Why don’t you fuck off Lou, huh. I’ve got an important message here, direct from The Company that Ms. Taylor wants me to analyze. So just piss off, I don’t have time for your shit today.” Todd is livid, but their playful game of cat and mouse usually plays out with a more fanciful fanfare. The tall mountain of a man named Lou side steps the door to the now abandoned C Suites block, and Todd scurries along inside. Down the main thoroughfare, passed a massive row of desks and a palatial lobby, big enough you could host multiple robot fights in here simultaneously. Turning at a t junction, Todd locates the security details hidden terminal. Tucked back behind a generic looking cabinet, in a non descript portion of the office block. The beige angular box boots up at the touch of an analog key. It always strikes Todd as crazy, just how old the tech is that The Company’s security forces are utilising. Punching in a few key strokes, the prompts for the intranet come up on screen. Clicking a short message into his wrist comms Catherine suddenly appears face to face with him. The new holographic interface is really something of a marvel. “Great, now load in the whole message, do a search for any extraneous code, or tags, or what have you that might be embedded in the message itself. These are crafty buggers, must have a secret message in there to pass along covert data.” Her face is a mottled red and blue, slightly pixelated in the rendering in three dimensional space. “No, not much showing up here.” Says Todd. “Hey, wait a second. There’s a broken link to an image here. The corporate logo looks corrupted. I’ll scan that for….oh woah, here we go…” in the blink of an eye a wall of text begins to spool on screen. Directives, missives, commands and appendices. “Good catch Todd. Those tags look ominous.” She half chuckles. “Yeah – I’d say so. They have you flagged as a target. Jesus, they have you listed for Euthanization. Looks like a strike team located on the station has the green light to terminate your contract. As it were.” Looking down her nose Cathy says, “These people and their fucking euphemisms. Grow a pair will yah!” With a laugh she waves him off. “Ok log out, and get back to my offices. Take care to not be seen exiting the offices. Say hello to Lou, you saucy minx.” The display winks out. Moments later the lithe body of Todd is seen slipping into the shadows of the corridors directly outside the C Suites.
“I don’t understand you. How. Are. You. Still. Alive. Gods damn it! You should have been dead more than one hundred times over. I’ve stabbed you, burned you, given you viral loads of vast quantities, blood borne illnesses, hypothermia, hyperthermia. Are you a fucking demon!” Dr. Jang is pacing the laboratory, under the brilliant lights, in view of the camera rigs. His slow decent into absolute frustration with the near lifeless lump that is Ravindar Rashida is bringing him to his wits end. Soft steps can be heard in the halls. In comes the lead medical officer in charge of Project Cerebus on UB313. A man of medium height and build. Plain in look. Would be nearly impossible to pin point him from a line up. Nothing to distinguish him from countless other white men his age. “What seems to irk you so Dr. Jang?” He nearly croons the loaded question. For he is always watching on the far end of the lab’s CCTV link. “You’ve gone over, and over, and over this man. Do you have the answers we seek? We’re under – direct – pressure to produce results. I did not personally engage in subterfuge, fuelling a separatist movement and various terrorist plots, just to get stumped by physiology, and losing my grasp on a several trillion dollar contract with The Company.” The man’s sing song voice belies the true raw nature of his anger and loathing. His greed has led him to do some truly awful things for the sake of progress and an enormous payout that would take generations of poor choices to spend in its entirety.
“I have it on good authority that the dispatch from The Company is a trap. A time wasting trap. Now, as far as we can tell all members of the security forces have fled the station, so no one is here to read and carry out their directives.” Says Ms. Taylor to her gathered junior staffers. All of them trusted members of her inner circle. The vast majority of people may have left the Torus, but her staff stayed on. Todd coming through the doors, his nose in a binder – again. “What do you know about a guy named Dr. Douglas Jang, and an independently wealthy figure known only by the moniker Jones.” Crossing the room, over to her desk, he lays a print out on the work station before her. Looking it over, her thumb on her lip. “Well, if I recall, Dr. Jang was disgraced about twenty years ago, and banned from practicing. Had a penchant for unnecessary surgery. Seems he was a part of an older religious movement that shunned Nano technology. Was in such a state of denial, it was nearly pathological.” Leaning back in her chair. Stretching her back. “I have no idea whom this Jones character is. Financier? Patron? Alias? Hard to say. With a name that generic it could be nearly impossible to find him.” After a brief pause, the room stirs back to life.
PART XIX
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 