When Scott pulled off his rebreather and mask, he looked around for Carl. They had planned to swim to a beach in Morocco in the late afternoon to avoid crowds. They also wanted to be early enough to avoid extra attention for sneaking around at night. They left the submarine about one kilometer offshore with the plan to swim directly towards the shore. Right before leaving, Carl had announced “Race you!” and took off before Scott had even finished checking his gear.
Scott was still recovering from his medical procedures. They had some fitness equipment on the submarine, so he had recovered enough to handle the swim, but he was angry about Carl ditching him on a mission.
Scott pulled out a GPS device from his waterproof bag after stowing his swimming gear. They had chosen to go without phones because of fear of SPAI being able to track their location. The old-fashioned GPS map device did not connect to the internet or cell phone services, so it should not be possible to track their position. Scott headed in towards the coordinates they had agreed to meet at. Near the target location, he found Carl talking to a small group of young women, who seemed to be impressed with whatever story he was telling.
“So then I knocked over their leader with my van, and we rescued the hostages.” Carl’s story seemed to be wrapping up. “Hey Scott! You really took your time on that swim…”
“Carl, I don’t think we should be socializing right now,” Scott said. “We need to get moving before it gets dark.”
“Just waiting on you. I’m ready to go! Bye ladies,” Carl said with a cheesy wink. Scott rolled his eyes. They left the beach and put on better shoes for running, after cleaning up a bit using showers near the exit.
“Hey Carl! it’s important we stick together in case something unexpected happens.” Scott said as they started walking along the busy roads. Their first stop was only three miles away, but they quickly decided that running there would attract more attention than simply walking along with the crowds.
Scott thought about the other surprise he had received on the submarine after waking up. His skin was now a couple shades darker, and his hair was coming in with more curl. Scott didn’t mind the new look, but he wondered if it would really help them avoid notice. Carl had received a similar change, and Scott thought it made Carl look about ten years younger. Scott thought they still looked obvious as foreigners due to their lack of understanding of the fashion, culture and language of the country. It wasn’t a big problem here, because the area was full of foreign visitors.
“Hey Scott! It would be really cool if you could add something to my software to translate languages. It would be great to understand what these people are saying. It should be easy, right?” Carl said, eyes widening in excitement. Scott shook his head and groaned.
“I know you had trouble getting that program working where it decides if someone is hostile. It doesn’t work great, but maybe you could hire some smarter programmers to help you fix it.” Carl added. Scott glared at him.
“Hey! Your aggro reading just turned yellow. That’s a bug, right? Sometimes it does that when I’m talking to people.” Carl continued.
“Can we just keep quiet and focus on finding this place?” Scott growled.
“Nah, I hardly ever get to talk to you in Mexico. Anyway, the aggro system kind of works, and I’m sure you’ll fix it eventually! It would be really cool if you add a way to check out if chicks were into me. It would be like the opposite of the aggro system. You just need to flip a switch on the code you already have. Don’t tell Melinda. I would totally use it to get intel and help the company, but she thinks I just want to pick up more girls. ” Carl explained, nodding with a big dumb smile.
Scott was wondering why he had agreed to go on this mission.
“Sorry, man. I was just having a little fun. I’m kind of nervous about this mission and I cover it up with dumb comments,” Carl said as the smile slipped off his face. “Usually I’m with someone experienced like Terrance or Sergio on these missions. No offense. I know you’re crazy smart and had to work really hard to get this computer in my head working. I get scared going into these situations where people are going to be shooting at you. I try to cope by spouting a bunch of nonsense to distract myself.”
Huh, Scott thought. “OK, I get it. The language translator is an excellent idea if we could get it working. I’ve talked trash about your other ideas, but Melinda pointed out that they are helpful for other projects. When you keep saying how easy something will be, I felt like you were disrespecting the amount of effort we put into it. Maybe you could tone that down a bit?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that!” Carl protested. “I forget how sensitive you guys are. Oops, I’m doing it again. Sorry, dude. I can entertain a group of strangers with exaggerated stories, but I have trouble being around people longer term without pissing them off.”
They walked a few minutes in silence. After this, they kept their conversion limited to comments about when to take a different street or how far they needed to go.
They had walked for about an hour when they came to what looked like an auto repair shop surrounded by a wire fence in a lower income section of town. A couple guard dogs were chained up inside. Carl and Scott walked in.
“أيمكنني مساعدتك؟“ The man inside asked.
Carl looked puzzled, but Scott said, “Do you speak English?”
“Ah yes. It is unusual to see tourists in this part of town. But you do not look like tourists. I do not want any trouble.” The man seemed to get more nervous as he looked at Carl and Scott.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“We just need a car,” Carl spoke up. He pulled out several large stacks of money, roughly 100 thousand Dirham.
The man looked even more suspicious after seeing the money come out. Carl’s hand started to move towards a weapon he had hidden in his clothes.
“I don’t know how you found this place, but I don’t do that kind of business. I just fix vehicles here.” The man protested.
“Look, we can also pay in gold if you want.” Scott said. “If you don’t have a working car to sell, we’ll go somewhere else.” He put a hand on Carl’s shoulder, trying to signal that he should quit scaring this guy. Carl took the hint and put his hand down.
“No, I just remembered I have a car I fixed up that was broken in an accident. The owners got insurance and sold it to me for scrap. It’s old, but it works. That money there is fine, just hold up until I can find the keys.” The man started heading out a door in the back.
