Chapter Twenty One Gabriel

Gabriel is gradually coming up with less and less to report on to Sy for the weekly meetings. He’s been teaching Five an awful lot, but hasn’t done much of anything new himself. He can hardly keep up with the pace she’s pulling him along at. Whenever he falls short of her expectations, she accuses him of trying to keep her in the dark. It scares him a little when she gets that way. She’s become obsessive over the project.

The two of them often end up arguing about how the brain processes thought. Sometimes she’s right, but then sometimes he refuses to let her bully him and proves her wrong. It’s getting difficult. At least so far, she hasn’t been able to come up with a better way to have processed and rebuilt their minds. She would love nothing more than to say he screwed up because he was lazy. Even though their artificial neurotransmitter system is extremely simplified, she at least admits that it’s incredibly robust and covers most of the bases. He didn’t even design any of the hardware, Marco did all that. When he also proved that Marco was the one who had to have altered Arma’s brain, she still wouldn’t let go of blaming him. She’s not as kind and reasonable as everyone thinks she is.

Lately, a lot of his time has been spent not doing anything but watching her work. It was such a mistake for Paul to have ever let Evan make her beautiful. It’s done nothing but cause the project trouble from the start. No one ever gave Arma any slack, back when she was homely, and her name was a number.

His thoughts rewind all the way back to when the project started. His thesis from school was about capturing the neural connectome at the finest levels possible. He couldn’t have imagined that, one random day, his boss would drop two fresh bodies off in his lap, promise him millions, and a chance to live beyond death.

He’s almost forgotten Five’s face, her real face. Five-One was remade to look like her original human self, but not Five-Two. Paul had them change her. It was like he didn’t want to see her ever again. For some reason, it was different with the tall woman. He could tell Paul knew both of them, even though he said no one did. Five was probably only in her early twenties, years younger than the other. She looked so meek and pitiful. Her skin was so pale, and her long ratty blonde hair flowed over the edge of the stainless steel cart the two of them were piled up on.

When he took her head from her body, it wasn’t cold, like he thought it was going to be. Thinking of it sends shivers down his spine, making him twist in his seat. He wraps his hand over his head and shuts his eyes tight. He felt so bad for both of them, but Paul had him scared. He had no idea how either of them had died and there was no time to figure it out either. He only had moments left to save them.

He remembers it was already dark by the time he finished preserving their brains. Before he even made it back out of the clean room, both of the bodies had vanished. Barry was standing there on the other side of the glass in his dark brown suit with his arms folded. That look from his dark beady eyes was more than enough to seal his lips forever. The old son of a bitch is long dead, and he’s still afraid of him.

Eventually, he was introduced to Marco. The man was a bit old for the game, but not as old as Paul. He had a focus like he’d never seen in a person before. Marco was like a machine. It really pissed him off how Marco always lorded his ideas around, making it sound like he was the one who had made it all possible. Then, when Valerie showed up, she started dictating what they did with the prototypes, how they were to be brought up, and acted like the whole project was supposed to go wherever she said. She had no idea what Paul, himself, and Marco had done to those poor girls.

Valerie broke all the rules and did everything Paul told him and Marco not to, and she always got away with it. She ordered people around, made everyone else bend to her schedule, and acted like she was doing all the heavy lifting. All she was ever given was one simple damn task, to see if the prototypes minds worked like the real deal, not to mother them.

She did bring them up from pretty much nothing though. He thought the whole thing was a failure when the two prototypes started out hardly capable of doing more than rolling their eyes around in their heads. Everything went to shit when she became attached to them. She guarded them like a goddamn grizzly bear sow, and it all spiraled the drain from there. They should’ve just let her have them and moved on.

Now, he’s sitting in a makeshift re-creation of where it all started, fawning over one of the damn prototypes himself. He chuckles, considering the irony of it. After all that’s happened, it makes him think about what’s still to come. There’s a nagging feeling, deep in his mind, telling him that they haven’t even come close to the hard part yet. It makes him think of his own future, and that it could still be forever. It’s the only reason he’s there. Even years of hell will be nothing compared to lifetimes of endless possibilities.

