The Walter Experiment

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.…

“You are as hateful of my surprise as your friend, Mr. Fang.” Detective S took it upon herself to get in his car without his permission, the beginning of her intrusions into his peacefully isolated day.

The drink he had just purchased the last of would surely be missed if she continued to guzzle the creamy, sugary treat, and her ride would never begin. These small shops were meant to be the grass root homegrown portion of the Mega Mart corporate family, but for legal reasons, they needed to remain distinguishable from each other due to problem brands that could only stay in business catering below the poverty line. The tiny little street is kissed lightly by the sun peeking between the buildings of the downtown center, bustling as it does with hoovering toys that are all the rage and light bikes of those who find good uses for scrap. Walter, for the most part, relaxed, given the claims growing of a Gold City conspiracy. Amongst the chatter, Tessi had created a little piece of Scorpion Arches through plenty of the out-of-date channels and a stellar reputation. Her mark when performing technical disruptions on a massive scale, the written code’s trademark was highly regarded. After years of searching, a cell of badlands found it and kept her secret. As Detective S provided this update, she looked through his compartments, checked his dash console, and went through the paperwork under her seat. “Are you going to drive?”

“Is there somewhere you need to be, Miss?”

“The conversation we need to have must be in a safe and quiet location. A stolen car on a crowded street in front of a shop constantly getting robbed by schoolchildren is no beuno.”

“I have a place not far—”

“Tessi’s. It’s best we have this conversation at once.”

“I would like you to introduce yourself and tell what you want, or you and Tessi can start the shindig, and please see the sights while you find your own way round by yourself. People attempting to make another move quickly never think to just explain themselves and get it out in the open, so the drive isn’t interrupted by this conversation. I enjoy my drives.”

“You should call. Let her know we’re coming.”

“Haven’t been in contact with her for thirty years; maybe more.”

“It’s the number marked Tessi 787G,” she said, handing him a small phone older than he had ever seen. Since he hesitated, she dialed it and placed it on speaker. “Say hello,” she whispered.

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“Your friend Detective S gave it to me. Ring any alarms?”

“Drop her off at these coordinates.”

The abruptly lost connection was not a surprise, at least compared to hearing his friend’s voice for the first time in two decades. “Her tone could use some work.”

“Try not to be followed. I may nap.”

The unbelievable Detective S slept for most of the seven-hour ride, where Walter did some much-needed updating. Turns out Detective S does some miraculous disappearing herself. Seemingly appearing in a Red State precinct, suddenly finds herself on a task force handling some dark secrets removed from hard drives startling the unsavory communities everywhere she has been. In fact, she’s currently on a classified mission with her team of elite and expensive Spec ops experts in hostile recoveries. Also, in fact, Walter hadn’t been in the vicinity of someone this dangerous in a long while, yet not enough for his past reflexes to not restore themselves back to their original ways, except Tessi wouldn’t answer. He assumed she had taken precautions, but his ideas came down to jumping out of this stolen car and heading into the desert. They were getting close, some rest areas representing the fallen Scorpion Aches capitol 5.0 calling their name by spelling it in heat waves rising off the surface. “Sometimes I forget places like this still exist.”

“What, deserts?”

“People-less places void of bacteria where this planet fades back to its unspoiled beauty as desolate as it can be.”

“Get out; I need both of you,” she said.

“Your chauffeur is done for the day--”

And with that, she whipped out a beast of a pulse hand cannon that glowed a bright neon orange before blowing the back wheel clean off the car. “Huh, that’s a new one,” she uttered, throwing the weapon in the trash as she headed inside. Upon entering, he was faced with armed goons aimed not only at his head but his forearms. Tessi had the detective picking up a bag of crisps from the broken vending machine.

“I’d like to suggest we speak clearly and promptly since these fellas seem a bit twitchy for the price range.”

“Tessi, I came here to let you kill me. That’s my bad. I know too much, but I think you should hear me out, and my life is yours.”

