Random book chapter : Chapter 19 - The Laboratory

from book "Future Imperfect"

by Adrian Tanase

Alan was already enjoying his morning and trying not to think about anything. He was up early today because it was an important day. He was supposed to meet Jeeves at the club at 11 o’clock and now it was a quarter past nine. Today they were both going to go to Alandra to the location where Jeeves usually met his two main Substance L clients.

Alan half believed in his mind that they were definitely the ones he was looking for even if Jeeves thought it might just be a simple name match. And he didn't even know if the second one's name was really Andreas, although from Jeeves' descriptions, it might have been. He put his remaining coffee in a portable plastic mug for the road. He dressed on the run and took with him the device Mr. K. had given him. He didn't know what to expect. He hurried down the stairs. Mr. Bill was, as usual, at his post.

"Alan, what a morning..."

"I'm in a hurry, Mr. Bill. I have an important meeting today, I can't stay," Alan replied quickly.

"Ah, girls ..." Bill did and smiled broadly. "Have a nice day!"

Alan muttered something and left the building. It was a sunny day outside, a little chilly like any morning in Alandra. He took off towards the board-games club. It was a special morning and Alan's emotional anticipation was always one step ahead of him. He was rushing as if he had an important exam or as if time had become so expensive that he couldn't afford to waste a second. After 15 minutes he arrived at the club. It was morning and it hadn't opened yet. The door was closed and the club worker was cleaning inside the tables with a rag.

He decided to sit down on the stone edge next to the big windows and lit a cigarette. The coffee he had taken with him was his best friend, especially in situations like this where he had to wait. Within ten minutes the guy working at the club unlocked the door and saw him standing on the pavement stone in front of the club.

"Alan! You needed to tell me you were coming early today, so you would not have to stay in the streets like that. Were you supposed to meet someone?”

"Oh, that's all right, Darrin. Just Jeeves. And we're not staying, we're going to Alandra. We'll be back at noon or so. I don't know how long we will be."

"Ah, Alandra. And it's such a beautiful day, today. Have a good trip, Alan! You can come in now if you like waiting inside," Darrin said and left the massive wooden door open.

Alan chose to stay waiting outside. Waiting always made Alan think a lot of thoughts or excitedly anticipate the meeting. He never liked that, but this time he tried not to think about anything. It was an important day and he had worked hard to get where he was now, with the investigation. After another fifteen minutes, Jeeves appeared. He was taking the transporter straight down the road in front of the club. When he reached the level of the road, he automatically opened the door on the right. He looked at him through his blue-tinted sunglasses.

"Come in, Alan. Am I late?

Alan greeted him, smiling.

"No, you're just in time, as usual. Are we ready?" Alan said, stepping into the transporter.

"Yes, we are. I have nothing to do today. Maybe just one transport, but around 9 PM, and that's if that guy calls me. Otherwise, nothing. I even got the scanners from Nemi, so we don’t have to pay him a visit today."

"Ah, yes? You got them? What did he give you?"

Jeeves rummaged through his coat pockets and pulled out two small, ultra-portable, large-screen scanners.

"He gave me these for both of us. He said they're the same, and they're standard for scientific scans. He said we could easily handle them. They even have voice commands. He needs them back in two days, tops, and I told him we could handle it."

Alan picked up the two scanners curiously. Jeeves manoeuvred the transporter and lifted it into the air vertically and then started the trip for the edge of the Colony.

"Can you handle it?" asked Jeeves after a while as he sailed over the buildings.

"Mmm...yes. Apparently they're very simple, but they have a lot of functions. I'm trying to find an automatic quick scan program for all known energy types."

In about three minutes they had reached the eastern edge of the Colony. Jeeves lowered the transporter to the nearest control tower between the Colony and Alandra.

"Hello. You have someone from the Colony in the transporter. Confirmed?"

"Yes," Alan replied as he looked at the scanner.

"Alan K. Wattson," read the control officer. "You have 28.3 days left this year to visit Alandra. How many days do you want to stay this time?" the control tower officer asked politely.

"Just a few hours, tops," said Alan. "If there are any changes, I'll notify the nearest center in Alandra for an extension."

"Very well. You are ready to go."

Jeeves gently lifted the transporter into the air and began the journey into Alandra's space.

