We will all go together when we go [Closed to bomb teams]
There were 8 bombs spread around the ship. The teams were assigned. They had their orders, now they had to carry them out. And pray to whatever they held dear that they could disarm them in time.
Tick tock.
Tick tock.
Superheated Element is a fun sort of substance to work with, as any Specialist-studying scientist might know and as Dustin certainly understood. Like any volatile chemical mixture it reacted with most unstable compounds and left nasty burns on the biological ones, which already made it useful as a thermal weapon; but, due in large part to Ether's strong material connection with the fourth dimension, intangible and otherwise non-physical objects could be affected as well, should the concentration be potent enough to manifest in the dimension where we now reside. A bolt of Elemental plasma could disrupt telepathic frequencies, separate Spirit Walkers, punch a shadow-hopping Shade out of hiding, collapse temporary time portals, and, no doubt, probably had the capability to disperse the semi-invisible tendrils of tangible emotion currently surrounding the genius and his discharging weapon.
Thankfully the nozzle was facing down and towards the door; it would be a pity if the terminal-or Alex--got hit. He wasn't much use if he was dead, after all--if he could prove obedient enough to be useful in the first place.
Reply
"Th-the code, it won-" Dustin's gun fired, and Alex stopped, stunned.
It hadn't hurt. It was a bit surprising, since he could use those tendrils to feel, but instead it felt like a weight had been lifted. The anger weakened a bit. Alex turned to Dustin, pulling back the one of the three tendrils that had not been destroyed. "W-w-what the h-hell was th-that?" The question was shocked, not angry. Not even irritated. Simply amazed, and a little frightened. Had this guy come from his world? Was it a new weapon the government had made? Maybe this guy was even from a future point in his world.
He shook his head. They had no time for this. Alex would hound him about it later. "N-nevermind. The c-code. It is ch-checking for changes. W-we need to stop it without ch-changing any code."
Reply
But now it seemed as if the kid's mood was changing, and he was actually willing to give helpful suggestions rather than intentionally recalcitrant ones. Perhaps he'd frightened him enough to modify his attitude? It was worth the risk; at any rate Dustin had certainly established that he could do some damage if needed.
He lowered the gun, glaring, and motioned with a jerk of the head to an inactive terminal next to the rigged one. "--Right. Get that one running, write a start-up sequence if you have to, and start setting up a program to counteract the code running on the other terminal. I'll connect the two and tell you when to transfer."
Reply
Alex nodded and took a deep breath, forcing himself to let go of his anger, making the shadow tendrils disappear. Well, that would probably be the last time he would be forcing visibility in front of someone who didn't know about his powers.
He went to the other terminal and turned it on, started the BIOS, and kept it from running whatever operating system it normally did. He really didn't need any of that extra fluff. It knew from power-up to start the video card and the human interfacing device -though it was probably called something different- and that was all he needed to input code.
He began typing up code that would disable the bomb and the terminal's code at the same time. His hands were flying across the terminal's equivalent to a keyboard, not once needing to hit the 'backspace'. The only time he paused was to ask, "Wh-what port are you using as a c-connection?" He already knew all the port numbers the other code was using. They were floating up in his head along with strings of binary that were translating themselves into workable code.
Reply
There was a compact space between the two terminals, dark and claustrophobic, but the rigged computer's secondary access panel was there and the clean one could be otherwise modified to connect the two, so Dustin had no qualms-and no physical difficulties-squeezing in and curling against the wall. The V-12, however, had suddenly become cumbersome here, the humming was distracting as it blocked out the telling clicks of machinery and buzzes of electrical signals as they passed through foreign cables. He reluctantly gave the gun's scanner a tap with his palm, it collapsed, and he replaced it in its spacious backpack home.
Giving said access panel the actual name of 'access panel' was rather lenient, as it was, so Dustin found out, two screws and a patched slice of metal that was probably added due to manual modifications at an earlier date-not to mention said screws were not actually screws, or at least not any type of screw that could be undone with an Earth-based tool (especially since they lacked drives to speak of). Eventually he settled with using a bar magnet and a pair of pliers, as that was the most efficient solution just short of creating a localized magnetic field or sawing the plate off, both of which ran the risk of damaging the machinery underneath.
