Max had found his friends and Casa at the meditation rock without any more animal encounters. The falls roared nearby as Max ran up. His surprise at seeing Casa’s mech quickly turned to embarrassment as she immediately began chastising him for running into the Grand Oaks alone again. His smart clothes in tatters, he admitted he had run into some trouble with the elusive kitsune creature.
“…and now that I can accompany you, you shouldn’t ever be going in there unsupervised. The wood's EM signature prevents signals from passing, even discounting those aggressive animals, I can’t let anything happen to you again. If you were to get hurt, you wouldn’t be able to contact me.” Casa, rather than winding down Max’s corrections, was clearly getting ready for another round of lectures.
He brought up his hands and opened them, showing Casa and his friends the missing Tesseract. Casa’s sapphire eyes blinked twice and grabbed the device quickly trying to access it.
“I’m sorry, Casa. I tried already. I think it’s dead.” Max said glumly. Casa was frozen for a good five seconds, her mech hands shaking. Max wondered exactly how much she had slowed upon loading into the commercial-grade neural core. This was unlike her. She was normally three steps ahead of everyone and the jittering hands were odd.
While he knew from accessing her primary neural core that she had emotions; she normally only projected happiness, enthusiasm, and curiosity. Max shared a grim look with his friends, both of whom also looked much worse for the wear. Finally, Casa let out a long simulated sigh.
“Wireless and physical access connections are broken, but it does accept power inputs. It’s bad, but maybe not completely dead. We need to get back to the NetherLab as soon as possible. It has all the sensors I need to understand and hopefully fix this.” Casa finally said.
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Deep under the Casa de Mitchell 2, the group waited for the verdict. They had raced back to the home in Charlie’s aircar. Everyone was surprised by the new changes to the house shape and décor, but they hadn’t had time to admire it as they hurried to get the Tesseract into the lab. Casa’s mech body had stayed upstairs as the group and the Tesseract had been transported with a long elevator ride down to the NetherLab.
Charlie and Leah were awestruck by the miles-long elevator ride to the NetherLab. As their amazement slowly wore off on the ride down, the group shared their encounters in the forest. Upon arriving, they found that the disembodied Casa had already staged the lab to use all the scanners for a detailed scan of the Tesseract.
Unlike Max, she had contacted her primary consciousness and Bill with updates as they relocated it. Bill’s virtual avatar stood with Casa’s as they probed and scanned the device. Bill was physically already beyond the moon’s orbit, headed for the dark side when the call had come in. His avatar was a bit laggy, but not enough to disrupt his participation in the investigation.
“I can’t believe you climbed that tree, Charlie. You knew from Max that the bear was a climber.” Leah said, shaking her head.
“I know. I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought I had it under control with my stun attack. I was really close to getting it to fall into the river. I didn’t think the damn thing would knock the whole tree over.” Charlie grimaced at the memory.
“I can’t even deal anymore with this slingshot. I have to try to get my weapon idea going. If the Labyrinth is a mixed reality dungeon with monsters like the bear, I’m going to need a lot more stopping power.” Leah said.
Max was only half hearing the conversation and didn’t talk much beyond a quick description of his own encounter. The lapse in his thinking and the savagery of the fight left him deeply uncomfortable. It seemed like maybe his uplift was not as solid as he believed. It was unnerving at how easy it it had been to slip into such animalistic thinking.
“Hey, Max!” Leah said, “I asked you a question.”
“Sorry, what?” Max asked.
“Isn’t your sister taking classes in Nanofacturing this year? Do you think she might be able to help me?” Leah asked again.
“Yeah, she is. That’s a good idea. Casa would be very willing to help, but Mira did a similar training program for her augs. She might have some interesting suggestions. Let’s ask her next movie night, ok?” Max said.
He perked up as Bill and Casa’s avatar images crossed the room, over to the group, leaving the Tesseract on the diagnostics stage. He somehow looked happy, worried, and confused all at once.
“Max, you did it. Thank you! You succeeded and found the Tesseract. Now, I have both good and bad news. But before I say anything, can I trust your friends to keep this between us? This lab was supposed to stay off the books, not for guests and friends to know about.” Bill said, cautiously looking at Leah and Charlie.