“He’s totally red on aggro,” Carl whispered.
“Can you disable him without injuring him?” Scott whispered back. He was looking around for cover and started to crouch behind a cabinet that held tools.
The owner of the store burst through the door holding a shotgun. Scott hid behind the cabinet while Carl dived to the side, firing a small weapon. The blast from the shotgun shattered the front window of the building, and Scott saw some blood spray from Carl. The store owner was lining up a second shot, but Carl popped up and pulled the gun from his hand. Shortly after, the man slumped to the ground.
“Well, it took about three seconds for the tranq to put him down. That is not ideal when they are shooting at you.” Carl said. He was checking his arm where his shirt had been torn, and some blood was trickling down.
Scott took out a med kit they had. He gave Carl a shot that helped with the pain. They pulled out some buckshot from his arm and used glue to seal up the small holes. Another needle injected some medicine that was supposed to speed up healing. They split the injection between four places where he had been hit.
“Well that sucked.” Carl said. “He went red while we were talking. That’s why I was reaching for my gun. Your software worked great, but I should have just shot him once it signaled he was hostile.”
“Probably. Sorry, I’m not used to this kind of thing.” Scott said. He was starting to freak out now that the fight was over, but the feeling eased up as he focused on suppressing it. I’m probably about to get another major headache. “Let’s find the keys and take a car. We’ll leave the money. The last thing the guy said to us was he was selling us the car, so maybe he’ll decide to forget about the tussle at the end. Also, you need to drive. I’m probably going to have a headache and a panic attack in a few minutes.”
They were able to find keys and a car that looked like it might be the one the man had described. They moved him to a small chair, so it looked like he was taking a nap, and left the money next to him.
Scott and Carl got in the car and headed down the road towards the border.
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Matthew Stanton had a bad headache. He had worked long hours for the past week helping his team setup the dig plan for the Xibalba tunnel. It was a complicated puzzle keeping several hundred robots working without running into each other, staying idle too long, and getting regular maintenance and replacement of parts. On top of this, his girlfriend Zaliha had needed his help several times a day to establish what his robots could do to help build their spaceport. They were capable of a variety of jobs, but each different activity required a lot of engineering and programming time, and his team was stretched thin. They could hire more people, but then they would need to spend time training and integrating them into the company.
On top of this, his gaming company was struggling. They had some parts of the code working, but everyone complained when they spent more than a few minutes testing. The experience seemed to cause motion sickness. No matter how great they made the game, people wouldn’t want to pay a subscription fee for something that made them feel like throwing up. Even aside from that, every task was taking longer and costing more than his initial estimate. He would burn through the initial investment in five months, and there was no way they would be finished before then. Matt and Scott were busy with more important things, so he didn’t even see how they could take steps to solve the problem.
He took a moment to call Melinda and vent about what he was struggling with.
“Hi dear, I was wondering when you would call for help.” Melinda answered cheerfully.
“Yeah, we have so many projects on short timelines, I don’t know how to handle it.” Matt said, while fidgeting with his hands.
“OK, so let’s talk about priorities and what is taking up all your time.” Melinda said gently.
“Right, so keeping the tunnel robots working efficiently is most of my time. Second is Zaliha needs help on the spaceport. Finally, my game company is a mess. I’m not spending much time on it, but it’s a source of stress. I’m worried it will fail, but I can’t justify spending time trying to fix it.”
“Can’t Phillip and Rafael handle most of the programming for the tunnel? You have a few other people who could do some of the work too.” Melinda questioned.
“They are already spending a lot of hours on it, but Rafael is working on our weapons satellite and Phillip is spending time making some kind of powered armor.” Matt explained.
“I’ll tell Phillip to put his side project on hold and take over as the team lead for the tunnel project. We’ll tell Adriana we need to slow down a bit on the digging. She can focus more on getting plans for the infrastructure and buildings and see if we can start more of that before the tunnel is complete. Is there a reason she can’t focus on finishing the pyramids before the digging is complete?” Melinda asked.
“Well, the robots are constantly moving around in there with heavy loads of rock. Construction crews would get in their way and might risk injury. But… maybe if we dug a short bypass tunnel instead of using the main entrance, we could re-route the robots hauling out materials.” Matt realized he had been too focused on finishing his tasks as quickly as possible. This small change would allow Adriana to start on the next phase weeks earlier, and it would only cost him a couple of days. The overall project would be finished faster, and he might even be able to slow down a bit.
“Well, that’s one problem addressed. Tell me about your game company. It’s not my problem, but if it is causing you stress, I’d like to know more about it.” Melinda encouraged Matt to keep talking.
“Everything is taking longer than we thought. I’m going to spend all the money we budgeted long before we have anything to sell. Also, the VR experience is making people feel sick. I’m worried that even if we throw in more money, it will still fail.” Matt felt a little better after admitting what was upsetting him.
“I remember when Elsa was struggling with Genysis Biotech, and we pulled in everyone to brainstorm. You guys helped her take a better approach and look how great it turned out! I don’t understand video games, but I bet your friends can help you figure out what to do next.” Melinda was making a bit of an angry face, which did not match her words. Matt wondered who else she was talking to and if it was something he should be worried about.
“Sorry, got to go,” Melinda announced abruptly and hung up on him.