And yet still he didn't remove it, not yet-not until he did another low-frequency scan of the interior to see if any physical defenses, such as pressure nodes or chemical capsules, were waiting just under the patch. Only afterwards did Dustin realize he'd been addressed by the incompetent (but still apparently talented enough with a keyboard and set of tags) child, working away with that odd little rat of his. He blinked at him once.
"This one."
There was, of course, no port there, nor means of connection-not until Dustin jammed the pliers between the edge of the plating and popped it away, exposing a clean hole to the guts of the infected machine. His phone, meanwhile, found its place attached to the side of the other terminal, securing itself with weak magnets and a heat-based adhesive near the back where it did indeed connect itself with whatever ports were available. The information designated to pass between each was trivial and disregarded by the heavily modified device, which quickly found its way to the main storage drives and processors and began loading everything and anything that it encountered-including what Alex was currently typing. Now the standard cellphone's memory capacity isn't quite up-to-par with an alien terminal, but then again, that was why Dustin had slipped in a removable card before turning it loose.
His attention went back to the open panel. This would only take a few minutes...
Reply
Before long Alex began humming a tune as he coded. It happened to be the same as the one he had been humming when he had been working on the code for the Doctor. He was mostly unconcious of the fact that he was humming. He went over to the other computer to check the rest of the code, commiting as much to memory at a time as he could.
As an after thought he mentioned, "Alice c-can grab wires and the like. J-just say her which one an' say 'get', an' she'll bring the end that's c-connected to the terminal."
Reply
In the meanwhile, Dustin ignored Alex and continued to work.
The wires themselves were proving less of a problem than might be expected of such an endeavor--they were easy enough to retrieve with the aforementioned pair of needle-nose pliers and a LED flashlight--figuring out which ones were required, however, and identifying all of the bizarre machinery within, took a different sort of finesse. Dustin, of course, rose to the challenge just about as casually as taking a stroll on a sunny day, first tracing back the wires, the thinner prosthetic half-buried inside the rigged console, finding some parts that were familiar and others that were completely alien (as would be expected); then he delicately embraced the electronic board in question and pressed his ear to the metal bones of his false arm.
Different programs have a unique electrical signal created through the streaming of data between cables and chips and the like, in turn creating an identifiable, if not very difficult to pick up (let alone immediately discern), audible vibration, a sort of resonance that sensitive equipment can identify and categorize. Technopaths, as studied in a past life, are physical manifestations of these devices, wherein they not only detect these signals but can also create their own. Dustin found that he was capable only of the former; the chemistry of his brain, with the Element running over its surfaces, rushing around his skull and spine in a bizarre mix of conductive proteins and spinal fluid, transferred these signals into physical waves that, in the right situations and places, had the capacity to completely consume him.
For such a complex process it was surprisingly brief, and it thus only took a few minutes for Dustin to know exactly what was inside this terminal, how it worked, what data was going where, and how he could safely intercept said data without blowing this dysfunctional collective to tiny bits. The wires in question were rerouted, cleanly cut, and extended soon after.
"That won't be necessary." With practiced ease he sorted each cable and fed them into his moble's various feeds, which devoured the ends greedily in a conductive feast but kept the lines dead until further notice. Dustin would not risk sending what code Alex had created before reading it over first, and especially not before he'd finished what he'd started.
"Ready when you are."
Reply
It seemed that both were terribly incompetent at communication, which, while functional, made for a rather poor group. At least each were sufficiently competent at their own tasks.
Alex's humming faded as he began reading through his code for errors. Having found none after three checks, he nodded, "done." He hadn't actually heard Dustin say 'Ready when you are,' having at that point been running the code and it's reactions through his mind, but it worked out that he finished only moments after Dustin had.
Reply
Leave a comment