Episode 33

Sharp felt positively stupid. He had forgotten to dismiss his Portal AR overlay. Now, instead of keeping it a tight secret that only Darity and Novell knew about, he broadcast all the stat windows he had spatially attached to the portal to both workstations in the observation room. He had framed the entire portal with stats windows as he thought of them. One window showed temperature and atmospheric readings inside the lab as well as readings from the other side. There was a graph that was charting the duration of the portal windows. A thermal map of the beyond filtered for heat signatures and metals. A radar map warned him of movement towards the portal entrance. Lastly, a window of notes recorded all his thoughts about the portal. He dictated them during downtime.

He had set up most of the info windows during the portal’s beach period, but none of them were giving him useful information yet. His metal detection had missed the box entirely. It must be made of an alloy he wasn’t filtering for. He hadn’t had a chance to tweak it. The radar map only worked within ten feet from the entrance of the portal. That wasn’t much of an advanced warning, so he had more work to do there as well. He had assigned various bots to observe and record data, then report back to him. When he was done calibrating, the Portal AR overlay would provide him with a fantastic amount of data, but now it was just experimental.

And he let a room of enemies see it, one of which had trapped him in the lab room in the first place. Since the wormbox had fired up moments after he discovered the rig, he didn’t think it was paranoia if he connected the obvious dots.

As he finished organizing bullet points in a task list for his keynote, Cattleya sidled up beside him and began whispering.

“You promised that you would enlighten me about all that is happening. Perchance now is the golden moment since your companions are awaiting an explanation as well.” Cattleya gave him a kind look, almost gentle, as if she realized he didn’t want to divulge his secrets, or maybe she was manipulating him. He couldn’t be sure..

“Mr. Hiko…Sharp, enlighten me, too. Department head to department head.” Isabelle smiled, but her eyes belied her intensity.

Maybe this is the bone I need to throw her way. I need her on my side.

Sharp looked from Isabelle to Cattleya, then shouted in exasperation, “Fine. Fine! Get your AR gear ready. You two, Kyle. I’ll give you a demo, but only you two. And no screen capping. This isn’t Bloop property. Message me a loose NDA. Keep it simple. Nothing fancy. Something like, ‘I, whatsyourface, hereby promise not to publicly pants Sharp Hikoboshi with the stuff he’s going to show me.’”

“Publicly pants?”

“Isabelle, he’s just being hyperbolic.”

“Oh. I knew that.”

“Right. Let’s just do this then.”

As Isabelle and Kyle wrote out an impromptu NDA, Sharp walked at a brisk pace over to the storage unit. He rolled up the door and looked over the boxes before heading into the back. After some loud rummaging, Sharp tucked something underneath his arm, then pulled down the slatted storage unit door and walked back to Catttleya.

“Here, put this on.” He handed her some AR goggles as he plugged the AR Deck he had found into the utility plug on the back of the wormbox island. It played a three note song as it booted up, and Sharp quickly assigned bots to configure it and prepare it for conferencing. Then he looked up at the observation room as he remotely logged into Isabelle and Kyle’s workstations, preparing them for a conference as well.

“He’s doing it again!” shouted Apple.

“Wudgepuck’s just going to love this when he finds out you can hack workstations,” Syd said with a sneer.

“I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m just using my sysad privileges remotely via AR. Just shut up and wait for them to give you the censored edition at the end of my presentation.”

Sharp turned away from the muttering Syd and focused on Cattleya. She was struggling to get the AR goggles to fit properly.

“Right, they go over your eyes. Let me help. And these go over your ears like this.”

Sharp reached out and tucked Cattleya’s ear down to hook the temple arms around first her left ear, then her right.

“They’re soft,” he said more to himself, but Cattleya’s eyes widened. He was close to her face, and now that there was proper light, he was momentarily stunned by her eyes’ teal and purple color. For a moment, they stared deeply at each other. It seemed that she was examining his eyes as well.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“What? They don’t have eyes like mine on your world? We certainly don’t have eyes like yours. Their color is amazing.”

Cattleya’s ears twitched downward, and she turned her head.

“Well, eyes like yours are rare in our world. Only the Japanese travelers have them. You’re Japanese and English?”

“I’m Japanese American, if that’s what you’re asking. There we are. Comfortable?”

Cattleya nodded slowly, and Sharp looked up to read the messages he had received from Isabelle and Kyle.

“Yosh…all set.

“I’m stepping away so that I can’t be picked up by the intercom. I’ll be fast, so buckle up. Cattleya, I’ll get you up to speed later. Promise.”

As Cattleya mouthed “get you up to speed” with a puzzled look, Sharp turned his back on the observation window, preventing the lab workers staring down at him from reading his lips. Then he called up his virtua display and showed them all 16 of his screens except the last two which featured his game project and the code for his AR tech. He was always tweaking during downtime, though since being trapped in wormbox lab, he hadn’t found much downtime.

