Nanowrimo 2011 - Day 01

[SHAWNA - ORDINARY WORLD]

Shawna turned as the Captain stepped into her laboratory. He was clad, as usual, in the form-fitting black of a sensor net suit. Head to toe, an outfit that she also emulated. He gazed around the lab, meticulous in its organization despite the ferocious number of concurrent experiments underway. Shawna was, by far, the hardest working of his crew. He could count on her to produce results, and she’d never failed to impress him with any of the “side projects” that he had offered her.

“Quorum in an hour and ten, be ready to report on your findings. Oh, and I’ll be initiating Protocol Seven on this one. You have ten minutes for anything you dont want to declare to be offline.” He said to her.

Shawna nodded, stepping away from the piece of lab equipment she’d been using and quickly shut down a computer terminal and unplugged its harddrive, “Good of you to tell me.”

She palmed the drive and brough it close to her right thigh where a small forest of hungry connectors pushed themselves up through the black of her emulated sensor net suit. Power. Data. Others wrapped themselves around the drive and drew it silently inside. She felt, for a brief moment, the pleasure of expansion as the drive came online and her conciousness assimilated the data and expanded its runtime across the empty space of the drive. The flush of pleasure was met with a deeper and more painful spike of sheer loneliness though, the visceral ache of decades without anyone she could talk to, who would understand such simple pleasures. Decades of hiding. Running.

“Indeed.”

She didnt know if she sensed humor in his response, it was so hard to map his features beneath the black suit. She’d have run medical diagnostics to get answers if she thought she could get away with it, but no, this was the captain and it would be a gross invasion of privacy. In a ship this small, with a permanent crew of six, there were some barriers not to cross. It was apparent early, everyone had their limits, everyone in the Scout Service “joined to forget” and there were areas not to pry into. Hell, she of all people ought to know that! So, the captain’s features below the ever present sensor net were off limits. That’s not to say his other dietary needs werent an area to be looked into.
He’d clearly had to trust her, in her role of ship’s medic and dietician, but it went no further than that.

The big man nodded and turned to leave.

“Before you go, sir…” Shawna said.

He turned around, “Yes?”

“Are you sure about Protocol Seven?” she asked.

“Are you questioning my command decisions?”

“No, sir, but … ” she trailed off, it was hard to articulate what she wanted to say, she desperately wanted to explain the limits that would be in place, the futility, and the history of prior crews that had sought refuge in Protocol Seven as the means to protect a big find, hoping its strictures would make the discovery above reproach, only to be tripped up by their own … she almost laughed at the word … at their own humanity. Protocol Seven would preserve matters, both good and bad, warts and all for their superiors to pore over later. She wanted to tell the Captain how that had hurt in the past, but to tell would be to invite inquirying into her own deeply hidden past. She couldnt have that. No.

“No, sir. Just wanting to be sure. See you at Quorum.” she said.

[SHAWNA - CALL TO ADVENTURE / REFUSING THE CALL]

Before the holographic projection of Magdalena had flickered and vanished, Shawna was out of her seat, and out the door. Li’s revelation had rattled her, deeply. She had always been so careful to not leave traces. Subroutines long dormant, that at the time she had been unwilling to simply delete, gained priority and leaped through to the forefont of her mind: shift blame, divert the witch-hunt, where necessary exert dominance and even resort to violence, to keep key players from acting on data. The altercation with Li that followed was inevitable and played out according to the new plan. Before her higher functions had caught up, she’d already immobilized Li on the ground and clamped fingers around her throat.

“I have the power to ruin you. You need biology to render a verdict on this so called synth-flesh. When the time comes, remember. You owe me. I own you bitch.” She released the potentially fatal hold on Li’s neck and stalked off down the corridor.

Back in her lab Shawna took stock of the situation and nodded to herself. Extending the tour meant little to her, she just made a mental note to exercise extra caution while Protocol Seven was in effect.

[MAGDA - ORDINARY WORLD]

“You know too much you freak!” Magda said to the shabby doctor, “I have a mind to kill you where you stand!”

“Kill me? But you’d never get answers that way.” he said, with eyebrows raised.

Magdalena considered for a moment, watching the progress her finger was making. Its growth took her mind off the awful conundrum that stood before her. How did he know? What the hell was he injecting her with or feeding her on for it to have such a potent effect? Who was this man?

