“Can I get a quarter-inch flat-head, please?”
Sherri listlessly scanned the rack of screwdrivers, and plucked out the requested size. She handed it to Nexus Quinn, who was lying face up on the floor of the basement, head underneath one of the many large coils that were arranged along the wall. He unscrewed a hatch, and pointed a handheld device at it. The device was small, and had a numeric LCD screen similar to a timer, at which he was squinting.
“What is that thing?” she asked him.
He poked his head out, looking at her. “It’s just an EMF meter. I’m checking for possible leaks of electromagnetic energy that could have fried my drives. If it was one of my components that caused this, it could do damage to a lot more than some floppy disks if I don’t fix it.”
Sherri nodded, as he closed up the hatch, and shimmied along to the next coil. She looked across the room at John, who was captivated by the crystal storage device that Quinn had placed on the desk in preparation for the data restoration. It was a small machine with a single quartz crystal inside, and a series of lasers pointing towards it from several directions.
John had his handlink out and was scanning it from every angle; his enthusiastic demeanour was like a kid in a candy store.
“Steph, can you pass me a half inch spanner, please?”
Sherri selected the spanner. His hand was outstretched to receive it, though his meter device was already occupying it, so she carefully placed it on the floor beside. He grabbed it with the ends of his fingers.
“Thanks.”
After a moment of clanging, he slid along to the next coil, repeating his work.
“This thing is amazing…” she heard John mumble. “The data is carved into the crystal in microscopic detail. It can’t be erased, so that makes it perfect for long term storage… and this one quartz point, alone, has tens of terabytes of storage capacity. Incredible. I wonder if he’s got the schematics somewhere.”
“Can you pass me some needle-nose pliers, Steph?”
Sherri fought the urge to sigh, and leaned over to hand him the pliers.
“Here,” she said, placing them in his hand.
“Oh, here, put this back too…” he said, using his other hand to thrust the screwdriver at her. The pointed end went right into her hand, and she cried out.
“Oh, jeez, sorry!” Quinn said, crawling out from his position. “Are you okay?”
Sherri sucked on her new wound. “Well, it hurts, but it’s nothing serious,” she said. “Just… watch what you’re doing, Quinn.”
Quinn stood, and took her hand, looking at the puncture, which was beginning to ooze blood.
“Ugh. I’m such a jerk,” he said. “Come on, I’ll patch you up.”
He led her upstairs, and brought her into the kitchen, where he got a first aid kit out of the drawer.
Gingerly, he started cleaning her cut with an alcohol swab.
“Sorry,” he said. “I get a bit carried away when I’m focused on my work. Forget to notice things right in front of me.”
Sherri raised an eyebrow, and thought about what else that might apply to.
“We don’t get much time together, do we?” she asked. “Just the two of us, I mean.”
He looked up at her with an unreadable expression. “I guess not.”
“Seems like you and Wade get more time together than us,” she continued. He dropped his gaze back to her hand, and grabbed a band-aid, peeling it open.
“Do we? I guess I’m working so much I didn’t notice,” he lied, as he put the bandage on her.
Sherri kept a poker face. “I think she had a crush on you when you used to work together at the computer store.”
He looked up, studying her face. She wasn’t sure what was going on in his head, but his energy had changed, and it put her on edge.
“Yeah, maybe. But, I was already involved with you, so she knew to keep her distance.” His words came out slow and deliberate.
Sherri rubbed her hand, breaking eye contact. She felt like he was playing chess and she was playing checkers.
“I’m sure she did.”
He stood. “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll go finish up.”
And with that, he hurried out of the room, leaving Sherri with a nervous feeling.
* * *
John was intensely frustrated that he couldn’t touch this storage device. He just wanted to open it up and figure it out. If he could integrate it into Higgins, it would improve efficiency by a substantial margin. He thought he had the gist of how it worked, but without at least some schematics, it would take him a lot of trial and error to build his own.
As he tried to stick his head into the middle of the device, in the hopes to see some of the circuitry, he realised Quinn was returning from upstairs. He glanced up, seeing that Sherri wasn’t with him.
Curious, he watched Quinn bend over, picking up the tools that had been left on the floor.
He looked at the screwdriver’s tip for a moment, before moving to his desk and rifling through a drawer. He pulled out some tweezers, and plucked off the stray fleck of Sherri’s skin that clung to the tool.
John looked at him, a sinking feeling descending upon his stomach. “What are you doing…?”
Quinn inserted the sample into a small vial, and placed it under a lamp with a concentrated beam.
That’s more than just a lamp…
As the sample was illuminated, a small LCD display on the size produced a string of text that John couldn’t interpret.
“Huh…” Quinn said, biting his lip. Then he began to squint, as if he was looking at a bright light. He turned away, rubbing his eyes. “What… what is that?”
John stepped back, and quickly tapped at his handlink, re-centring himself at Sherri in the kitchen, who was sipping a glass of water. She looked up at his frantic face, and her eyes grew wide.
“Is something wrong?”
“Sherri, I think he’s on to you.” John put a nervous hand on his head, gripping his hair with his fingers.
“On to me? What do you mean? How?”
“He didn’t stab you with that flat-head by accident. He did it to get a… a sample of your cells. I don’t know what data he’s getting from it, but it’s clear he knows something’s off with you. When he was looking at your sample, he had a physiological reaction consistent with the Sensory Aura Paradox.”
Sherri had first described that phenomenon to him long ago, causing him to study it somewhat, and provide it with a name. The Quinn he had met in 1978 had first identified the SAP in a simple experiment that pierced the illusion of the Leaper Aura. It caused a visceral reaction to the brain attempting to parse contradictory stimuli, most often visual in nature.
“Oh boy,” Sherri sighed, standing. “So, I guess Plan B is go.”
“Yeah.” John nodded gravely. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Plan B?”
“Oh, I know…” Sherri gave him a sad look, as she opened the kitchen drawer and put the first aid kit back in its place.
“I hate it too,” she said, pulling out a claw hammer.