Lately, he’s been toying with the idea of designing himself his own artificial body, the way he would want it to be. He keeps getting the feeling that, on any given day, the others might be scraping his corpse up off the ground. Given what he’s seen in the last few months, anything is possible.

When he’s honest with himself, he does realize that things really are actually better now, even in the underground bunker of some space thugs. He at least doesn’t have to scrape to the likes of Paul and Barry anymore, and he actually likes who he’s working with. Even though Five can be awful to him, he still considers her to be his friend. At least then he could say he has a friend at all. He really hopes she’s come to see him in the same light. It’d be devastating if she still ended up hating him after all this.

When Five finally leaves the lab, it’s pretty late. He waits to make sure she doesn’t come right back before bringing up the schematics of the body he’s been working on. So far, he’s rescaled a generic frame to look the way he has always wanted to. It’s six foot two, trim, and simply good looking. Nothing huge and muscular, like Aaron and Paul’s frame, but still well shaped, with a broad chest and shoulders.

Lately, he’s been feeling even more depressed about his life than usual. Sometimes, he feels like hurting himself. Then, sometimes he feels like he should go down and train, like everyone else. He can only imagine the embarrassment. He’s at least stopped stuffing his face in front of the computer. It’s been hard, but the disapproving looks from Five have left him no choice. Merely the sound of a bag of chips makes her flip out.

With his eyes closed, and hands out wide, he grabs the edge of the countertop as hard as he can. He imagines himself as a powerful robot, like Aaron. In his mind, he can see himself thrashing those rat-brained derelicts around like Aaron had done that night. He pretends he’s protecting Five, and telling her everything is going to be all right. It’s nerdy as hell, but it’s his thing.

When he thinks about all that happened to them at Evan’s, he realizes that he’s never really cleared the air with Marek since then. He apologized and spilled his guts to Five and Valerie, but he kind of forgot about everyone else. They’ve all been working in the same building for months now, but almost never see each other. He shakes his head when he repeats it in his mind “We’re all stuck in the same building, and I still never talk to anyone.”

He wonders if Marek feels bad about picking on him like he did back then. He supposes it’s not likely. To him, it was probably just another day in his crappy street-life. Hell, it was probably an easy day for him. He was probably the least dangerous person Marek had ever dealt with in his life.

Marek probably still thinks he’s a wretch though. Surely Valerie has poisoned everyone against him quite thoroughly by now. Even then, things are still better. As surprising as it is to himself, he often finds himself in a good mood. All the other guards seem to be nice to him at least. He wonders if maybe he should start trying to fit in amongst them instead. He could have other friends, if he only tried. He decides to head out of the lab, to wander around and maybe even meet some people.

After wandering the halls and asking some random guards if they’ve seen Marek, they direct him to the machine shop. He’s never been in there, not since orientation day. It’s quite impressive, even by Werker standards. They have some fairly modern machinery, but a lot of it is pretty old-school stuff, but the really good old stuff. When he finds Marek, he’s turning something on an old tool room lathe.

When he walks in, he sees Marek look up and notice him, but then quickly pretend to be focused on his work. He tries to not look up again until he’s standing right next to him. He doesn’t even pause what he’s doing.

“Can I help you with something Gabriel?”

“Well, not really. I was just thinking about that shit storm we all went through, and I realized that I have never really talked about it with anyone. Anyone else than Five, and maybe Valerie a little bit.”

Marek has to almost yell over the sound of the gearhead groaning under a heavy cut. “Did she put you up to this? No, wait, that’s a dumb question.”

“Look, I feel like there’s already a kind of understanding between us, but still. I mean, we can be a little sore at one another, but there’s no bad blood right?”

Marek wants to tell Gabriel that he’s a little shit-ball, and no one’s going to let him skate on a damn thing, but he doesn’t. Gabriel had played them all like a fiddle, and got a lot of his community killed in the process, but he simply doesn’t care about any of that anymore. He and Alexis are alive and together now. Not a damn thing else matters to him. He could give a shit about the rats anymore.

“We’re fine dude. It’s all cool.” He flips his safety glasses down and gets right back to his work.