Taking the silence as an impromptu time to negotiate, Detective S stole a pack of smokes on the counter, slowly helping herself. “How you seeing this going, Walter?”

“I’m surprised you care, but more to the point, there’s something powerful haunting this one.”

“They’re dead, her whole team. Agency doesn’t add up.”

“No records either. Knows enough to be against, twisted enough to be in need. How did they die, your team?”

“They couldn’t hack it. I get wild, and these rule-following droids make a lot of hard questions easy here, and tangling with me is a terrible idea, but none of us have a choice.” Detective S found a comfortable position to lean while they continued their back and forth.”

“You think she knows…?” Tessi asked.

“I think she knows…?” Walter asked with a quick glow from under his blue shirt sleeve.

“Oh, I know who Jin Vigor is, chums. However, if I tell you, we are intertwined with each other. Have to protect my co-conspirator.”

The terms were laid out as clearly as they liked, but the two weren’t in sync like they used to be. There have been more complex choices to make tangled in a bastardized con existence of a thief-led resistance, but in the backs of their minds, they have been praying to the almighty universe that name come up again. Their reasons currently sway like an amateur highwire act in a tornado, their years of experience flung from the top until they were clueless except for their need to know anything about that name. The weapons were holstered so her men’s untrained arms could rest and Walter could throw the switch behind the water fountain. Detective S assumed there was some hidden floor to sink into some layer, but a rocket capsule with acceleration set for a moon’s distance had her double guessing the lore. Stopping at the limits of thin oxygen, they arrived at a structure impossibly held up whilst its antennas tickled the upper atmosphere like a ghastly feather.

“I point out that you seem troubled by this,” Walter started, “the only way to stay truly off the grid with sentries over every city is to be above them. You seem so foreign, Detective S.”

“Just not the windy heights type,” she responded, stepping onto the platform and following Tessi to the elevator. Walter wouldn’t stop staring, and once he really zeroed in on the eye contact and the color behind her hair, that seemed just done up enough to constitute a style, although what it’s called is lost to time. “The less you worry, the better this will go for you.”

“Is that right,” Detective S said smugly, spitting on the floor.

“Especially since there is no wind.”

The ride up took a bit more adjusting compensation for the variations between gravity and the knock-off humanity claims to be revolutionary the wrong way amongst the artificial gravity studiers. Walter marveled at what she had accumulated over the last couple of decades. She adamantly despised the empire type gaining wealth to sit on it and bend people over backward for stories over platinum hors d’oeurves, but this has become a scrappy blip no one is sure they saw on the radar. It carried her ancient Punk style that warmed her heart so, but these poorly dressed anti-establishment employees were on the mark in every sense of the word. This wasn’t a guided tour; however, S was led further up to a room of hardware that displayed an active search for any information existing on the planet on the subject in question. Detective S wondered whether she should inquire with added pressure or, simpler, do her own detective work at their expense.

Shutting the door behind them and clicking a very ominous switch under her desk Tessi sat down on her sofa under a very peculiar painting. Walter found himself a drink amongst the cabinets lost in it and joined her on the opposite end. Since they didn’t take the time to provide her with reasonable seating in any way, she grabbed the chair behind the desk, rolling it over to kick her feet on her glass table. “Let’s go over the facts so the three of us won’t get careless later on.” Detective S stole Walter’s drink, downed it, and continued. “one-hundred-one years ago; Jin Vigor sent a vague transmission of an easy job that no one would take due to the lack of information. The one team that tried a previous Jin Vigor job died and was exposed and court-martialed leading to one member of the crew receiving the death penalty.” This was news to the two of them, but they figured it wasn’t significant enough to interrupt her with it and let her finish. “As desperate you two were for a win, you took the job. While you planned to find the secret room of the former Count of Gold City, Walter chatted up Count Morte before going off and doing the actual job that didn’t involve tricking people’s implants from sending generous donations to the starving thief fund.”

