Master wu, p.4
Master Wu, page 4
Finally, Jayne went to the door and opened it. She looked around outside the office. There was no one in sight. She closed the door again and sat back in the chair. She was considering the best way to contact Dr. Pincet, Rose, and Spike. She could simply use her VID to call them up. After all, everything was encrypted, or so the AI had purported. Jayne was not so sure. Perhaps Thurston had the decryption codes and could decipher everything she said. Maybe she could create a worm and contact Rose. What would she say? She laughed, ‘Hey, Rose, I am OK, but I have no idea where I am. I don’t want to be rescued yet. Maybe later in the week. I will let you know.’
She dismissed contacting anyone until she had a better idea of where she was and what was expected of her. She picked up her VID and scanned the files titled LAB SUBJECTS. She opened the first one and was assaulted by the grimmest images she had ever seen. The initial image showed a young woman no older than twenty. She was strapped into a specialized medi-chair. Her head from above her eyebrows was encased in a transparent dome. Inside the dome was a web of what appeared to be wires running from the inner surface of the dome into the woman’s head. The next image was from the perspective of someone looking down into the dome. Jayne could see that the entire top of the woman’s skull had been removed, and wires were inserted into her brain. The third image showed a close-up of the woman’s face. She was alive, but the dullness of her eyes suggested there was not much left of the person inhabiting the body. There were many notes. Jayne scanned and read a few. Once she caught the gist, she stopped. The girl was taken from the Wilderlands and considered for a connectome transplant, but she was rejected because one of her hip joints was a little flat and that might lead to arthritis later in life. She was then relegated to a research program that measured about 200 responses to various stimuli after a section of her brain was excised. She had gone through almost fifty trials. There was not much left of her brain. She was kept alive by the medi-chair. The last paragraph stated that her vital organs had been sold and were to be harvested in the coming days. Jayne then reluctantly flipped through the rest of the very similar cases.
She stopped reading. There was nothing she could do for these subjects—most of whom were likely dead now. She no longer wanted the data to be on her VID. It felt like the least she could do was to erase it all. She did just that. It did not make her feel any better, but she vowed that she would bring the monsters who perpetrated these horrors to some form of justice. The first order of business was to identify them. She wanted to know every one of the notorious Forevers by name. She wanted to display them to the world so that anyone who was involved would think twice about continuing in the organization.
Jayne sat back in the chair and considered what her friends must be feeling. She popped up a bubble and wove it into a worm. The worm did not travel to its destination. It was as if she had directed an eye to appear where she wanted. This was new. Usually, the worm would snake out and seek its destination. Once it was there, her consciousness would travel down the worm. This time she did not know exactly where Rose would be, so she just concentrated on the person and not the place. She was now looking at Rose, sound asleep in a bed. She could even hear Rose snoring and wheezing in her sleep.
Jayne nudged her. That was the only way to explain the mental push.
Rose suddenly sat up, “Jayne? Jayne, where are you?”
Jayne spoke out loud and in doing so concentrated her focus, but it was not the sound that reached Rose but something echoing in her head. It was a simple message. “I’m safe. Will make contact soon. Do not worry.”
Suddenly Jayne faltered. The energy to maintain the connection ebbed and everything snapped closed. Jayne knew that Rose had heard her. She would still worry, but the fact that Jayne was still alive would be enough to allay most of her fears.
Jayne closed her eyes. She was tired again and needed something to eat. Using her mind to create these bubbles or worms or whatever these things were used up a lot of her energy. She knew she must eat regularly to keep up her strength if she was to maintain this façade. She was now Winter Bancroft. She was in a position to be the perfect spy. She reflected on Poppy. She missed him terribly. Some of his words came back to her: “Remember the Sentinels.” She would need help if she was to succeed at destroying the Forevers. She would have to pass information on to those who had the power and the resources to act on it. She must do this without jeopardizing her identity and her safety.
Jayne was jolted to attention by an insistent knock on her office door. “Yes,” she deliberately croaked from her chair. She opened her eyes and realized that her chair had rotated, and her back was to the door. The door opened and William Thurston entered.
“You did it. You did it, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” exclaimed Thurston as he closed the door behind him. He looked at the back of the chair. “Winter? Winter, are you alright?” His initial excitement turned to concern. The possibility that Winter had somehow harmed herself while trying to do whatever it was that Jayne Wu was able to do flooded his brain. He strode to the chair and spun it around.
Jayne stared back at him. “What is the problem? What is it you think I have done?”
There was a visible relaxation of Thurston’s face. “You know. Did you do what I think Wu was able to do?”
“Why do you think that I did something? I was led to understand that this office was secure and anything that happened in here was undetectable. Is that true or not?”
“Yes and, well…” faltered Thurston, “no.”