Gabriel doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but at least he didn’t get hit. It must be a good thing. “Well, anyway, I’m really sorry about all the people you lost.” He doesn’t point out the fact that Marek and his buddies are the ones that drug him into the whole nightmare to begin with, or how they used him to get to Valerie and Marco, but that’s not what he’s there for.

Marek doesn’t even look up. “People want to believe that we reap what we sow, but you know as well as I, that’s not the way the world works. Sometimes shit goes sideways, and sometimes you get lucky. Murphy’s Law doesn’t care if you’re a good person or not.” He finally turns the spindle off and looks at Gabriel. He pats him on the side of the shoulder and then looks up at the clock. “I don’t hold anything against ya bud, I got out with more than I ever deserved.”

After his talk with Marek, he begins to feel a lot more motivated, and continues wandering around more of the building. It’s turns out, it’s really nice to get out and about, despite that people look at him like a stranger as they pass by. He doubts a third of the company’s people even know he works there. He figures he’d better start getting to know more of them, especially if he’s supposed to be the one saving them all from death.

Eventually, he works up the courage to take the elevator downstairs, to where all the techs hang out. In the least, he expects that he’ll be hassled by someone for snooping around, so at least at someone will eventually have to talk to him. It’s as good a bet as any.

As the elevator doors are closing, a man with a deep voice calls out for him to hold the door. He sticks his arm out to keep it from closing, looks out, and recognizes him. It’s the big black guy Sy sent to his house, to basically kidnap him. He’s well over six feet tall, and his arms are so big, they’re about to rip the sleeves on his shirt open. The man looks down at him with bulging eyes.

“Who da hell are you li’l man. N-how you even get’n here?”

“Uh, um… I’m the robot brain scientist guy? You picked me up a couple months ago? You’re Reese, right?”

Reese pauses for a moment. “Oh, ok, yeah, I member. Shit, didn’t know you were still here. Where da hell you been? He hits the button to go down to the lower hanger floor.

“I’ve been working in the lab, the new one, with Valerie and Five. You know them?”

“That redhead horse-face girl, and li’l cutie? Oh yeah, seen em round.”

His jaw drops at the shit that comes out of this guy’s mouth. “Say, Reese, uh, you know where I could find Aaron, or Arma?”

“Ah yeah, naked bitch n Valerie’s sex doll?” I bet they in the same place bout right now, you know what I mean?”

He presses his eyes with his hand, not knowing what to even think. “Yeah… them.”

Reese looks down at him a little more seriously. “You the brain man right? What you know about them?”

“Well, I’m the guy that made them.”

“Nice work on that big girl bro. She damn fine. Fuck your boy tho. He freaks me out.” He points to his nose, which looks like it’s been recovering from a pretty bad smashing. “Busted ma shit all up too.”

He peers up at Reese with squinted eyes. “What do you mean, freaks you out? Is there something I should know about?” A back flash of Paul’s grotesque rubber face flits across his mind.

“You seen him move? He ain a man no more. He a fukin… animal. He’s like that damn centipede. No good. No way.”

When the door opens, Reese immediately spots Aaron and Arma across the bay, chatting with the techs and a group of other guards. With a long bulky arm, he leans towards him and points them out to him. For some reason, Aaron doesn’t have a shirt on, and Arma is her usual naked. They’re all just hanging out, looking at the new ship. It’s starting to come along pretty nicely.

Some people are sitting on pallets while the rest are standing around in kind of a semicircle. It looks like a pretty good opportunity for him to socialize with everyone. When the big man heads over to them, he follows right after him. Arma spots him following behind Reese. She cranes her neck over to see around Reese, and actually looks rather intrigued to see him, and in a friendly way. She even walks over to greet him. “Hey Gabriel, come down to see our new ship?”

“Yeah, it’s really coming along! I look every time I walk around the balcony. You guy’s have been really busy. I haven’t seen you visit with Five in a while.” He looks over at Aaron suspiciously. “How’s Aaron been? I don’t even now the las time I even saw him.” He tries to ignore the fact that Reese is embarrassingly giving Arma a brazen look over.

