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“Nothing like a crackling fire to make it a home,” Lars said, getting himself comfortable for a night’s sleep.
Abe looked around, taking it in. The grove had formed itself into a bower, roughly egg-shaped, spacious enough to have six adult men lay themselves out in some comfort, inasmuch as a forest floor could be comfortable. After some debate, they had decided that the trees and shrubs were keeping watch for them, so they could do themselves better by simply sleeping the night away. Because of the frigid temperatures, however, they took turns refueling the fire, which was kept at the narrow end of the egg, as it were, and which was supplied by various branches, as each tree saw fit to volunteer a dry branch. Without much in the way of direct conversation, Abe still received from the trees an intimation that if they were to stay in partnership as a human-bower endeavor, the humans would have to think to supply their own wood. “One night is one thing, but a long-term base needs supplies.” Abe determined to carry on a conversation with the trees somehow about establishing a base camp and various safe houses in the region just as soon as he woke up in the morning. His mind rushed toward that wonderful dark rest.
As for Sano, she found twelve eyes constantly fixed on her figure, buried as it was beneath shell layers and petroleum-based insulation layers, and no amount of gentle cajoling could overcome the rising anxiety of survival-brain fixations, namely, reproduction. The grove understood, even though Abe was reluctant to communicate as much because he liked having his eyes fixed on Sano’s figure. Thus, the grove made a separate bower for Sano, for discipline’s sake (so it was intimated) if not for sheer, old-fashioned, maidenhood protection (against which Jason protested), even going so far as to rig up in itself a tunnel of leaves which gently guided heat from the fire into Sano’s bower.
Abe woke up the next morning to find several little gifts laid at the entryway to Sano’s bower, where her dainty booted feet were sticking out. They were useless little bric-a-brac crafted from the leaves and twigs of the grove: a leaf-origami unicorn; a pretty spiral cone of a polished-red twig; a bracelet of juniper berries; and a non-descript pointy thing of spruce needles wound together. He sighed and looked around at his sleeping mates, trying to determine which of them had made the gifts. He went outside to relieve himself, and, upon returning, he found them rousing themselves, awakened by the blast of cold air he had brought to them by exiting and re-entering. Conversation was at a minimum while Jason stoked coals into a flame. Abe fluffed his leaf-and-needle mattress, grateful that he could be so comfortable in such circumstances. He felt utterly refreshed.
While they were reheating the vegan airline meals, Blake said, “That’s all for scrounging. In two meals we’ve completely exhausted our airline food supply. We have a few soda cans—”
“—pop,” said Lars.
“—we have a few soda cans per person at hand, which will give us enough calories to live another day or two. What we need is a big animal, a mule deer or an elk. Who all has experience with stalk hunting?”
No one raised a hand. Blake continued, astonished, “Really, Lars? Not you?”
“No, man,” said Lars, “I can do a still hunt in a thicketed forest, but I ain’t never done any mountain hunting.”
“What about you, uh…” he was looking at their new arrival.
“James Thurgerson.”
“Right. What about you, Jim?”
“I have never hunted, and, believe you me, this technology-riddled body requires about twice as many calories as yours does.”
Blake gaped. “I would have thought they trained you in survival.”
“Well, they did, to be honest, but big game hunting is not really a combat survival skill. Raiding an enemy supply depot: that’s a combat survival skill. Packing several MREs: that’s a combat survival skill. Stealing a farmer’s eggs: now that’s a combat survival skill. Wilderness survival? Not so much of that, especially this barren stuff. I’m really just supposed to radio-in and have supplies delivered, or whatnot, not this nonsense of hiding in the wilderness for days.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“So you are a military asset, then,” said Blake.
“Not quite,” said James Thurgerson. “They wanted to deliver me over to the government to become a military asset.”
“Who?”
“Look, Blake,” said Lars, “we’ve got to get some food. This vegan stuff is going to be the death of Umezawa.”
“And speaking of technology,” said James Thurgerson. “They are definitely homing in on me. I’m surprised they haven’t found us yet. I think the mountain must be distorting the signal, or they haven’t adjusted yet for Kepler elements of the satellite passes, or maybe they were really relying on the airliner, or whatever, but the helicopter never even came up to altitude.”
“We’re far too high at ten-thousand feet,” said Blake.
“More like six-thousand,” said James Thurgerson. “Believe me. I have telemetry embedded, and it’s on display on my corneas.”
“That’s a helluva HUD,” said Lars. “Does it come with environmental or bodily control features?”
“No,” said James Thurgerson. “But I’ll tell you: having health and environmental signals propagating the way they do can be very helpful at times. The problem is that I’m still an early beta.”
“You mean like Cyperpunk 2077 at its initial release?” said Umezawa. Jason and Abe laughed.