“What the frack are you talking about?” Jayne rasped. She had naturally assumed Winter Bancroft’s tendency to speak in a very low tone. She thought it gave her more credibility. She would use this until she was sure she had been accepted by everyone privy to her new identity.
“Well, I have been able to measure large energy spikes from Miss Wu whenever she did whatever she was able to do. It is what led me to her when she was in the government Probe Project facility. It was initially accidental. There was a release of highly focused energy not unlike a laser burst but on a series of fluctuating frequencies. I had some techs analyze it and set my tracking equipment to scan for it. I am not sure what it does, but it has something to do with utilizing naturally occurring entanglements and bending those entanglements to serve a purpose. I think that a possible purpose would be to allow a person to communicate with another person over vast distances. The energies involved in this process do not follow the same rules as other energies. I do not think that they can be blocked by, like, using a Faraday cage, for example.”
“So what you are telling me is that you detected one of these energy bursts?”
“Yes. And it came from this office. Did it come from you?” asked Thurston in a manner that suggested to her that he already knew the answer.
Jayne smiled. “Yes, it did.” She knew that if she denied it, his suspicions would be aroused. She needed to tell a lie with a modicum of truth. “I was able to cause that stylus to roll onto the floor. At least I think I did,” she said. Her voice was filled with doubt. “It nearly made me pass out.”
Thurston nodded his head up and down. “I know what you mean. I thought I would be able to do whatever Ranovich here was able to do,” he said, as he tapped his chest, “but it is so physically demanding that I decided it is not worth it.”
Then Jayne suddenly stood up in front of her chair and stepped forward to face Thurston. Her voice became Winterized. She held up her index finger and pointed it at Thurston’s face. “If you ever use that equipment again to eavesdrop on me, I will…” she paused and lowered her hand. Jayne conjured up what she considered to be her most macabre grin. Some of Winter’s old memories of whippings entered her head. “I think you have a pretty good idea of what I will do to you.”
She turned back to the chair and sat. “Destroy all of that tech. I do not want it falling into anyone else’s hands. I can’t do what that young girl could do, but I want to try. I do need some time to explore it fully, and I do not want anyone to be able to track me when I do.”
She spun around in her chair. “Leave me alone.”
Thurston did not argue. Her order to destroy this newly developed tech was, in his opinion, not very prudent. But he had experienced some of her punishments before and did not want a repeat just now. He knew she had power over him. The last three years had been rather blissful without Winter. She had existed only in one of his storage pits. Now a part of him was regretting ever bringing her back. Another part of him shivered with a measure of anticipation of her punishments. He shook the thoughts out of his head.
“One last thing.” He spoke to the back of her chair. “I received a formal invitation to one of the costume bashes put on by them. It is scheduled for next week.”
Jayne’s mind zoomed through all of Winter’s memories, looking for a name to put to them. She found a series of memories relating to past costume parties, all of which were very old memories when Winter was just a girl.
“I know you never attended any of the group parties in the past,” Thurston said, “but I thought, with this new body, you might like to meet the new members and reacquaint yourself with some of the old members. If the group’s plans go well, and we are accepted, we will have to live with these people for a long time. Biome 13 is nearing completion.”
“Our acceptance is in doubt?” responded Jayne. She could find no data suggesting that Winter was not part of the group and decided she would risk a measure of exposure. Old Winter might already know this but had forgotten it.
“You have been away for three years. A lot has happened. There have been changes. The group planning committee realized that making a passenger list so far ahead of the final launch would jeopardize the entire project. Some on the list might not be able to go for various reasons. Having a list was dangerous. What would happen to those on the list if it was ever exposed and made public? Those on an acceptance list would become rather passive. It is human nature. We need everyone to continue to contribute credits in hopes that they will be among the accepted few.”
“You have got to be kidding,” shouted Jayne in her best Winter voice. Then a plan started to form in her head. It was a plan worthy of Winter Bancroft’s massive ego. What if she tried to manipulate the Forevers by becoming part of the upper echelon? Hell, why not aspire to be the actual driving force? Jayne did not sense there was a single leader in any identifiable way. She suspected there was a committee that guided this group. But every committee had a leader in reality. Maybe not in name, but this group would never have gotten as far as they had without a single head directing all the actors. She, Jayne Wu, pretending to be Winter Bancroft incarnate, would infiltrate this group until she was powerful enough to destroy them. She could share all of this plan with Thurston, except for her true purpose. He would agree to help. He would have to agree.
Jayne smiled. “When is this costume party?”
“Next week. I think the theme is Steampunk.”
Without checking Winter’s memories, Jayne blurted, “What the frack is Steampunk?”
Thurston’s face scrunched up a bit and Jayne read his expression as one of disbelief. She hunted the term down in the captured memories and was rewarded with a series of images and data on the style and its history. She then played up the fact that she, as Winter, had just remembered something forgotten as a result of being transferred into Jayne.