“I’m sorry, Dad. We were in a hurry to get the Tesseract back and I forgot.” Max said.
“Mr. Mitchell, I think I can promise you that we will keep this quiet. We both understand a little better why those men would break into your house. We just want to do anything we can to help Max out.” Charlie said.
“Thanks, kids”, Bill said. Bill was confused for a second and did a double take at Charlie’s appearance. The man had regained his youth subtly over the weeks, so slowly that Max hadn’t noticed. He appeared now to be in his late teens or maybe early twenties.
“Thank you both for that. Please keep everything you learn here secret, I’m afraid the mayor is none too happy with me and is likely still looking for excuses to run me and Max off.” Bill said.
“His bastard of a son getting into it with all of us and getting expelled from the program might have contributed too, huh?” Charlie commented and then looked a little sheepish seeing Max’s ears flatten as he looked anywhere but directly at his father.
“Yeah,” Bill said slowly raising an eyebrow at Max. “I hadn’t realized that. I guess we all need to tread a little more carefully. Right, Max?” Max, seeing that Bill wasn’t going to press the issue, rapidly nodded.
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“Ok then, so here are the details. The Tesseract has a lot of damage. The access pathways, both physical and wireless, are trashed. But there is a power line active and it takes any charge we push at it. Casa and I were able to do a nanoscale review of the exterior and a penetrative scan of what there is of the tesseract in our dimension and there are active nanobots repairing the circuitry. This is where the problem lies.” Bill sighed.
“It’s good and bad. Good because the repair bots do appear to be following the Tesseract’s schematics to fix it. Bad because neither I nor Casa installed any repair nanobots into the Tesseract. Casa insists that the equipment loaded into the subspace did not include a matter compiler to fabricate nanobot repair units. There’s no way Casita could have created those repair bots without a compiler, nanobots are strictly controlled fabrications. These units appear like a licensed design, but they don’t have any self-destruct timers as is required of any nanobot fabrications.” Bill scowled at his own words, thinking hard.
The Holo avatar of Sherlock Holmes appeared next to Bill and addressed Max.
“Max, you didn’t mention those scoundrels having an opportunity to access the Tesseract. Are you certain?” Sherlock's sharp eye bore into Max.
Max hesitated as everyone looked at him but stood firm and replied.
“I’m certain. We had a pinhole portal to watch them as they entered the lab. They never came within ten feet of the anchor. It was disguised at a wall feature before they arrived.” Max said with conviction.
“Now did Casita pull any additional equipment into the portal between the time of the house losing power and your rather forced evacuation?” Sherlock pressed again.
“No, sir. She spent what little time we had configuring traps for the thieves. Nothing else, other than me, was brought into the pocket space.” Max said.
“And therein lies the mystery. How did the Tesseract arrive at the location you found it? It was well beyond any blast radius we calculated. Furthermore, if your description is accurate, it was hidden quite well in an animal burrow. And finally, we have unrestricted repair nanobots actively working on repairing the device in accordance to its schematics that were not placed there by any of us.” Sherlock concluded.
“I will need more investigations to determine exactly how all these factors combine. Our observations are not seeing what has truly occurred. ” Sherlock admitted. “I detest quoting my fictional self, but when you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
“I’m going to isolate the Tesseract and the scanner stage from the rest of the lab with shielding and a vacuum gap. Those nanites seem to be behaving, but the lack of self-destructs has me worried. A focused and shaped EMP pulse and high-powered ion shower are being set up should they do anything other than repairs. I would expunge them with my nanite countermeasures, but the risk of further destabilizing the Tesseract is too high for my liking. If Casita is still in there, I have hopes that just feeding the device power might reopen the link.” Bill finished.
“Is there anything I, or we, can do to help Dad?” Max asked. His friends nodded in agreement.
“No, I think you should leave this issue to me. You can best help by continuing your training and staying out of trouble. Casa and I will be initiating a second Tesseract build soon. I have yet to experiment on a functional device, if I can recreate it, we might find more technical options to help fix this one. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.” Bill said.
“Sherlock thinks there's more going on, maybe I could investigate.” Max offered.