“Pretty much,” said James Thurgerson. “My map pop-up, for example, never works right. Of all things. I can’t get the retina-cursor to rest on the menu indicator, and even when I do, I don’t know how to activate it. I think my hardware is mostly for data-collection, and they regularly collect it for the next beta.”
“Who’s collecting data?” asked Blake.
“I don’t quite understand,” said Jason. “What, exactly, are you?”
“Bionic, mostly,” said James Thurgerson. “A kind-of technological superman. Our biggest threat—my threat to you, actually—and, listen, don’t think I’m not grateful. I think without some miracle I would have died, or would be dying, or they would have already scooped me up—I suspect they embedded some weaknesses in the works so that I can’t actually go rogue longer than they want—my threat to you right now is that I’m constantly transmitting, and they are definitely trying to dial my signal in.”
“Constantly transmitting?” said Blake. “To whom?”
“To whomever knows to listen. But, listen, there’s no amplifier, so my signals are barely perceptible beyond my body. They’re looking for that amplifier, which I sure hope is off and smashed to bits.”
“Why didn’t they implant an amplifier?” asked Blake.
James Thurgerson opened his mouth to answer, but Lars jumped on the question, saying, “Non-iodizing radiation. It won’t cause cancer, but, over time, amplified radio signals would cook your insides.”
“That’s about right,” said James Thurgerson. “The human body can absorb and dissipate only so much energy, and, well, I’m one-hundred-percent human.”
“Except…” Blake prompted.
“Yeah,” said James Thurgerson, “except they’ve got something like a million implants in me. What I think we should do, and right this instant, is find a few resistors and cut them out. The main transmitter is in my bones, and the heart of the system is deep in my brain, so we’ll just leave them be. But if we can shunt the signal for a while, even if they do finally get around to bringing in an amplifier, they’ll be tuning in to the wrong frequency.”
“I figure by cutting out a few resistors we’ll be affecting impedance more than frequency.”
“Well, whatever,” said James Thurgerson. “They’ll be getting a garbled signal, then.”
“No,” said Blake. “You could be affecting frequency or impedance, depending on the circuit, or, for that matter, you could be affecting signal strength.”
“Wait a second,” said Umezawa. “Are we talking about bionic surgery? This is so exciting!”
Abe spoke up, “Abigail had to do the same thing in the Season 7 OVA when she was conscripted by the British Army after the Crimean War.”
“The Crimean War was in 1860!” said Lars. “They didn’t have micro-technology in 1860!”
“I didn’t say they did!” said Abe. “There were a series of safe-houses throughout London whose jobs were to signal to the Home Office by means of smoke—”
“In Nineteenth Century London fog,” sniffed Lars. “Come on.”
“Would you two cut it out?!?” said Jason.
“A Russian spy had infiltrated the British signal corps, and Abigail had to analyze the signal array for enemy intelligence communication.”
“Okay, this is a little bit like what we’re in, now,” said Umezawa. Lars sniffed again.
“She saw a reference to Piccadilly Square in the smoke array, and that was a clue that the Russians were using it for nefarious purposes. She sent Nami over immediately to disrupt things.”
“Why do you even pretend this is Josei, Abe?” asked Lars.
“I already told you,” Abe said, indignantly. “The manga is josei!”
“Fine,” said Lars. “So my knife blade is pretty sharp. Do you need anesthesia? Where do I make a cut?”
“Why did Piccadilly Square tip her off?” asked Umezawa.
“Stop it!” said Jason. “Just stop it!”
“Because it’s Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus,” said Abe.
“Cut right here,” said James Thurgerson. “Very little flesh at that juncture in my wrist.”
“Lots of nerves, though,” said Blake. “Won’t that hurt?”
“Yes, it will,” said James Thurgerson, resting his eyes on Sano. “But I’ll manage. Be sure to cut with the direction of the ligaments and nerves. I promise, even though I’m filled with microscopic electronics, the resistor packages are quite easily recognizable.”
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“Here,” said Lars to Jason. “Hold my magnifying glass right here.” He peered down through the thickest part of his glasses. “Yes,” he said, as Jason adjusted the distance of the pocket-magnifier. “Right there. Abe, hold this light…”
Lars made the least little incision in James Thurgerson’s right wrist, near the outermost wrist bone, while Jason held the magnifying glass, Abe held the light, Blake held James’s arm in place, and Umezawa held his breath. Sano held steady while James Thurgerson stared at her. When Lars’s blade tapped a piece of metal near the bone, James Thurgerson inhaled sharply, but he did not cry out. Tears streamed out of his eyes.
Sano moved close to James Thurgerson and held his head in her hands, wiping away his tears. Blake, on the other hand, vomited.
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