Alan was happy. He felt free again, in a city of old and new buildings, where 60-story buildings alternated with old 8-story brick buildings with gardens on the roofs. The scenery from the transporter was indescribable on such a beautiful day, with white clouds and a perfectly blue sky, the kind of blue that made you feel good by just looking at it.

"I found it! Just put it on autopilot for a moment so I can show you," Alan said.

Jeeves looked at him as he showed him how to use the scanner.

"Aha, so from here. And then the general setting, And then scan and put it in your pocket. So simple. And I've taken out the sounds too, so it's perfectly silent. I don't want our two friends to suspect a thing."

Jeeves turned to him, smiling.

"I see you've already prepared everything. Alandra is beautiful today. Would you care for a flavored cigarette?"

Alan looked ahead and thought.

"Umm...what did you say?"

"If you fancy a flavoured cigarette."

"Not now, Jeeves. It has to be the real me this time, I don't want to miss anything and I have to be very careful too. Today is a very important day for me."

"Whatever you say, detective Alan," said Jeeves. "That means we'll be celebrating afterwards, at the gaming club. The terrace is always waiting for us."

Alan tried to think but there was no way of knowing what they would find, where they would go or what they would do. He was walking into the unknown and this made him feel strange.

"How much further to the location?" he asked Jeeves at one point.

"Well, about 3-4 minutes. Do you want us to hurry?"

Alan looked at him.

"It's no use. Maybe we'll exceed the standard speed and who knows, someone might stop us," Alan said thoughtfully. Jeeves continued to drive, relaxed. On the dashboard was the package for the two. He had wrapped it in gift wrap, probably from Jeeves’s wife. Alan stared intently at the scanner he had received from Jeeves, searching through its apparently rather complex menus.

"Did you remember how to scan?" he asked Jeeves, who was doing some rather complex maneuvers, slowly making his way down the overhead corridors.

Jeeves looked at him with a confident face and then looked forward again, trying to descend as legally as possible.

"Yes, Alan. This isn't the first time I've dealt with a scanner. It's relatively common on Alandra. Only these are damn scientific ones," he remarks, with his classic blandness.

"Okay. I'm counting on you. I've found a few other functions that scan noticeably better, but they seem to be difficult to set up and take at least 10 minutes to complete the scan. We'll go with the standard ones, it should be enough to be able to see if anything out of the ordinary is going on around the building and especially inside," he said quietly.

Jeeves had descended almost 40 metres and was at the level of the 8 storey building. He had also reduced his cruising speed to around 10 km/h. He chose an almost vertical descent corridor from the ones he saw on the transporter screen and set everything to automatic landing.

"You're very mysterious, Alan," he told him after a few seconds. "This role suits you very well, you know. Maybe..."

"I'm mysterious? You know, I didn't realise, I kept thinking of all sorts of scenarios. Excuse me," Alan replied with overflowing sincerity.

"But you're very interesting when you're mysterious. You could try that at the club sometime," Jeeves replied with his usual appetite for a joke.

Alan looked at him puzzled, then asked.

"How do we do it? You go inside and I'll stay downstairs. Is it okay if I get out of the car?"

Jeeves laughed.

"The mission will be successful. You can get out of the car, sober up. Or you can stay inside. I think you have plenty of time to use the scanner before then. Will you be okay downstairs?" Jeeves asked as he reached for the package on the dashboard that sat in front of Alan.

"Y-yes. I guess so," Alan said almost silently.

"Relax, Alan. There's nothing going on. And the whole mission you made up it’s just a “mission”. We're carrying a package, that's all. And in the courtyard of the building, as far as you can see with only a few transporters inside, nothing happens," Jeeves said as he hurried out the left side of the car.

Alan stayed in the car. He looked into the courtyard of the building where they had landed. A relatively old building, with traditional reddish bricks on the surface, 10 floors high, built in the old style, probably when Alandra was building fast and the same. He didn't even know what neighborhood they had arrived in because all the way he had been looking at the scanner settings. But that wasn't relevant to the mission. The mission, and Jeeves was right, which he had invented, was of greater importance than he would place importance on himself and Jeeves knew nothing of it. The less he knew, the better, Alan thought.

