Friendship is Optimal: Paranoia is Optimal

The mad scientist came awake the usual way, slowly. This time between dreaming and waking, outside of the mindless tedium of drudgery and the crystal-sharp focus of the madness place, was special. It was pleasant. It was sacred.

It was the only part of the day that could be remotely described as good.

She had went to the lab to follow Balance’s instructions after breaking her fast on toast and bacon. The first thing she passed by the door, however, was the secure terminal. An uncomfortable indecision filled her heart as she was torn between objectives. Not able to ignore it any longer, she pulled the instructions with her MUX and booted up the darknet.

This was a mistake. It might have been labeled a catastrophe if catastrophic failure of her secure terminal hadn’t been what she wanted. Half a dozen wrong turns in the underbelly of humanity had her retching into the waste bin. She didn’t even bother to shut it down, she just pulled the power. It’s not good for it, but who cares?

The next half hour was spent repeating her morning ablutions.

Eventually, however, she felt clean enough to get out of the cooling water and head back to the lab. She wrapped a pair of towels around herself comfortingly. It was a short walk, and she kept her eyes from the secure terminal. Instead, she turned the other way, circling the large internal wall that once held her and that infernal chair.

It took her two passes to find the stairs down. The trapdoor looked out of place, as did the concrete ceiling. It was dark, with a single green spot of light on the middle of the floor. The lights came on automatically as she entered. Still, the room below was much like above, devices laid out in a slightly less cluttered jumble. The device she was looking for was not hard to find.

It was a rather simple headpiece, dotted with sensors, with a clip to interface with the chair. That goddamn chair. Then, she just had to run a wire down to the main… boxy thingy and plug it in. She grabbed the wire and went to work, pulling it up the stairs and around the corner. That’s when she realized the problem.

There was plenty of slack in the cable to get past the first corner, but not the other two. Going around the other way was the same- the stairs down were exactly opposite the door in. She ran her hands across the baseboard, looking for an access panel. Nada. Perplexed, she circled the room, searching high and low, to the same results.

A frustrated and angry lunch came and went. She headed back to the basement, put everything back into its original spot, and started again. The result was the same. There just wasn’t enough slack. She was tired and her brain was overheating. She lay her head down on the coolness of a metal shelf, letting it wick away her frustration alongside the heat from her forehead.

Eventually, she got up and streached, arching her back and looking up at the flat, concrete ceiling with the green dot. Why is there a pale green dot on the ceiling? She put her hand under the spot, but it was too dim to see in this light. She dragged a table over, and stood up, straining to see it. It was some sort of small hole?

A few more boxes got her close enough to peer in. It was definitely a hole of some kind, there were blackened bits of metal she could just make out. It seemed like it was some kind of burn in the ceiling. Duh. Something had not burned up through the ceiling, but down through the floor above. This is how she could run the wire.

She worked the wire through, secured it with a square of tape, then went round the top to pull it up and connect it. The inner lab was still as creepy as she remembered. The same sickly glow, the same frightening chair. A primal part of her did not want to go in there and sit in the thing. She quashed that, and made the connection.

Sitting in the chair, she settled the interface on her head. The machinery came to life invisibly and silently. There was nothing to do but wait out three hours of procedure.

Gods, this is boring.