Character Perspective: Waverly

I followed Sullivan from the bridge and through the double-sided elevator, unable to stop myself from wanting to stop and check every panel we passed. This simulator was an engineer’s dream playground and being relegated to just looking and not getting my hands on every inch of it left me painfully on edge. It was like waiting for All Holiday’s Eve to open the very first present of the season, all while knowing exactly what it was because your mom couldn’t seem to think to put the wrench in a box before wrapping it.

Or maybe that was just a personal experience.

“I really hope those two aren’t mucking things up already,” Sullivan muttered under his breath.

“Your, er… assistants?” I asked curiously. Sullivan had taken a short period during our after dinner meeting to explain the two bio-engineered creatures that he had developed but I still wasn’t exactly sure I understood why he had made them.

“Chale has a habit of getting… overeager if left alone too long and while Dip is capable of keeping him under control, I don’t need them fighting either,” he explained as he continued his fast walk around a corner to a room past a large set of doors labeled Engines.

There would be time to explore later. That’s what I had to keep telling myself. If I had to sneak back down here in the middle of the night, I would dammit.

“Locater Pulse activated,” the Neutrino’s robotic voice called over the intercom.

We reached a new door that was labeled Lab and the doors pulled open as Sullivan raced up to them, almost as if in anticipation for his arrival. “Dip, Chale, activate the Collider, the signal is still transmitting so we should be able to pull it in and we can make some altercations.”

Two furry creatures seemed to jump into action, though one of them seemed to already be halfway into a box before Sullivan even entered the room. A somehow more orderly looking one with a metallic gear in its neck and a dotted white stripe down its spine darted into a closet, pulling out a cylindrical device with several exposed wires that was easily five times the chipmunk’s size as he carried it above his head, skittering across the floor and leaping up and onto the back counter.

“Holy moly you weren’t joking, they really are strong for their size,” I said as I watched with a mix of awe and curiosity.

“They better be,” he laughed, “Took forever to get the bionics balanced without ripping the muscular tissue apart.”

“That sounds… gross,” I said after taking a moment to consider my word choice.

“You would be correct,” he laughed. “There should be a Comms panel in the side wall over there, can you get the transmission line out and run it over to Dip?” he asked, and I nodded, moving to a much smaller screen than the one that had been established on the bridge.

For a simulator, they really had gone all out on making sure everything felt as real as possible and it didn’t seem like that level of detail was exclusive to the bridge. I was almost positive Ty was freaking out in the weapons room, she had spent half the night before we headed to bed already talking up all the possible ammunition types that she was sure we’d be utilizing. I had never studied that side too far, at least not past how the systems integrated with the rest of the ship, so I just smiled and nodded while she rambled.

I pulled the multitool off my belt, quickly unlatching the Comms front panel, I hit an intercom button next to it quickly, reporting procedures flicking through my mind as I realized what could happen if I moved the wrong wire. “Captain, I am reconfiguring Comms in the Lab, we may lose transmission from this room but the Intercom won’t be affected.”

“Heard,” Curtis called back. “Next pulse is about to fire, I hope Sullivan will be prepared for the Turkey because if we haven’t been noticed by now, one of the others will see us then.”

“Turkey?” Sullivan asked as I disconnected a single long wire from the side and started pulling it out, half jumping when I saw a small chipmunk sitting, it’s hands already out in preparation for the cable.

“I think it’s a bowling reference? Like, three in a row, right?” I offered as I gave the chipmunk that I was assuming was Chale the cable and it started tugging it along, running to the cylinder that Sullivan and Dip were working on from various angles. “So what are you doing anyway?” I asked, following over and looking to the device.

“While I call it a miniature Hadron, it’s really just an all purpose accelerator. Anything from particles to communication waves, as long as I can find the right frequency, I can speed it up,” He explained.

“And that’s what you’re gonna do with the next pulse?” I asked as he handed me a wire from the other side of the box, the one that Chale had delivered already being hooked into a slot on the cylinder’s side.

“Reattach this to the old transmission input,” he said, his eyes never leaning the small panel opening he had been looking into, a monitor to the side of the device displaying a weird string of text that I would have needed to focus on to properly understand.

“Can do,” I said and started back for it.

“But yes, that’s the idea. I’m going to speed it up and add a virus,” Sullivan explained. “Well, a computer virus more or less,” he added on before I could ask the obvious question.

“Hmm,” I murmured. “Can spaceships even get computer viruses?” I was already reattaching the cable, bolting it down and sliding the panel back over, a single wire forcing an edge up. I’d have to fix that later if this was going to be a regular technique in Sullivan’s arsenal.

“If it’s got a computer in it, it can get a computer virus,” he replied simply.

“I guess that’s fair,” I replied, returning back to his side. “So how’s it gonna work then? Sorry, I don’t mean to sound dumb, just… you know, curious,” I said as I heard the machine start to spin up.

It was loud, like, ridiculously loud, and reminded me of simulated engines as the internal mechanisms started to activate. The two chipmunks seemed to move without instruction grabbing opening extra compartments near the base of the machine and yanking clasps from them. They dropped off the table, quickly wrapping the straps around the feet of the table just before the accelerator could start to shake to violently.

“Dammit, thought I had this part remedied,” Sullivan muttered under his breath. “Dip, grab the extras from storage, I’m not having this thing go flying once the pulse gets sent.”

“It’s going to move faster?!” I asked almost incredulously.

“Oh yeah it is,” He smiled back to me, “Think about it this way, when the next pulse happens in a few seconds, this is going to fire it at about twenty times the density. Any of the other ships that do have their scanning channels open are going to be overwhelmed and that’s where the virus is going to slip through.”

“Which is going to help us how? Are we going to disable their systems or something?” I crossed my arms, “Sorry, this is really making me feel dumb, maybe I should have spent more time in the science classes.”

“Don’t worry too much about it Sera, we are gonna have a lot of time together cause I’m going to make Science and Engineering go hand in hand together,” he said with a smile that left me feeling incredibly reassured. “I’m really bad with misnomers. It’s a virus but it’s like a bug, basically we are going to be able to hear into their systems, and if we know which system is which-“

“Then we can figure out who is safe to contact!” I cut him off as the realization hit me. “Grounds that is good!”

“Well, it’s good if it works…” He replied, “But like I told the Captain, better to experiment now, right?”

“Right,” I said, the intercom overhead crackling to life as the Neutrino’s robotic voiced came over.

“Locater Pulse activated.”

The comms panel lit up as multiple new object flickered into existence on the screen, and I rushed back over with Sullivan close behind.

​

“Now,” he started, “Let’s see what we caught.”