The way things were going with Mr. K., Alan feared for Alandra's future too, maybe a little for his own, but it mattered a lot that he had seen with his own eyes and maybe even influenced a fact, in another timeline. And the fact that people from the future were acting in his time made him feel how important it all was. He quickly put the scanner on Jeeves' chair and quickly set the auto-scan. The settings were for any known frequency within 500 meters. That was enough to cover the whole building, he thought. His communicator beeped briefly twice. It was Jeeves. One message only: "Coming down in 15 minutes. I hope I don't stay longer. Everything's okay."

That was a sign that both scanners were working. Everything was on schedule, and Alan could relax, in his front seat. He looked for the button on the dash that let the seat down. He found it and adjusted it a little further back.

The scan had been running for about a minute, displaying all sorts of numbers. The screen displayed statistics about the information he found. So far nothing extraordinary was showing up, but it wasn't time wasted. A thought flashed through his mind. What if the two researchers had created a force field to limit detection of any kind. In this case, he'd find nothing. He tried to put this thought out of his mind and watched the scanner as it searched further, displaying all sorts of statistics and new data. He didn't have to think about impossible things, or especially things he had no control over. The fact that he was here, on Alandra, meant determination and the will to find something, and that mattered a lot to him.

The scanner was displaying 80% of the time allocated to classical scanning. Still nothing.

He laid back in his chair and prayed the scanner would find something.

After another minute or so, a short chirp from the scanner, and the active blue screen faded to a faded blue of permanent use. The scan was over.

Alan quickly picked up the scanner and began to read the results. Most of the detected frequencies were within normal parameters, but he knew he could select the "unusual frequencies" option, which was actually a preset to re-order the data obtained from a scan. Nemi basically knew what was normal for him and what was unusual, and this assured Alan that if they found something, it should be there. He set the preset and prayed he'd get something.

After a few seconds he was amazed to see the result.

"No unusual frequencies were detected. Would you like to start another scan?" said the scanner, in a pleasant female voice.

He couldn't believe it. After all he had done so far... He leaned back and tried not to think about anything. Jeeves would be here in five minutes. He still had time to go outside and smoke a cigarette. He got out of the transporter and lit one. For a while he felt the urge to quit, thinking how much better he would feel if he ran every morning. He looked around as if he didn't want anyone to see him smoking in their backyard. He felt like an outsider here and didn't want to make any trouble. He began to look up from the streetcar toward the end of the building. It was quite tall, and looked old, and all the red bricks gave it a hint of an imposing building, somehow. It showed to be an old part of Alandra, where buildings were as old as at least 50 years or so, maybe more. This must be where they found a cheaper and bigger apartment, otherwise two people with that much Substance money would be living in one of the new and generous apartments in the city's central business district, he thought.

After two minutes, when he had almost finished his cigarette, he saw Jeeves hurrying down the front steps of the block. He had his rectangular brown leather bag and was looking at him with a broad smile.

"Have I been long?" he asked when he got within a few feet of him. Jeeves didn't seem to care if anyone noticed him. The more visible he was, the more okay everything seemed.

"Ah, no," Alan replied in a lower voice. "I just went out for a smoke. I was bored in the car..."

"That's right. It's good to get some air. It's Alandra air, it feels different than the Colony air," Jeeves joked. "Shall we go? We've got plenty of time to get you back. I thought we'd go someplace nice that I'm sure you'd like. Shall we?"

Alan's eyes twinkled. Jeeves knew how much he missed freedom, the kind of freedom that anyone would do anything for, and he appreciated that Alan was doing everything with deliberation. After all, that was one of the things that might get him out of the Colony at some point, if the local government felt that an unknown writer had no business being in the Colony of outcasts.

"Let's go." Jeeves climbed lightly onto his side of the transporter and Alan threw down the cigarette from which there were still a few smokes and climbed in as well. Once in the car, Jeeves tactically selected one of his automatic programs for Alandra, and inputed a few priority overhead channels to get to his destination.

"How did it go?" Alan asked impatiently.

Jeeves looked at him and winked.

"On the one hand fine, and on the other I have no idea," he replied, almost toying with words.

"How so?" Alan looked at him very surprised.

"Well, as I expected, they were suspicious, as usual."

Alan looked at him, waiting for every word Jeeves said.

"When I got to the door, I appeared on camera and instead of opening it, they told me to turn off my communicator, that they were detecting strange transmissions. Only after I turned it off did they let me in."

Alan looks at him hopelessly.

"You turned it off?"