“Everything’s great. He’s doing… great.” She such a big smile when she looks over at him.

Gabriel’s stomach plummets when he hears Reese say it. “Not as fine as you sweetheart.”

Arma looks at Reese and then back down at him, as if he has something to do with what’s going on. She looks at him suspiciously, but he tries his best to ignore Reese’s existence. “Things have been going real good. Five is... I can’t even keep up with her.” He can’t bring himself to smile though.

“Five’s been telling me a lot of great things. It’s good to see you out on the floor like this. Where you been all this time?”

He’s really excited to hear such kind words from her. It makes him feel a lot better. She wouldn’t be this nice if Five were trashing him. She’s not fake like that. When she starts walking him over to Aaron. Reese follows right behind. Immediately, Aaron’s attention is drawn to the man, like a trained Malanois.

He’s a little taken aback by how obviously territorial Aaron is over her. It’s not subtle at all, and makes him reconsider the garbage coming out of Reese’s mouth. Then, the worst thing he could imagine starts to unfold. Reese starts making a scene, just to get at Aaron.

Reese stomps up alongside Arma with a grin.“Yo girl, you dark like me, you ever think about that? Hey, you ever wonder what it’s like to have a boyfriend? I aint talkin bout no plastic toy. Nuh uh. I’m the real deal honey, you want to know what real is don’t you?” It’s a ruse, and he’s going for the gold.

Arma doesn’t turn around, and tries her hardest to not make a thing out of it, like he wants. She keeps her eyes straight forward. “Not in the mood today Reese.”

“Oh, c’mon baby, you good for it. You already know I am.”

She stops walking. “Don’t make me embarrass you in front of everyone.” She points ahead of herself. “Keep going.”

He can’t believe how cool she’s staying. It sounds like she’s probably had words with Reese before. When he sees it out of the corner of his eye, he tries to block Reese’s hand, but he fails. “Don’t do it!” Before he finishes the three words, the sound of the slap on Arma’s ass is loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Come on, give me some sugar baby!” Reese is showing everyone his goofy face, and clearly has no clue that she’s not some piece of hardware for everyone to play with.

With lightning speed, Arma spins around on her foot and backhands the man across his face. The “clack” of her knuckles on his chops sound like a sack of steel ball-bearings hitting the floor. Aaron snaps up off his crate to move in, but she signals for him to stay back with nothing more than a hardly noticeable look. He expects it to be over at this point, but it’s not.

Reese is a little stunned by her. There’s really nothing quite like being slapped by a woman. “You wanna go then bitch!” He wipes the blood off his lips and slings the red drops to the clean epoxy floor. The renewed pain in his nose has definitely changed his mood. “Oh, you think you bad for a blow up doll don’t you. But baby, I gots somethin fo ya.”

She gives him one more chance. “You had your fun, now just take your lumps and go away, before it’s too late. If you wanna know what happens when I teach someone the hard way, all you have to do is ask Gabriel. He will tell you.”

“Bitch, I throw your rubber ass on the ground and show you the hard way. Heh heh. Be good-n hard. Maybe you might just like it!” Reese spits blood across her chest and looks around at everyone, like it’s on now.

He tries his best to stop the whole thing from spiraling out of control, by standing in-between the two of them with his arms out. “Now come on you guys! You asked for it and she busted your shit. Now let’s just let it go, ok.”

Apparently, that’s not how things work. Instead, the entire group circles wide around them, like it’s some coordinated thing. It appears that, at SSS, a challenge is literally a challenge. Even he has heard about the legendary first time Vaun set the precedence of putting someone in their place. He didn’t know it had become a traditional rite though.

Under his breath, he tries to give Reese one last warning. “She’s a viper Reese! She’s killed a dozen men already. Don’t do this!”

Arma knows very well about the tradition of a challenge. She won’t kill him, like Gabriel thinks she will, but she absolutely will make an example out of him. That’s the point. It keeps things like this from repeating. “You’d better have some manners after this Reese.”

