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The three bionics talked long into the night, while Blake hung on every word, taking only a moment to have Sano inspect his wound to make sure it was healing after Umezawa had laid his hand upon Blake’s forehead. They were testing the mechanics of the superpower for demonstration to the bionics.
Abe followed along as best he could, but after Blake’s reluctant concession that the American CIA could have been just as amateurish and inept as the Chinese-controlled Canadian government, the talk seemed to Abe as meaninglessness. It became the droning of technical explication, something like the aural equivalent to a series of indecipherable charts and graphs shown to a corporate sales subcommittee.
“…and certain silicate compounds are heated for…” melded with “…self-constructed oil-based capacitors…” and folded into “…containment issues for both waste and heat…” which was subsumed by “…halfwave dipole resonation with a quarter wave stub at the micro-level…” a thing he understood from talking to Lars about radio signals, but he couldn’t understand with respect to bionic flesh. He dozed between occasional outbursts of laughter as Lars and Blake and Sano and Jason and the three bionics went on and on about the conspiracy and their predicament. It seemed so very important, but he found himself to be unnaturally sleepy, so he gave up his attempts to remain attentive, announced his desire to retire for the night, and he excused himself.
Following him were more resolutions: “…another elk for the growing party…” “…provisions, if it’s still there…” and, finally, “…the blonde…”
Abe fell asleep almost instantly, but his sleep was fitful, stuck perpetually in the twilight of consciousness. The airplane crash filtered through his mind, complete with the sensations of rattling superstructure, the rush of elevation loss, the lurch of explosion, the shrieking, and the smell, for some reason, of the chemical plume which gave the four of them their powers.
Why don’t Lars and Blake have superpowers?
The fear of the bear rushed forward, followed by their first encounter with James Thurgerson, who tried to kill them.
Every second of your existence, Stoic, is fear. Whenever you step outside the bower, your heart rate increases, and you know death is stalking you. Now you know death is closing in. It knows where you are. How much longer before it knows where you live?
An elm tree appeared, silhouetted. It faded quickly, replaced by the helicopter. Then came the thunder of boulders dug up and thrown by the mountain. Abe shuddered fully awake. The bower was quiet. He moved outside to relieve himself. The cold revived him, then the warmth of returning to the bower soothed him, and he remembered Jason and Umezawa’s reception.
He laughed aloud.
Then he lay down and went into a more peaceful sleep.
When he awoke it was morning, and he heard the rest of the party in the main room, discussing Blake’s shoulder.
“We don’t heal nearly so fast,” said Perry Tuck. “There’s no way this is a nanotechnology, just no way.”
“See, Blake?” said Lars. “It’s magic.”
“I’m telling you,” said James Thurgerson, “they’ve advanced the nanotech this far. They just have. That chemical cloud wasn’t magical.”
“It awakens magic,” said Lars.
“It seems like magic now,” said Blake, getting himself ready to go outside. “I really don’t care if you call it magic or not. What I care about is who put the magic in them.”
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“Why?” said Lars. “Why does it matter? Isn’t your life better because of the conspiracy?”
“It just does,” said Blake. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going elk hunting with Sano.”
“What?” said Perry Tuck. “Why? We can just go back to our HQ and get provisions.”
“He’s afraid we’ll get killed or captured,” said James Thurgerson.
“I am indeed afraid we’ll get killed or captured,” said Blake.
“I aM inDeEd afraiD We’Ll geT kilLeD or cApTureD,” said James Thurgerson.
“What are you talking about?” said Perry Tuck. “We’ll be fine. We’ll just go back to HQ and grab our provisions.”
“No,” said Blake. “You don’t know what we’re up against. They send helicopters.”
“Who?” said James Thurgerson. “Who sends helicopters? And so far it has been just one helicopter.”
“Yeah, the Chicoms,” said Blake, “in partnership with the Canadians, and they were just overconfident. They’ll send more. It’s not like they had a fleet of conspiracy copters parked at the base of this mountain waiting for an asset to get lost. But they’ll send more from their reserves in the Goat Range up near Calgary.”
“We don’t know that,” said Lars.
“Whose side are you on?” said Blake.
“What?” said Lars. “What do you mean ‘whose side are you on?’? Whose side do you think I’m on? I’m on the side of the truth! I just want to do the right thing, here.”
