“Booting it,” Oda said, and reached out toward one of the very few mechanical switches on the console. It was military hardware, eBayed (Tristan boasted) from some collector of Cold War electrical components. It had a protective cover that had to be flipped up out of the way to provide access to the switch itself, imbuing it with more ceremony.
I nearly suffered a heart attack after Oda snapped the switch to “on”: an alarm Klaxon began to sound and it happened to be mounted directly above my head. I jammed my hands over my ears and pivoted away from it; Rebecca was doing the same, in mirror image. At the same time the room lights dimmed, flickered, and went out, prompting battery-powered red emergency lights to switch on. I tripped over a discarded fire extinguisher and staggered a couple of paces, finally breaking my fall by colliding with a rolling coatrack that had been set up to one side of the console. This had been stocked, for some reason, with a row of snowmobile suits in various sizes and colors. They were soft, and cushioned my fall as I knocked the whole thing over and went down onto the floor. It must have made a loud noise. No one noticed because of the Klaxon.
Tristan was either a perfect gentleman or no gentleman at all. At the moment he was too fascinated by goings-on surrounding the ODEC to know that I had taken a pratfall. Probably just as well. I clambered to my feet and reached into my pocket, where I’d got in the habit of stowing a pair of foam earplugs. Recently I had been using them when operating power saws, but they were just what I needed now.
Tristan signaled Oda to switch the power off. The Klaxon went silent. The room lights flickered back—this took a few moments, since one of the Vladimirs had to run to the electrical panel and flip a number of circuit breakers back on. The collective excitement of the room palpably dissipated. So much drama, so many sound and visual effects, for—what?
“Anything?” Tristan inquired.
“The data loggers inside the cavity all went dead. Completely zorched, as far as I can tell,” Oda said. The words sounded like bad news but his tone of voice implied fascination.
“So we don’t even know if anything happened in there.”
“Something friggin’ happened,” insisted the most long-bearded of the Vladimirs, who had just stormed in from the server room. “While that thing was on, we ran a ridiculous amount of data through our servers.”
“How much?” I asked.
He looked exasperated. “Enough that I could make up some kind of strained analogy involving the contents of the Library of Congress and the number of pixels in all of the Lord of the Rings movies put together and how many phone calls the NSA intercepts in a single day and you would be like, ‘Holy shit, that’s a lot.’”
“Holy shit, that’s a lot!” I exclaimed dutifully.
“And as to the amount of computational processing performed on that data, using Professor Oda’s algorithms—well—same basic story.”
“Fantastic,” I purred.
“I believe you,” Tristan said, “it’s just that we don’t appear to have any data on what actually happened in there.”
“Confirmed,” Oda said. “The renormalization loop appears to interfere with normal functioning of the sensor package we left inside.”
“That’s exactly as it should be—right?” I said.
“Could be,” Tristan said, “or could be it just went on the fritz. We are blind in there. No real way to know if it’s working.”
“Maybe if we had a cat,” the professor said.
“Maybe if we go inside,” said Tristan. Rebecca made a disapproving sound under her breath as the Maxes and Vladimirs made anticipatory sounds under theirs.
Oda shook his head. “A cat is one thing. But I’m not going in there.”
“I’ll go,” said Tristan.
“It’s your funeral,” muttered Rebecca, as if to herself, and paced away from the console table.
Tristan turned to look at her, and then at Oda. “Does she mean that literally?” And to Rebecca: “Do you mean that literally?”
Oda answered before she could. “It won’t kill you. But . . . you will not enjoy it. The cat certainly didn’t.”
Tristan waved this away dismissively. “As long as it’s not lethal, I’m going in.” And then with an inviting grin: “Want to come with me, Stokes?”
Flattered as I was that he considered me a peer in this undertaking, and eager as I was to know what would come of it, I thought of the cat. “Next time,” I said.
“Internal temp of the cavity?” Tristan asked.
“Twenty-three below zero, Celsius, and holding,” reported Console Max.
“Gotta get better insulation,” Tristan muttered. He pivoted and made for the rolling coatrack, which was still all kinds of messy on the floor. I stiffened, awaiting a reprimand, but he didn’t even seem to notice that it had been knocked over. He found the end of the pile where the larger snowmobile suits had ended up, pulled one out, and stepped into it. “We still go? Everything nominal?”
Half a dozen different Maxes and Vladimirs hollered out “Check!” from various parts of the building.
Tristan zipped up the suit. In a side pocket he found a balaclava, which he pulled on over his head. I helped him yank it around until his eyes were shining out from the oval hole. He gave me a wink and then pulled on a pair of bulky mittens while striding toward the ODEC door. Oda hauled it open for him, then appeared to regret this gesture as the cold burned his hand.
Tristan stepped over the threshold, displacing a column of air that turned cloudy as it spilled out into the room.
A torso flew out and did an end-over-end bounce across the floor, shedding batteries and thumb drives. It was the upper half of a store mannequin that we had instrumented with sensors. Tristan had tossed it out.
Having thus made room for himself, Tristan sat down on the wooden stool we’d put in there to support the mannequin. Providing a bit of padding under his bum was the cat-hair-saturated cushion from the Mark I; Rebecca had moved it to the Mark II to supply a feeling of continuity. He reached out, pawed at the door, and closed it behind him. The Maxes exchanged expectant glances. Rebecca rubbed the space between her eyebrows and paced silently. Oda-sensei resumed his position at the control panel. He reached out and flipped up the protective cover on the switch. Rebecca stuck her fingers in her ears.
For a few moments we all stood at rigid attention, our eyes on Oda’s finger. Then he flicked the switch. Again the lights went out and the Klaxon came on. He checked his wristwatch and let the machine run for fifteen long seconds. Then he flicked the switch back off and gently replaced the cover.
Tristan walked out of the ODEC, pulling off the balaclava and shaking his head as if he had swimmer’s ear. He saw all of our party staring at him, and he stared back a moment, frowning. “That was unpleasant,” he reported gruffly. “Like being in a Russian disco. But that’s all.”
“I’m glad you’re all right,” I said. “But . . .” And I thought better of saying more.