Gabriel fully expects her to kill him. He’s literally seen her mind laid out before him. She’s got the amygdala damage of a stone cold killer, if he ever saw one. For some reason though, he suddenly stops caring. Reese is being an ass, and she gave him more than a generous chance. He won’t be caught dead defending the man, not from her, and not after she was just being nice to him.

He throws his hands up and steps out from between them. “Fine, this is your guys deal. I did what I could.”

He squeezes himself in next to Aaron and leans up against the ship hull with him. With his feet crossed, he puts his hands in his pockets and starts to get curious about how it’ll play out. It’s kind of like he’s got a horse in the race. He’s pretty interested in seeing what she’s got. He never did get to witness any of the stuff she, Aaron, or Five did first hand.

By the time Arma and Reese start sizing each other up, a few of the guards have already mustered damn near everyone in the building with their combat communicators. The overhead living quarter’s balcony is now lined with people that have come out to watch. Up above, the elevator dings and lets out another dozen people. Sy, Vaun, and Valerie are among them. He hopes that they’ll put a stop to it, but they don’t. They stand up there and watch like everyone else.

Reese spots Valerie up there and makes everything so much worse. “Hey, look who it is. You looking for your sex doll? Better come and get him. I think someone’s been using him behind your back.”

Valerie doesn’t so much as even blink. As soon as Arma looks up, Reese lunges for her. He goes in low, to tackle her to the ground, completely unaware of just how swift she is. She stands facing him in a confident braced stance, with one foot planted a ways behind her. She hammers the top of his head with the bottoms of both her fists together, sending him to the floor like a sack of shit.

Reese scoots away on his hip, stunned, and trying to get back up. Arma thinks she’s already won, and is grinning back at Aaron. No one expects it when Reese catches her off guard with a huge leg sweep this time. When the back of her head smacks down on the concrete, it’s just as much a surprise to her as it is everyone else. Sy is grabbing the railing tight with both hands wanting to shout for her to get up, but he doesn’t. He can’t take sides. After kicking her legs out from under her, Reese tries controlling her with his body weight, and hammers down on her with his elbows.

Tony, in the back of the group, makes a snide comment. “Looks like he’s done this with a woman before.” A few others laugh.

Aaron is intensely focused on their every move, but he also dawns a solid look of confidence in her. It’s like he already knows she’ll win and is only waiting to see exactly how. It’s hard to decide whether to watch Aaron’s reactions, or the fight.

Arma spins around under Reese like a badger, trying to escape, but she has no idea what she’s doing. She never finished her training. Reese immediately grabs her in a rear choke hold. He’s quite strong, far more so than she is. With her backside to him, everyone expects him to do something lude, like he said he would, but he doesn’t. She’s got him plenty mad.

Reese stands up with her neck locked tight in his arm, and has that arm locked back again by the other as well. She tries to dig her hands in between his forearms, to pry herself loose, but she can’t. He has her locked in too tight. She bares her teeth and hisses like a snake with her last breath.

Reese leans back till her feet lift up off the ground and chokes her neck even tighter. His words are measured and certain. “I got you bitch.”

When Aaron looks down at him, he’s shaking his head. That’s when he realizes what a stupid move Reese has made. Arma’s battery may breathe oxygen, but there’s no way she’ll tap out within the hour. The hold would surely mean the end, within seconds, for a normal man, but it’s a completely useless tactic against her physiology. Reese puts all of his strength into putting her to sleep, but nothing happens.

Someone else in the circle shouts out, to warn reese. “Wrap your legs around her dude!”

Arma’s eyes fly open with the realization. Before Reese has any chance, her entire body curls upward as she launches an outstretched leg into a huge high arched kick. Even though he’s leaned pretty far back, her long leg has so much momentum into the swing that her foot still reaches all the way up overhead of him, striking down on top of his head like a sledge hammer.

Everyone’s jaws drop at what sounds like a lightbulb bursting on the floor. The rebound of her leg coming back down keeps her standing straight up while Reese’s body piles up on the floor behind her. She doesn’t look back, even when half the people in the room are covering their mouths. She purses her lips, says “woops” and continues her walk right back on over to Aaron.

