in relation to the strength-to-density ratio of earth materials. However, when carbon nanotube interlaced graphene ribbons were used in conjunction with GGS platforms, the tech became commonplace.
Jayne’s Day One was everyone else’s Day Two. She stood with the group of apprentices in front of the journeyman who was in charge of their training. She had assured him she could catch up on the safety protocols introduced on the first day and if she was unsure, she would ask. The day would be spent learning to perform basic maintenance at the base of the spavator. Joseph was in the same group as her, but he never spoke to her or even looked at her. This irritated Jayne and so she decided to give him some of his own medicine. She pretended he didn’t exist, even though a part of her wished she could talk to him and tell him about the silly luck testing and connectome scan and find out what he thought.
“You will work in pairs to complete the specific tasks sent to your VID. Collect your tool pack from stores and report to the spavator undercarriage. Once there, the VID will provide further instructions,” said the instructor. “If you remember what you were taught, this will be a breeze.”
He started to call out names and numbers of those that would be partners. Jayne stopped hearing and thought of Joseph and his big feet on the PUT pad and the day he had followed her and waited for her in the hallway. She smiled. She heard ‘Kane 37’ being called, followed by ‘Riley 23’, and glanced up as he and Riley headed to the stores for their tool packs. He would not work with her today. She wondered again why he had been required to follow her on that first day. Then the instructor said, “Wu 13”, followed by nothing. “Well, I guess you get to work with me,” he said. Jayne nodded. He looked at her more closely and said, “Get your tool pack, 13, and meet me back here in five. Boy, she’s a young one,” he muttered, as he walked away.
Jayne headed to the stores. She waved her VID in front of the scanlock at stores. There was a click and a small door opened in the drop bin. She reached in and grabbed her tool pack. She slipped it over her shoulders and headed back to the marshaling area. Everyone else was gone. She waited for her instructor to show up. She waited 10 minutes. She was about to take off the heavy pack and sit down, when he arrived.
“Sorry. I got delayed. Some strange problem with the ID scanner at the spavator intake port. One minute it won’t let anything through and the next it lets in everything,” he said, shaking his head. “Follow me.”
They headed off and then stopped. “Well, where are we going?” he asked.
Jayne looked at him, puzzled. He looked back querulously. “Oh!” Jayne said, realizing that she had to complete the assignment. She looked at her VID and said, “This way.” There was no green arrow to direct her but the VID showed her a map with a simple ‘You Are Here’ flashing red dot on the screen. She led the way and they soon found themselves in a narrow hallway with a curved wall of test contact points. Her training told her she had to check each pair for degradation. Each strand of the spavator cable led up to the geosynchronous tether point 100,000 km straight up. There were a series of seven coloured diode lights at the base of each set of test points. Series of coloured lights indicated the tests that were to be performed. Thirteen knew all the codes and quickly opened her tool pack, applied the lockout tie, removed the test core and connected it to the contact point. The diode’s colours changed. “This one has three months left before failure. It will need to be replaced in two,” she said. “I will record this and order retesting in one month.” She removed the lockout tie.
She turned to look at the instructor for his approval. At the same moment, his VID sounded and flashed red. “What now?” he exclaimed. He looked and frowned. “I must go. I am sure you can handle this task. As you can see, there is work here.” He gestured at the blocks of shining coloured diodes disappearing down the long room. “If you need me, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she asked naively.
“Need me. Or call me. Get done what you can and report to staging at 16:00. By the looks of this, I will be busy. Have a good day,” he said and he left the way they had come.
Jayne shrugged. She was used to being alone. That did not bother her. She went back to work. A number of hours had passed. Jayne had stopped for a food and water break and then back to work. After awhile she noticed that the long room in which she was working curved in a circle but never brought her back to her beginning. At first she thought she was going back to where she started but the small marks she put on the wall never showed up. “It must be a spiral,” she thought. “I am travelling in a spiral.” She visualized the diagrams she had studied of the base of the standard spavator. All the connections of the carbon and silicon nanotubes spiraled up to a main cable. There was a great deal of redundancy to prevent catastrophic failure on the spavator. She looked at her VID. She still had 10 minutes of personal time left before she had to get back to work. Her legs were cramping from all the standing. She needed some exercise. She started to run up the spiral. The circles were decreasing the further she ran and the slope of the floor increased. The LEDs became a blur on her left as she climbed. Suddenly the hall ended in a circular room five meters across. She was in the core room. In front of her was the core cable in a transparent case that morphed down into, what her training told her, was a GS device (Gravity Suppressor) in a super-cooled case. On the far side of the room was a door with a small window and an imbedded scanlock at waist height. Chest height for Thirteen. She kept her back to the wall as she circled the room. The center cable was the same all the way around. She stopped at the door. She turned to face the door just as her VID beeped. There were three minutes of personal time remaining. She would have to hurry if she were to start work on time. It would not look good on her record if she started late. Out of curiosity as to where this oddly placed door led, she placed her hand on the scanlock. Nothing happened. She jumped up to see through the small window. She could see nothing. It was dark on the other side of the door. She jumped again and the silver star on its chain bounced out from beneath her jumpsuit and flashed in front of the scanlock. Jayne landed on her feet at the same time she heard a definite click. Jayne had not noticed the connection between the lock opening and the silver star around her neck. The door was opening and the light was on. “Beep! Beep!” went her VID. Two minutes left. Jayne stepped inside and a light came on as soon as she crossed the threshold. She looked around. It was a small storage room with six recessed niches one half meter square and 30 cm deep. A glass door covered each. Inside one of the small cupboards was a white plastic box. She was moving in slow motion. She reached up and opened the glass cupboard door. A cloud of cool water vapour rolled out in a white wave. Jayne removed the box, set it down and examined it. There was no lock or latch of any kind. She lifted the lid. On the inside of the lid was a stylized image of a human heart. There was another box inside. It was completely sealed with a strap that read ‘Human Organs – Open For Immediate Transplant Only’. “Beep! Beep! Beep!” went her VID. Her heart pounded in her chest. The time was up. This did not make any sense. Why would a human organ be here at the base of a spavator? Jayne quickly closed the white box, placed it back in the cupboard and closed the door. She stepped out of the small room and the door closed behind her. She walked quickly down the hallway and recommenced testing the contacts and reporting the state of the spavator cable fibers. Her mind, however, was not on her task. She could not get the image of the heart out of her mind. As she worked, she realized she was getting closer and closer to the room with the human organ. “Maybe it was empty,” she thought. “Maybe that’s where they leave the empty boxes. After all, she had not actually seen a heart in the box. She had seen another box inside. It was probably empty. But the seal was not broken.”