Blake said, “Well, they had a Canadian flag inside that helicopter, so that means—”
“What? What does it mean?” said Lars. “You do this all the time! You just jump right in, don’t you? Every time! Every frickin’ time! What does a Canadian flag have to do with anything? Why would a conspiracy just…broadcast…its origins? Answer me that!”
Blake looked stunned. “Wh—wh—well—actually, Lars, that’s a good point.”
Lars looked stunned.
Blake continued, “So what do you think it was?”
“I don’t actually know,” said Lars.
While Lars and Blake were debating how one comes to know he knows something, the bionics continued readying themselves for the trip back to their headquarters. Eventually, Blake returned his attention to them, saying, “No! I said no! No one is going back to that headquarters. At the very least, they are surveilling it.”
“Ah, come on, Blake,” said James Thurgerson. “Don’t you think we can get there and back in one piece?”
“No.” There was a sudden snap of electricity in the bower, and everyone was paying attention to Blake squaring up to James Thurgerson, chest-to-chest.
“Well, we’re going to try it, anyway.”
“I said no.”
“Get out of the way, Blake.”
Without any further debate, Blake cocked his fist and drove it toward James Thurgerson’s nose. Abe thought it was entirely unfair of Blake, really, to just cold-cock a guy like that. He changed his mind in a hurry when he saw that Blake’s fist came to an abrupt halt well before it landed on anyone's nose, caught by James Thurgerson’s two hands.
“Come on, Blake,” said James Thurgerson, “don’t make me do it.”
Blake tried a combination: he kicked at James Thurgerson while giving his left hand a whirl in the form of a roundhouse out of James Thurgerson’s direct vision. Quick as a flash, James Thurgerson took one hand and caught Blake’s left fist and simultaneously swept Blake’s leg with his own. Blake went down like a sack of miso, but he was up again in an eye-blink. This time he caught James Thurgerson under his chin with his head, but Blake yelped in pain. James Thurgerson, looking at his bionic colleagues with resignation on his face, shrugged, then punched Blake in the gut. With an "oof," Blake was no longer able to stand.
This time he did not get up. He lay there moaning. Finally, Lars spoke, “Hey, you okay, buddy?”
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Between groans, Blake laughed. “I wanted to make sure, Lars.”
“You meant to do that?”
“YoU meAnT tO Do tHAt?” Blake said. The tension in the bower broke. Sano began to laugh as she rushed to help Blake up, and the rest of the party joined. “No, I don’t want you bionics to go to the headquarters, but if you’re going to, you’re going to, and now I know you really are bionic.” He stood, and Sano wrapped herself around him to steady him on his feet. He lay his hand on the small of her back.
What is happening here, Stoic? Do you see what I see?
“Come, now, let’s reason together,” said Blake. “Nothing good can happen if you return to your headquarters. Well, not nothing, but a lot of bad can happen. Listen: I can go hunting again. We can knock down another elk or mule deer, and that will feed us for a while, and we’ll get another hide to cure, and bones to fashion into weapons and furniture, or just tchotchke to keep us from going crazy, you know. We haven’t scouted the mountain in full yet. Who knows what’s up here? We can keep ourselves occupied, warm, sheltered, and fed without having to risk our lives.”
“Says the guy who’s been maimed by a bear and shot in the shoulder,” said James Thurgerson.
“I’m learning from my mistakes.”
“Then learn from this one: you can still hunt elk so we can have fresh meat,” said James Thurgerson.
“And something to do,” said Umezawa.
“Yeah,” said James Thurgerson. “All that. But you’ve got to take into consideration what’s down there.”
Perry Tuck spoke up. “We have a winter’s provisions in those trailers. Extra clothing, tons of food, cookware, propane…”
In unison, Blake and Lars interrupted, “Propane?”
The bionics nodded in unison.
Blake blinked. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Let’s get going!”
“Is there a lot of stuff?” Lars asked.
“Practically a ton,” said Perry Tuck. “If we all go, we can fetch it in a single trip.”
“I don’t know how to climb a cliff on a rope,” said Abe.
“No problem,” said Blake. “We don’t all have to shimmy down. These fellows can do that business. Worst case scenario here is they get captured, and we have fewer pursuers. We can figure out the order of procession while we walk.”
“So it’s agreed,” said Perry Tuck.
“We’ve thought of everything,” said Blake.
“That’s right,” said Umezawa, “everything.”
This is going to go very poorly, Stoic. I don’t think anyone is thinking clearly. Why would the conspiracy have a winter's supply of provisions?
“I’m ready,” said Abe. “Let’s go.”
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