Britney runs over to the body to check for a pulse. “God you guys!” She gently rolls him out flat while Selner immediately takes the huge first-aid box off the wall and brings it over. They shoot him up with something while someone else runs to get a neck brace and stretcher board.

In a loud voice, Sy addresses everyone bellow. “The liability contract you all signed was not just a formality. If you want to push you luck, that’s on you. I’ll always do right by you guys, but I am not your mother. Get him up to the lobby. Vaun’s already called a wagon.” He simply turns and goes back into the elevator.

Gabriel knew it was going to be bad, but he wasn’t expecting this. A broken neck is nothing that can’t be fixed, but the guy could’ve actually died. With how hard she hit his skull, he still might. As the crowd disperses, he can hear quiet comments being made about what happened.

“I swear to god, if there’s a robot version of Reese walking around next week, I’ma fuckin quit.”

A woman’s voice scoffs. “That’s what you get for being a macho piece of shit.”

“She popped his ass like a bag of chips!”

“She’s a robot! What the hell did he think was gonna happen?”

“Man, I hope Arma doesn’t beat herself up about it.”

Under his breath he answers, but so no one can hear him. “Don’t worry, she won’t.”

After everyone else is gone, he hangs back to talk to her and Aaron, like he’d meant to before the shit show. He can’t believe that between getting out of the elevator, and reaching the two of them, a man was nearly killed. He knows she didn’t ask for trouble, but she sure as hell delivered it. She was too cool about it too, like she knew she was going to hurt him from the start. How else could it have gone down? The man would never have been able to hurt her, wear her down, or get her to give up.

When Aaron looks down at him, he has a smug look on his face. “Gotta love a woman that can handle herself.”

It suddenly dawns on him that the two of them are together Reese was right, and Five all but told him. He just wasn’t paying attention, or maybe he thought it was absurd, and brushed the idea off. Either way, it’s not good. While Arma isn’t paying attention, he tried to warn him.

“Don’t be a child Aaron. You’re playing with a hell of a lot more than matches this time.”

“Yeah, she’s a woman, and she’s dangerous to overgrown boys. What would you know anyway?”

“Don’t presume to make me out for an idiot, just because you don’t know how to listen. I’m tellin you that she should not be encouraged, and you should be careful. Her actions are not bound by anything, including you.”

Aaron isn’t taking too well to his insinuations. “Why are you even down here man? To give me and her shit or what?”

He sighs, and drops it. “No. I came down here just to say hi, honestly, and you know, kinda try’n make peace with you guys. I wanted to apologize for all the shit I caused you, and for everything that happened. I don’t mean you any harm, and I wanna do right by you guys.”

Aaron only glances down at him for a second. “Feelings mutual. I’m cool, Arma’s cool.” He shrugs. “It’s cool. I mean, you did send an army of zealot rats after us, but you brought me back too. We’re even.”

He tries to not laugh. “Yeah, well, I was kinda beaten up and forced to do it, but I did it, dint I.”

When Arma is done putting the computer at the back of the shuttle to sleep, she comes over and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you come up to the bar with us tonight? Everyone’s getting together here in a little bit. It’ll be a good time. Maybe we can all catch up.”

In the morning, Gabriel wakes up feeling absolutely miserable. He’s never even been shit faced in his entire life, and last night was definitely past that point. When he sits up in bed, it feels like his head is a lead brick, and it’s trying to pull him back down. With the sudden need to barf up everything he can, he struggles to find the bathroom in time, and it’s the only separate room in the tiny studio. After fifteen minutes of retching over the toilet on all fours, he manages to stagger back out and sit on the edge of the bed.

He tries to remember what even happened last night but he can’t seem to get past the first round of shots. There are snippets of things, like people trying to beat Aaron and Arma at arm wrestling, Sy’ god-awful bourbon, and his telling stories about them all trying to kill each other off. All in all, it feels like everyone was having a blast with it.