“I hate to say, Tessi, that’s exactly what they donated to.”

“We should send gift baskets,” Tessi smiled, but Detective S proceeded.

“The job wasn’t clear, and I gather you weren’t even given proper prep, and that’s when Walter was given forced surgery enhancements.”

“First, there was a key, then there was a room he had to find that not even the Count knew about,” Tessi added.

“He knew something to put a team in the hall,” Walter added.

“It registered you as a new user, strapped you down, and gave you what you needed to complete the job. Even gave you time to get cleaned up and dressed, which means it wasn’t meant to be destroyed but found, and it didn’t matter who found it as long as it was removed before the protection measure kicked in.”

“So I didn’t trigger it.”

“That’s what most believe, but we think the original Count felt that their heir would mature into someone that could handle the power, but they never did or couldn’t find it or was just out, we don’t know for sure, but the Noir Fire is not something that could be held in captivity forever. Even with unlimited resources, so it was bound to take the castle eventually. Since Count Morte knew nothing of its origins in the castle, I think you arrived minutes before an inevitability.”

“Okay, so it was a curse given to anyone wild enough to even make it where no one has; what does this Vigor character want.”

“See, that’s where we need you. The tech in your body has the information, but thirty years and you’re not ahead of me means it may need to be unlocked or brought to the surface to accomplish whatever goal is in Jin Vigor’s mind or will be. Be glad no one but Count Morte recognized you during his trial.”

“And Jin Vigor is,” Tessi asked.

“Please be patient with me, but the truth truly is, they don’t exist yet, and you need to keep that quiet.”

“Hey, Tessi, what door leads to the room for betrayers and unholy liars.”

“Well, since you ask, Walter, it’s that smooth action, easy-to-use panel over there, next to the window facing the moon. She’d, for example, would be ten miles out, and without a pressurized chamber, we wouldn’t feel the air so much as a ruffling in our hair.”

“The mechanism spins so smoothly; you would be warm then maybe suddenly not. I think it was detailed on the box.”

“Hear me out. The technological capabilities of your society haven’t reached that far, and the former, former Count, was an astrophysicist before his reign began, gaining power with risky experiments that jeopardized many lives, which became the cause of his sudden and tragic downfall and death. Am I wrong?”

“No,” Tessi answered, “but we were in Red State before that, so the details were not needed at the time.”

“Speak of the devil because I was helping solve the issue he had mistakenly caused towards the end of his duty. It was a repeating anomaly that was causing more damage than the news was allowed to report on, thanks to the joint effort with the Red State president. I’m beginning to believe that the anomaly they were covering up was an attempt to see the future with only one thing actually surviving the journey back.”

“Jin Vigor?”

“No, but here’s the schematics for Walter’s enhancements. Signed, Jin Vigor. All meant for his cultist followers.”

The bittersweet revelation forced Walter to get a drink and, out of habit, brought one for Tessi as well. She was flustered by the gesture but toasted with him feeling similarly to his ‘one step forward two steps back into quicksand’ of his recent momentum. “Interesting as that is, we need proof because it sounds like you just spoke a paradox into existence, Detective. If teleportation is still half a century off, we’ve focused away from some real mission, and something broke the space-time continuum to send it back. I can see this could only make sense given our limited time left to accomplish the task despite our limited time.”

“Okay, Tessi,” Detective S asked, “what time scale are you working on.”

“Wow, you aren’t just an out-of-towner; you’re centuries off the mark, Detective. Where are you from?” Walter’s questions clearly sparked a moment of silence kin to someone without an answer, but there wasn’t much she seemed to be able to express.

“He’s got a point. We figured on the way to your Jin talk, you’d explain your motives in all this, but this Detective isn’t carrying as much weight as she thinks.”