She looked back at him, really looked, extending her sight into its enhanced ranges. He simply stood there, waiting for her to draw a conclusion, smiling to himself. His body temperature was within normal range for a human, his heartbeat annoyingly relaxed. She felt her anger rising and with it the hunger that urged her to instill terror into the little man. The delicious taste of fear pheremones overlaid … she caught herself before fantasy took her too far into a realm where she’d be unable to control the outcome. It was like wrestling a live bull but was oh-so-familiar to her. She longed for the thrill of the hunt. It had been so long.

While still deep in thought she almost didnt notice the suble shift in the man before her. The body temperature was dropping steadily, heartrate plummetting, respiration shifting into a totally different rhythm. Now, as she watched, the respiration stopped entirely. To the untrained eye he was a walking corpse and yet he stood there, smiling as before, just as annoying and confusing to her. At his throat she thought she saw the edge of a dark wave. She frowned and waited. Yes, again. She looked closer, reaching to press his clothing back. The doctor didnt resist, just kept smiling as though he liked the attention, and particularly enjoyed her confusion. With more skin visible Magda was able to clearly see ripples of open and closed pores as if … no … surely.

“You see it then?” he asked.

“I see something. What?” she said.

“Respiration, but not as baseline humans understand it. While living in my higher nature I am faster, stronger, able to absorb oxygen from a variety of environments …” he paused for effect, “… much as you yourself as able to, no?”

Magda took a step back, hands on the shining metal surgical table behind her, glad of its solid support. Busted. He knew, but what manner of man was he?

“Who, what are you?” she demanded.

“We are the same, I think. Cousins. Perhaps branches on a family tree, but bearing striking similarity at a certain base level.” he explained.

Magda wasnt satisfied with his answer, opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a shrill beep from the equipment built into the operating table.

“Perfect, it’s ready. Let’s take a look shall we?” he said, opening up and removing a small white rod from the table’s interior. Magda shook her head, no, not a rod. A fingerbone stripped of flesh, polished and clean. The doctor turned to the wall behind him and with the little keypad, entered a code that unlocked what Magda could only describe as the most macabre collection she’d seen in her long years of study. The cabinet that opened was full, top to bottom, left to right, with finger bones. Each was clean and lovingly polished. The doctor stopped himself from shelving her fingerbone at the end of the collection. He consulted a readout on the side of the equipment, “Oh, my. I see … ” he turned and made a small space a few rows from the end. With Magda’s fingerbone categorized he turned around with an almost child-like glee.

“Tell me, those arent arranged chronologically are they?” she asked, a hint of horror in her voice.

“Why, yes. And you’re quite the prize my lovely, easily as old as any on this ship I would wager.” he said.

Magda looked from the smiling doctor back to his collection, so neatly arranged, and if chronologically arranged, so ancient. She tried to do the math and was rapidly grasping for a “BC” suffix for the dates she was adding up to. Could he really be that old? Or had he inherited the macabre collection? Had the creepy little doctor really been collecting severed finger bones for twenty five centuries? She shuddered and glanced down at her own regenerating digit.

“Where are you from?” She asked, as innocently as she could.

The doctor nodded, “You’ve been generous to donate to my collection, yes, seems only fair that I share a little more with you. Yes, the collection is as old as you think it is. And, yes, I have been curating the collection all that while. My first donor was a Roman legionaire, in Germania. What about you, young lady?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Magda would have clawed out the throat of anyone who had used that tone with her at any point in the past. The sense of outrage took her straight back to her past, a former life even, when servants attended her every need. Impertinence. Met with a firm slap across the face and a baring of the fangs, implying that a second offense would be their last. She lost herself in the moment, remembering the joy of family, of privilage, of roaring fires and hunting on the family estage.

“Good…” the doctor said, encouraging her to embrace the feeling, “… follow the feeling, tell me where you are. Where does it take you?”

“Italy, early 21st century.” she said.

The doctor nodded and glaced at the machinery in the surgical table - the readout indicated an age in that ball-park, and particular genetic markers suggested she was of Mediteranean stock, “Tell me more.” he encouraged.

Magda sighed. It had been so long since anyone had known her. Really known. Years of hiding evapourated under the bright blaze of desire. The doctor knew her nature and had acted in her interests thus far. What harm could there be in telling him? She looked around the room and saw a pair of folding chairs leaning against the wall.

“Shall we sit?” she asked.