“How are you doing all this? Contacts?” asked Kyle.

“That much I can say.”

“But what about the heat issues and the power source.”

“That’s proprietary information.”

“What’s processing the information? Surely not the contacts,” said Isabelle.

“That’s proprietary information.”

“You’re not using Bloop servers, are you?” followed up Kyle.

“No. My tech. Not a byte of which resides on Bloop property.”

“But you’re using Bloop’s network to transfer data, right?” Isabelle asked.

Sharp paused before replying, “No, but that’s proprietary information. Look, this is just a demo. I’m the magician here. I won’t be revealing how I pull off my tricks. Let’s wrap up with the portal screen so we can finish the box presentation. This is taking too long, and I’m getting antsy. The portal can change any moment.”

Sharp didn’t wait for an answer and walked over to the portal, revealing his detailed virtua display with all the windows.

“Wow! What are we looking at here?” Isabelle’s excited voice was picked up clearly over the intercom.

“Temperature and atmospheric readings, both from this side and over there. I’m tracking the duration of the portal windows. We’re currently at 43:52 minutes, which is the longest one we’ve had so far.”

Sharp began pointing to the different windows tacked around the portal opening. Cattleya’s mouth was agape, but this time because she could see that Sharp wasn’t just gesticulating like a madman.

“Let’s see, this is a thermal map of the beyond filtered for heat signatures and metals,” he continued. “That’s the radar, which doesn’t work well yet. I’ve got a team of bots on that one.”

“Wait!” Kyle practically shouted. “A team of bots? You mean AI bots, right?”

“Yes, my proprietary, non-Bloop related OS is built on AI bots. You know how in Unix and Linux everything is a file? In my OS, everything is a bot. That’s why I want to finish the presentation. As I show you the item, my bots are identifying or guesstimating weight, material, and function. I analyze the data later, then assign them tasks to do further research for me.”

“Hold on, you use them to do your job here. That’s why you’re so fast…” Isabelle said with a note of jealousy.

“What’s your OS called?” Interrupted Kyle. “It’s not SharpOS, is it?”

Sharp laughed. “No, that would be silly.”

“Well?”

“Um, Hikux. It’s a working title.”

“Wow. That’s terrible.”

“Shut up, I can call it ‘’lolz’ or keks’ if I choose. I can call it anything I like.”

“K E X?”

“Oh! That’s great! Thanks..”

“No, that’s terrible, t…”

Isabelle never finished her sentence. The portal screens started streaming data and new windows popped up as Sharp’s newly dubbed KexOS dispatched bots to analyze the data as the portal began to shift. The groaning, rumbling, and screeching, rusty hinge were all quantified as data points as the image rippled and shifted in front of Sharp and Cattleya. This time, his coworkers got a front row seat with their AR Decks. Isabelle yelped.

The air was filled with an angry hum and the portal window was crawling with waves and waves of angry bee-like creatures.

“The portal opened on a hive!” Sharp shouted. At the bottom left of the portal was a window view of a nest of insects. He and Cattleya jumped behind the wormbox. After a few moments, they peeked their heads around the corner. The lab was free of the angry bee-things. They couldn’t pass through the portal.

Sharp walked carefully to the portal and watched with fascination as the bee-things swarmed on the portal as if it were glass.

“This is new,” he said to his colleagues.

“Are they not heavy enough to pass through the, um, event plane?” Kyle asked.

“It doesn’t seem so…” Then Sharp spoke to his bots. “New note, titled Portal Rules. First item, insects cannot pass through the portal. Second item, branches and mud can pass through.” A note in blue paper appeared in front of him. He reached out and tacked it onto the right of the portal near his other note.

“Why can rain pass through, but not bugs?” Cattleya asked. She had joined him by the portal, gawking in wonder at the data in front of her.

“You’re not creeped out by the bugs?” Cattleya looked back at him as if he were stupid.

Sharp turned back to the bee-things. They were striped with bright blood red, alternating with bruise purple. Up close they looked more like beetles, with shiny shells, but with stingers.

Beetle-bees. Great…

“Gross” came Isabelle’s reply.

A wet slap on the floor caught Sharp’s attention. Something had broken through the barrier. On the floor was a winged, black creature half the length of his hand. It seemed to be eating a beetle-bee. It was soon joined with a dozen other slaps. Sharp stepped back. Cattleya returned to the safety behind the wormbox island.

“We might have a problem, Cattleya. Quick! Get your bat.” Some had finished their meal and were trying to get at more beetle-bees, but they couldn’t pierce the portal gateway.

“What are they?” she shouted as more and more of the black creatures landed on the lab floor with sickening, wet splats.

“Flying leeches!”