She tried to steal Walter’s drink again, but no good thief falls for the same trick twice, and they quickly showed her where the bar was and which was ethanol more than the composite blend of electrolytes, heavy hallucinogens, and low-grade poisons that no longer have the same effect with mechanical organs. After a sip, a gulp, then a final sip, for some reason, Detective S leaned back in her chair, asking, “well, Walter, what has your arm been telling you for the last thirty-one years.”

There was nothing at first, only listening to the sucking teeth waiting for him to stop stalling. The pressure devised solely of stares broke through his cynicism. “Other than a few odd surprise arrivals that went completely wrong and the wait for further instructions, message, I can’t say anything new has happened in those thirty years.”

“Did you ever try accessing them in an outside server that can decrypt the pieces your brain hasn’t adjusted to yet?”

This had not been done, let alone given any consideration since he split with Tessi, and their condescending looks displayed the shame he should be feeling, except he found none. He had been forced to take on responsibilities he didn’t ask for because if the opportunity arose, he knew the right decision would never even find its way outside the realms of his hindsight. He lied when he said he did loner odd jobs entirely, leaving out the three jobs where he messed up in spectacular fashion. He became too tired to be the getaway for all members and left two behind. Bigger score for sure, but they were a family circus of thieves, and losing one led to three suicides over the next five years. The second worst catastrophe left two going to a supermax prison most think is a myth but exists only in Reaper Tundra, where even the guards are trapped nine months out of the year due to charge earning a sentence of community service. The third would be considered the worst of all, but no witnesses could confirm the response or the assailants involved. Everyone died but him and what was allegedly stolen was not worth the effort of the Grey Port government, nor could Walter recover it if the question came up. Partially he feels it was the fault of the overzealous few; however, what they had uncovered seemed to be for a terrible cause that shouldn’t see the light of day anyway, not that these heroics would matter to twenty-nine dead. He worryingly kept this from Tessi and avoided the embarrassment of her relentless insults of so-called poetic justice.

His flat ‘no’ caused suspicion in Tessi, and her look sparked the keen eyes of Detective S, who found his over innocent act laid on far too thick to ignore. She only remained silent to switch the lead position to Tessi. What Detective S didn’t understand was their relative respect for keeping the past where the hell it is, and with the tight-lipped gang returning, she returned her energy towards something else. “What’s happening to the earth?”

“Essentially, times up. They had been talking about the core cooling for a while, but the accelerating of said cooling along with the growing solar flare-like activity, there isn’t much to do against nature taking its course.”

“There’s nothing to be changed to save the planet or the people at least?” Detective S asked. A couple of head shakes later; she uttered, “The human race finally discovers immortality, and the ground beneath your feet suffers from old age. You guys still use irony, right.”

An alert rang from Tessi’s desk display showing a Black level event happening on one of the lower floors. As serious as this was, she only felt the need to check it out when the reason for the Black level emergency since this involved a breach of some kind with the transmission being too cluttered to understand correctly. Walter refused to leave her side and found himself motivated to see the possible cute faces under those uniformed masks that followed behind diligently. Detective S, rejected at first, was allowed to join thanks to Walter exclaiming, “she needs to get a feel for her new environment.”

The elevator zipped down, yet on the problematic floor, the emergency protocols prevented the doors from opening and judging by the lack of life signs, there was a good reason why. She needed to close the hole before the structure’s integrity was thoroughly compromised. Unable to open the door, Tessi checked her live schematics. The screen she had to work with provided an estimated view of the commotion behind the door, given the last scans from the sensors before the breach. The body count was brutality in motion. “Pay attention, Walter. The manual emergency lever is three meters from the breach. I set the safety precautions, so all you have to do is pull.”

“Your assumptions that I have that kind of control is comforting, but I must admit, you ask too much.”

“Go on,” Detective S interjected, “save her people. Couldn’t you use the practice?”