“I think you should focus on yourself. Stay out of those woods for now. I don’t recall any mention of the EM jamming those tree devices are doing and it strikes me as unusual. Casa has been introduced to the town’s AIs, so she will subtly dig into what they know. When we have a better understanding of the town politics and the Grand Oaks bio-machine array, I hope to be able to return and get to the bottom of our missing puzzle pieces.” Bill said with a serious look, seeing Max’s stubborn expression. With a snort, Max shook his head and traded looks with his friends.
“Say, Dad, is movie night still on? Are you going to come, at least virtually, for Bo’s finals with the Cretaceous Challenge event?” Max said.
“Of course. I’m sorry I missed the first night. I was a bit busy with some friends in Japan at the time.” Bill said.
“Good. I’m going to make sure Mom and Mira will be there as well.” Max said with a not-so-subtle wink to Leah.
Bill and Casa were finishing the NetherLab remodel while Max was on his way up to the main house with his friends. Casa’s local neural core couldn't run multiple fragments, so Bill was interfacing his daemons, who ran off his augmentations, to shepherd all the adjustments being made.
“That boy has no intention of slowing down,” Bill commented as they worked.
“No, he doesn’t. He mentioned a couple of days ago that he felt like he needed to finish his training fast. I think he’s frustrated about his progress.” Casa said with feeling.
“Don’t worry too much. His augmentation is the best I could get. In some ways, it surpasses even military augs. He’ll be alright.” Bill sighed. Both were tired and telecommunication lags were growing more frustrating the longer they had to deal with it.
Sherlock’s avatar approached them, stepping away from the screens where he had been reviewing Casa’s recordings, the map of the search patterns, and the final location where Max said he had found the Tesseract.
“Mr. Mitchell, I believe there is one more thing we should do before you retire for the day,” Sherlock said.
“Of course, Holmes. What are you thinking?” Bill asked.
“I believe we may have an opportunity now to learn more. For the moment, I am assuming someone has tampered with the tesseract. Someone new or perhaps one of your past or current adversaries. Likely, they do not yet know that the device has been recovered.” Sherlock paused suggestively and raised his eyebrows.
“I think I see where you're going, Sherlock. We should perhaps return a replica or decoy so that the recovery is not obvious?” Bill asked.
“Precisely so, my good man! Well followed. Our most esteemed friend, Casa, is quite capable of rapidly fabricating something convincing, I should think.” Sherlock said with satisfaction.
“I can do you one better, Mr. Holmes. I can rig the proposed decoy with audio and visual recorders to catch our opponents unaware. I think this matter would be settled already if we knew with whom we were contesting.” Casa said with her normal bright enthusiasm.
“Although, we may not be able to access it as long as it's under that damnable forest’s canopy. A laser communication method might work, but not if it's underground like Max described. Maybe a small processor to send a laser signal if it's outside and not being actively observed.” Casa trailed off, and in moments the matter compiler upstairs began working, making both her decoy device and a “custom transport system”.
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Half an hour later, Casa and Bill had retired from their work, ending their transmission when the lab remodels had been completed. Max and his friends were outside playing with the RoboKoi and discussing their many plans to advance their augs before the tournament. They didn’t notice Casa2, newly fragmented again from Casa after a merge, using her mech body to remove two fabrications from the kitchen compiler.
She strode to the front door, swift and silent, to not disturb the friends in the back, with her packages. In the front yard, the first package flexed. It spread a lifelike set of wings and shook itself out. Casa’s latest creation was a special drone appearing very much like an raven but equipped with several interesting adaptations.
The sim-bot bird ran an extremely condensed smart program, more than an autonomous drone but less than an expert daemon system. Its body could recharge in the day with solar-absorbing feathers, and at night it would be indistinguishable from a real raven. It could receive both laser and wireless communications. It could also loiter for hours in the air over the massive forest. It was prepared to deliver the other package, the Tesseract decoy, and await an opportunity to gather more information if needed.
Casa2 put the decoy in the raven’s claws and threw it into the air. She couldn't resist a parting comment, too quiet for the kids in the backyard to hear.
“Fly, my pretty! Fly!” with a soft cackle, she returned to her mech charging cabinet. Today had been a long day.
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