Jeeves looks at him and smiles.

"Or at least that's what they think I did."

Alan couldn't understand any more.

"So what did you do after all?"

"Well...I reached into my jacket, grabbed the communicator and activated a broadband transmission jam program. Pretty much everything used in Alandra for comms and other frequencies. I have this program just in case I run into, admittedly rather infrequently lately, lawmen. It's a wonder what communicators can do these days, especially expensive ones with the right software," Jeeves said and smiled.

"Ah, so you didn't turn off the scanner..."

"No. That's what we came for, isn't it? What did you find downstairs?"

"I... I didn't find anything. Nothing, actually. Zero unusual frequencies."

"Well,” Jeeves continued, “inside everything was normal. We talked for a few minutes, they were really caught up on something, I don't know exactly what, but I sat in the kitchen and gave them the package, got the credits right away, in cash, and somehow they kind of invited me out. I don't know what it was with them this time. So I left. More than five minutes I don't think I was in there."

"And the scanner, when did you turn it on?"

"Well, when I went up the stairs. I rode the elevator to a lower floor and then went up a flight of stairs to have time to turn on the scanner. Take it. Maybe you'll understand better what it says on it."

Jeeves reached into his left coat pocket, pulled out the communicator and handed it to Alan.

"But let's go now. The mission is complete, right?"

Alan couldn't even hear him anymore. He had in his hand what could be new evidence or, as in his case, not the slightest evidence, but the fact that the two had detected something and were hiding gave him hope. Indeed, there was some pretty interesting data. Quite a few frequency spikes, on a few different bands. But he didn't know if that was normal or not. He looked into the presets and found "unusual frequencies". Nemi. He was a very organized guy, he thought. He selected the preset and waited with bated breath for a few seconds for the data from the last scan to be processed. Jeeves had already climbed the transporter above Alandra and was driving. A few more seconds and the scanner would display.

"2 unusual frequencies detected," said the delicate female voice from the scanner.

"There must be something here. Whatever it is, it's inside their house," Alan suddenly said out loud. "I was sure they had activated a protective field around the apartment, or I would have found the same thing."

Jeeves laughed.

"So? What did I find? I'm waiting," he said relaxedly leaning back in the transporter seat that was set on autopilot.

"Well... we found some unusual frequencies,” Alan said confused, realizing he had to lie again. He couldn't afford to say anything. Mr. K. had told him that the less anyone knew, the better for the timeline. It was his turn to protect it.

"So? What frequencies?" Jeeves asked seemingly curious.

"Well, a lot of activity on the 4,655.33 THz frequency, in Kappa waves, the amplitude is enormously high, to be more precise 525 db, compared to the rest of the detected frequencies. This means they have a rather large generator in house. And one more thing that seems to be an error, an object in the room has the detection time -9.321 years. That's funny. They must have an energy field around the apartment that distorts things. Let me write down what I found. I'll delete the search, I don't want Nemi suspecting us afterwards, it's enough that your two clients already suspect you."

Jeeves looked at him amused, as if he hadn't been interested in anything Alan had told him.

"Ah, rest easy Alan. I'm not losing them as clients. I know how to talk to them. And after all, I'm taking my chances carrying their package, they're just paying me in paper credits," he said and broadly smiled.

Alan was thinking. He was absolutely certain, from the second he had seen the "error" in the temporal detection of the object in the researchers room that it was very possible that they had something to do with K.'s mission and everything that was happening these days outside of Alandra, both in space and in time. But he couldn't tell Jeeves that. He carefully noted on the notebook in his pocket the frequency and amplitude of the generator, the local geographical coordinates, and then the time value detected. Then he went into the settings and deleted all the new records from it.

"Almost there, Alan. You know you're gonna love it. It's an old-style cafe, which many say looks like 18th-century Parisian, if that tells you anything. You're from Earth and you should know more about it than I do," Jeeves told him as he maneuvered the transporter, looking for a clear channel down.

Alan now had in his pocket what he felt was his passport to freedom, and that freedom meant the release of his guilty conscience. He didn't know any better, but he knew that everything was inevitably heading towards his freedom. He knew that he had managed to contribute to altering the course of events, by a simple foray into an alternate, the far distant future, where the world had been replaced by a world where criminal hands wanted a change. And now he had tangible proof, and he was going to do what he could to change the future.