The implication that he was on deck for the hero role broke through his suave façade, and he started breathing deeply, not to hold but to put as much oxygen in his head as possible. The psyche-up lasted far longer than expected. Once they bothered to ask whether he was going for the leap, he was gone. Then back, hyperventilating, having gone too far, needing a second to catch his breath. “I got it. Shut up. I GOT IT.” Again he was gone in a blink of deep blue electricity, raw enough to excite goosebumps, leaving a slight glow that faded the longer he was gone. The muffled sounds faded as well, but neither woman felt comfortable hitting the open doors button, and no sound came from outside. Then the lights in the lift turned red.

Judging by the deep breaths and frantic psyching up he required, she lit a cigarette and asked, “Which floor puts me in Earth’s atmosphere? I’d rather fall to the ground than float in the void; you know what I mean?”

Tessi’s face twisted as if a form of delirium temporarily stole her personality, and she simply responded, “I—no.” The door parted, and each acted the way they thought best, with Detective S choosing a powerfully wrong inhale, but there was no following suction to cause alarm. After a peak through the gap, she pulled on the left door until Detective S picked up on the hint.

Amongst the damage was Walter helping those brave lucky few who could remain on board in the bitter, bitter cold to their feet. Not knowing where or if there was a medical floor, he sent them past their leader, who visually checked on all of them before letting the healing begin. The station had plenty of empty floors for storage or excess data farm equipment, but this was merely luggage stolen items they had little use for, meaning personnel was the most significant loss. Watching them drift away soon to burn up on re-entry if they’re lucky made it tragic. “Look at that; I saved your hidden stash.”

“That’s not funny,” Tessi shouted, “I lost people, you evil fucking half-wit.”

“Yeah, it took me three tries to land. I am aware. I can’t speak for the initial break, but six more flew out while I worked out the details. And they say nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I didn’t need to hear what I saw as their new permanent expressions.”

“Over thirty-one years, and you have no clue still.”

“How about being nothing but a tool for everyone but myself? Or trying to cope with a device I can’t remove, specs don’t exist, and reacts as my nervous twitches. I was in the shower once, nearly slipped on some soap, fell naked in that fuck all long river in north Devil’s Congo. You left!”

“You weren’t the same.”

“No shit, Love. Every crook, grifter, panhandler, the government has great use for what I can do, and you were the one I counted onto still wanted to work with me with integrity.”

“I never wanted you—”

“Not like that; you were a friend, asshole. I went from partner to tool in three weeks flat after over two and a half centuries, no less. Then I was something that could get you the money you needed, the revenge you sought after. The only apology you’ll get from me is that I didn’t ditch you sooner.”

Detective S let them squabble, finding it rather peculiar that the system would just fail. Whilst she knew very little technologically, sabotage looks pretty apparent no matter how advanced. At the manual controls, she thought it was poorly placed for emergencies, but who was she to judge? She followed the scorched marks on the wall where it appears wires were overcharged and needed you to know about it. The evidence of a malfunction led her to a panel that seemed simple enough until she opened the thin metal cover to see more lights and wires than she thought possible without terrible and constant complications. Whole bundles of wires were cut in front of lights flashing blue or off entirely. “Hey, Dingus and Dangus, sidebar that shit, you may have a villain in your ranks.” As they rushed over for a look, Detective S honestly wondered, “is it supposed to look like that because humans may have changed, but your craftsmanship is still good old dog shit.”

“Could it have been an accident?” Walter asked.

“The switch you pulled normally causes damage; thus, it’s only a last-ditch effort when all others are offline-only, but no, these wires aren’t frayed. What were they even doing in here? ‘Control, see that the four in the infirmary don’t leave until I speak with them.’”

“Copy.”

“I know we have a tremendous load with you two being here, but I have to take care of this now. Don’t get in my way.” Tessi quickly left for the elevator. “Head back to the top floor; there are other rooms up there. Stay out of my shit, Detective, and especially you, Walter.”

“Why did I get the ‘especially,’ and you’re a sleuth?”