Episode 16
Isabelle’s blonde hair bobbed as her head quickly turned to and fro, taking in the chaos in the room that had sprung up while she stepped away to make a phone call. The staff rushed to plead their case like children tattling on each other, trying to not be punished.
When the cat's away… I wondered why things got so wild in here. I didn’t even notice her leave.
Sharp listened to their whining and shook his head with a laugh, then took advantage of their distraction and moved quickly about the room, patching into the remaining workstations with a glance while spinning off multiple AIs to handle the load. Several virtua screens rotated in his vision as his AI bots did their work. He had just finished configuring the last machine when Apple gave up trying to get Isabelle's attention and began eying Sharp suspiciously. He could feel her eyes peck at the back of his neck as he configured the last three workstations simultaneously.
Too late, Apple. Early bird gets the worm.
“We are at work!” said Isabelle, her voice raised out of character, at least as far as Sharp was concerned. “You all agreed to sign on to work here. Bloop saved our project. Things are just a little bumpy right now.” At this, the complaints began to pick up pitch again, this time focused on Bloop. Sharp thought it was funny how most of them could turn together in sync, like a flock of birds performing a mysterious dance in air.
“Please abide by their rules and conduct yourselves professionally! We're not a startup anymore. We're part of a larger corporation. Why do I have to tell you this?” Isabelle glared at her staff then looked past them to Sharp. “Mr. Hikoboshi, what happened to your shirt?” Kyle leaned in and whispered to Isabelle as her eyes widened. Syd quietly dropped the other jelly donut he was holding into the trashcan by the door.
“Mr. Hikoboshi, I am so sorry! I had no idea they were treating you this way. Do you need to file a complaint? Do you want me to call the police? I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. So many workplace protocols have been…”
“Please. Just ‘Sharp’. And I’m not interested in more drama. Let’s just get me into this back room so I can finish up and get out of here.” Sharp grabbed his gear bag and looked up at Isabelle expectantly.
Isabelle quickly pushed through the mob and snapped, “Get back to your stations! This is so embarrassing…” Sharp watched Syd reach back down into the trashcan just before Isabelle’s voluminous hair cut off his view. She passed her badge over the access panel and walked into the hallway beyond without waiting.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Following close behind her, they walked along the long hall, down the ramp, and by the “server” room. Isabelle stopped in front of the lone door on the left. It was slatted like an average storage unit door and could be rolled up into the ceiling to make room for large machinery. Just a boring gray, rolling sheet door. What stood out to Sharp, however, was the door within the door. The smaller door was slatted as well, but aside from rolling up into the ceiling, it could also be opened separately. There were security panels on both parts of the rolling sheet door—a strange arrangement that made Sharp smile for its quirkiness. Isabelle ran her badge over the inner panel, slid the door latch to the left, and let him inside the inner door.
Sharp’s first impression was that the WMD lab was much larger than it appeared from the control room. In the middle of the room was, he assumed, the “wormbox” sitting on top of a what looked like a kitchen island made of stainless steel surrounded by a sea of polished white flooring. The island stood out starkly against the floor, and had multiple drawers and a rack filled with computer components. A cable bundle thick as an arm snaked away from the island all the way back to a massive machine that filled a third of the room. Isabelle was standing by watching the looks on his face as he took in their project. Her closed mouth was shaped in a satisfied smile. She caught his eye, and Sharp smiled back at her like a kid on Christmas morning.
This is so much better than I had expected…
He walked over to the observation window and turned back to take in the entire WMD lab. At the back of the room stood a massive machine surrounded with staging, ladders, and two massive braces shooting out from the bottom at an angle to the tall ceiling. The center of the machine was in a cone-like shape adorned with tube scaffolding, cables, bright blue metal machinery, yellow corrugated sections, purple cables, dark green tubes, and everything else colored white. So much white. Along with the white walls and the white flooring, the colors stood out to Sharp like graffiti.
The entire room was easily two stories tall and large enough to fit three buses end to end. Before he began to calculate how wide the room was in Smoots, he called out to Isabelle.
“It’s enormous! I can’t believe Novell was keeping this from me. How are you running this project without a dedicated IT team? Wudgepuck should be fired!”
“It does seem a bit too big, but we’ll need the room once we successfully complete Phase One.” Isabelle pointed to the wall opposite the door they had come in. Another storage unit-style door was centered along the wall, but without the inset door. There were two other doors leading to rooms of some sort on either side of it. A bright red aerial lift was parked in front of the door in the back.
“Everything we need to build the second wormbox is in that middle room. Actually, it's mostly built anyway. Oh, and the restroom is through that door to the right, along with the cleaning supplies and such.”
"Why do you call that a wormbox?" Sharp motioned to the computer station in the middle of the room.
"It's a portmanteau of 'wormhole' and 'mailbox'. The project's purpose is to develop a stable wormhole, make it bigger than a bread box, then market it as something every home in America—then the world—will use to get all their packages. Instantaneous deliveries. Forget same day delivery. This will be same hour."
"You're going to destroy the shipping industry."
"That and all the businesses that rely on it. Our corporate sponsor has big plans." Isabelle grinned. In the dim lighting of the large room, her grin seemed almost ominous.