Chapter One - Meanwhile in my head
“Thank you all for coming, gentlemen,” Herman began.
“Sir?” It was his assistant, Harold. Well, his assistant’s head anyway, popping up as a hologram next to Herman.
“Not now, Harold,” he whispered, waving the hologram off and smiling weakly to the board of department heads.
Herman cleared his throat. None of the faces at the dark wooden table were smiling. Appropriate, he supposed, for an emergency meeting. Herman loosened his tie a fraction.
“I'll be as brief as I can,” he said. “If I may direct your attention to the cause of the malfunction.”
The room went dark and the smart-screen sprang to life, humming in a low whir. A playback began, showing charts and medical readouts of dazzling complexity. Herman positioned himself just to the side of the images.
“Everything was working just fine, all functions normal. Then the power surge. There, see?” At precisely the same moment in all the screens, every chartline went ballistic.
A murmur washed around the room. Men shifted in their seats.
Herman continued. “On the positive side, everyone please note the processing rate. It's off the charts, in fact it's an all-time high. A scan through archived reports shows only one or two spikes in recorded history that-”
A hand went up. Herman shielded his eyes against the glare of the images, trying to divine the hand’s owner.
Oh. The Eye of Detail. A hateful little man with a pursed pucker for a smile, head of Legal and valued consultant to Justice and other important departments. Herman knew him, and despised his terrible orange suit almost as much as his combover. Herman fought not to grimace.
Harold’s hologram blipped up. “Herman, you need-”
“Not now,” Herman frowned, wiping the holo off. “Yes sir?” he said to the Eye.
"Where did the energy spike originate?" the man said. His voice was a triumph of nasal languor. Legs crossed as if to hold off the call of nature, thin shoulders raised and arms crossed. Proof positive against natural selection, if ever there was one.
"Ocular Recognition, in all cases," Herman replied.
"Why was no plan in place?" asked another man. Head of Foreign Entities, but everyone called him Strangers. He was all right, actually. Tended to mumble to himself and either pay too much attention or not enough.
Herman blew out a breath. "Well, technically speaking, there was. But nobody was prepared for the magnitude of pure adrenalin generated by Ocs. Pardon the pun, it was like nothing we'd ever seen before. There was only a theoretical alpha-stage blueprint in place, nothing that had been tested. So, all we could do was ride the storm and try to divert excesses to the Primary Senses.”
“We seem all right now,” said the Eye.
“If a bit shaken,” agreed Strangers.
“Now isn’t the problem. Circulation is washing the adrenalin away but gentlemen, we predict this energy spike will be return."
Jaws around the table collectively dropped. Detail nearly lost his balance, limbs briefly akimbo as he recovered.
"Dear Lord,” said Justice. “When?"
Herman spread his hands. "It could be anytime, sir. We're working on a power redundancy but until one is available, a surge like this could wipe out the majority of our advanced systems.”
“Such as?”
“At the very least it would include Decorum, Social Tactics & Interactions, Common Sense, and Complex Navigations. We'll be left with basic functions only. Primal Responses.”
A shaggy looking man, dressed incongruously in a beautiful metallic blue suit, perked up and grinned.
Decorum, sitting next to Primal, glanced nervously at his shaggy neighbor and raised his hand. “Bottom line it for us, Herman. What will happen to us?”
Herman’s eyebrows shot up. He paused, gazing uselessly at the data on the projection.
He didn’t need to look at the charts, but it bought him time. He scraped his lower lip with his teeth, calculating. The buzz of the smart screen filled the stuffy little conference room. Slowly, Hermon nodded to himself.
“I’ll spare you the laundry list of internal ramifications. Physically, we could have the clumsiness of an infant, babble incessantly, possibly even fall down, drool and stare. That said-”
Herman had to raise his voice as shocked outcries threatened to segue into panicked shouting.
“-there is a real scenario where we may run at our highest yet recorded levels of optimum capacity. In all systems, across the board.”
Herman rested his fingertips on the table and leaned forward. The worried whispers gave way to holy silence.
“But,” he said, “in the meantime, my suggestion is to stay the heck away from that girl!"
The holo popped up again. “Sir!”
“What is it, Harold?” said Herman, exasperated.
“That girl you were worried about? She’s back, sir. Just walked in.”
Herman dropped the data projections at once.
“Ocs!” he said. “Get me a direct feed, please!” The ‘please’ was important. After all, one could still be polite in crisis.
The main screen suddenly came alive. The inside of a pet store. The main counter which their body stood behind. A beautiful girl just inside the entrance, scanning the room.
As one, all department heads hissed an indrawn breath, like a sinister breeze clutching everyone’s throats.
“Steady,” Herman encouraged. “No call for alarm yet.”
The girl’s head kept turning until her gaze landed on…
…on Herman.
The red warning lights came on in the conference room milliseconds after she began walking. Directly toward them.
Herman paled. They were doomed.
A great voice booms.
“A fork in the path of destiny appears, and only you can see it.”
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