“Oh, yes. Now I remember. That should be fun.” She turned the chair around. “Now leave.”
She heard his footsteps and the quiet click of the door. A huge smile crept over her face, and she shivered with anticipation of the dangerous game she was about to play.
CHAPTER 5
Cosplay
Steampunk had its roots in science fiction of the Victorian Age. It was inspired by authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells in stories such as 20000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine. These stories focused on fantastical steam-based technology. The Steampunk subculture was born in the 1970s with the rise of an entire genre of science fiction that focused on the Wild West of America and the Victorian era. Later, the costumes of the time took on a life of their own. The many and varied designs of costumes could often be seen at comic and science fiction conferences. They usually consisted of a Victorian costume with many accoutrements such as goggles, brass masks, gears, steam valves, leather straps, brass-studded belts, pouches, decorated leather top hats and often, bizarre, outlandish weapons.
Jayne was fascinated by the costume aspect of the costume party. The closest she had ever come to wearing a costume was during her visit to the Bloc Hed den in search of Spike. Her Sergio Partelli suit had morphed into a costume that a street waif might wear. She had been dressed in pink leggings, a black tutu, and a silver blouse with a high cone-shaped collar. Steampunk would be different. She suddenly remembered that she had been wearing the Sergio Partelli before she was captured. She wondered where it had gone. She touched her VID and called Thurston.
He answered almost too quickly, like he had been waiting, even expecting her call.
Jayne felt a little uneasy. It occurred to her that he might not be as easily cowed as she first thought. She reminded herself to be extra cautious around him. She thought it might help take the edge off their relationship if she called him by his first name. “William?”
His response was gruff. “Yes, Winter.”
“William,” she cooed, “Did you keep Miss Wu’s clothing and VID?”
“I did.”
“Could you please send them to my office?”
“No. It is part of the package that I am using to fake Wu’s death.
Something of her has to survive to make it credible.”
Jayne did not let the true Winter react to his denial of her request. She was soothing. “William, I don’t think it is a good idea to use that suit. Her VID, yes, but not the suit.”
“Why?” he asked. His tone had not softened.
Jayne continued to soothe. “Well, as I gathered from the memories I took from her head, that suit is a Sergio Partelli. It has even been upgraded with the latest tech. If you want her body to be destroyed, leaving a smattering of blood DNA, you might want to rethink having her in that suit. If the suit survives what you have planned, which it will because it is almost indestructible, it would keep the body together at the very least. If they find the suit without a part or two of the body, they will just not believe your little accident scenario. So I recommend that you do not use it. And since it will not be used, could you please bring it to me?”
“What do you want it for?” he snapped.
“Look, William, I hope I do not need to remind you who is in charge here. Bring me the suit.” At this point, Jayne decided that Winter’s patience would have vanished, so she pretended to lose it. “Bring me the fracking suit, William, or you might not wake up tomorrow. I still have friends in high places.”
There was silence. Jayne decided that the best course of action was to disconnect and ignore his little fit of pique. She grinned and waited. She wanted the suit to keep her safe. It would also help her pick out a costume for the party. She would simply give Sergio free rein. A few minutes later, the suit arrived in the arms of Ms. Underhill.
Jayne opened the office door. She wanted to try it on. “Take it to my bedroom. I will be there soon.”
She suspected that Thurston was able to both see and hear her when she was in her office. Once she had the suit, she would have it run a scan on her bedroom. If that was also bugged, she would go elsewhere.
She sat on the edge of her bed and unwrapped the package that held the suit. She brought it to her face and pressed it there. She whispered the phrase that initiated the special functions of the suit, “Suit override—thirteen.”
The suit vibrated its readiness.
“Suit: scan for surveillance devices.”
There was another vibration and the suit verbalized, “No devices are present.”
Jayne sighed and dressed in the suit, then looked at herself in the mirror. “Suit: change to a female steampunk costume circa late twentieth, early twenty-first century.”
The suit morphed and Jayne stared at herself in awe. She was dressed in an extremely short skirt made of strange, burgundy-colored material. Around her waist, right up to her breasts, was a corset made of the same material. Under the corset, she wore a light green blouse with ruffled sleeves. On her feet were boots that reached up past her knees. Her thighs were bare. The boots, skirt and corset were studded with brass gears and buckles of various sizes and shapes. On her head was a top hat that was too small for an actual hat. It sat at a jaunty angle on the side of her head. It was also ornamented with devices that Jayne did not recognize. There was a faux leather pouch hanging low on one hip.
Jayne stared at herself in the mirror. She started to giggle. The corset was so tight she could barely breathe, and it pushed her breasts up so that they bulged out in a very revealing fashion. She strutted back and forth, looking at herself over her shoulder. She pursed her lips in a precocious manner. She spun around and the short skirt flared out, revealing her underwear. She squealed. “I can’t wear this. I feel like I am half-naked.”