After finding a glass and pouring himself some water, he realizes he’s not even in his own apartment, it’s Marek’s. He only knows because his old oilcloth duster is draped over the chair at the kitchen counter. Feeling awkward, he wanders out onto the balcony to try and find his own unit. His wrist communicator says it’s a little past nine in the morning. When he looks back, to make sure he closed the door behind him, he wonders where Marek slept last night, if not in his own apartment. He hopes he didn’t inconvenience him.

He asks the first person he sees around the catwalk if the guy with the broken neck made it through the night. Apparently it wasn’t too bad and the graphene traces they put in are already helping his nerve damage recover. He thanks his lucky stars. No one ever learns their lesson if they end up dying anyway. He remembers Aaron saying that he’d smash they guy’s brain him damn self if they tried to bring him back.

After he finds his own apartment, changes his clothes, and finds his way down to the lab. He finds it unusual that Five and Valerie are both working away next to one another so casually. It’s great, since they’ve been a little polar towards each other lately. They probably buried the hatchet last night and made up. Valerie looks rather pleased with herself for beating him to the chair next to Five this time. He doesn’t have his name on it, but he always sits there.

He’s only able to socialize with them for a few minutes before having to head for the solitude of his own office. He has to sit down and hover over his little garbage can for a while, before even being able to sit up straight. As soon as he can close his eyes without feeling like the room is spinning, he crashes out face down on his desk.

It’s noon by the time he wakes up again, but at least this time, he does feel a bit better. After rejoining Five and Valerie in the lab, he catches them looking at him funny from time to time. When they can no longer hold back their snickers any more, they finally fess up that he has a sizeable paper clip stuck to his forehead. When he pulls it off, he can still feel the ridges in his skin where it was. This is the first time he can recall ever seeing Valerie smile in his presence. She even offers her chair to him.

“I’m gonna have lunch with my sister. I’ll be back in probly an hour.”

As soon as he and Five hear the far double doors close behind her, she turns her chair around to him with a pleasant smile. She cranes her neck for a moment, making sure Valerie isn’t coming back. Her hands hare folded in her lap when she takes a deep breath.

“Gabriel, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about last night. The chance that we’re going to have a brain to work with soon is probably pretty high. I’m gonna need to learn that part of the process before something like what happened yesterday doesn’t end so well.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’ll have to show you how to be careful with biological tissues, since you’re not familiar with them at all.” He puts his hand on his chin. “Then we’ve got to chemically stabilize the brain, and then I guess, run it through the slicer.” He looks out towards the door. Shouldn’t we wait till Valerie gets back though? We should all go over it at the same time. I owe that much to her. It’s the only way we’re really gonna start trusting one another.”

Her green eyes peer at him doubtfully. “Think you can’t trust her now?”

“Mmmm, not reeely. She’ll probably make sure my entire head is crushed by something on accident as soon as she knows she can pull this off without me.”

“Do you really think she’d kill you if she could get away with it?”

“Yeah. She’s the kind of person that can really hold onto a grudge. But I’m gonna teach her anyway, cause I’m past all that. Even if she isn’t.”

While Valerie is gone to lunch, he gathers up all the things he needs to teach both of them. They’re already pretty well informed on neurons and synapses by now, so he figures he’ll start them out on some more advanced concepts, like signal filtering, coding schemes, and how brain waves are now flowing through the new artificial structures. After that, he’ll show them exactly how the scanning machine works, in principle, physically, and what the software is doing behind the scenes. At some point in their lives, they’ll probably have to recreate all the machinery from scratch. It’s only inevitable. They’ll have to know the theory of everything to have any kind of long game.

By the time Valerie gets back, he’s managed to set up what looks like a small lecture area out front of the scanning lab shack. There are two chairs in front of a holographic projector and even a college style touch board for displaying his notes and sketches. Not only will he be teaching them everything he knows, but they’ll be recreate all of the original process documents that were destroyed at Werker.

Five sits down in one of the chairs with her hands together, pressed between her knees, and looks to be a little nervous. It’s what she’s been waiting for since the very beginning, and now it’s happening. She absolutely cannot miss any details.

While Valerie skeptically takes her seat, he brings up an incredibly detailed three dimensional model of the human brain on the holograph. The first thing he writes up on the board is a lecture title named Sensory System Data Transmission and Coding.