Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Wearing high heels wasn’t the best choice when following the Inspector, Chastity Galloway realized too late.

Her feet were protesting every step after they had wandered nearly three miles from the Bryant Park, down the Avenue of the Americas, Laight Street, St. John Lane, Ericcson Place, Varick Street, North Moore Street and onto Hudson Street. The Infinity Knight had held his light-spangled device mere inches from his face, which made Chastity wonder how he could see sidewalks, streets, wreckage and people that they passed on their way to this part of Tribeca. He’d even ignored the Empire State Building, which most visitors spend hours fussing over.

The Inspector came to an abrupt stop and Galloway nearly walked right into him. He spun a quarter turn to a short dark building, with three very narrow windows at the ground level. The Infinity Knight took a hesitant step toward the building and the lights on the optic pocketknife blinked faster, more in-sync. He pointed the device upward toward the sky, bringing his hands to a stop at a 135-degree angle.

“This is it!” he announced, throwing his hands up in the air.

Chastity looked over the building in the light of a couple of burning vehicles on the street nearby. The entire façade of the building appeared to be solid, with the exception of the narrow windows that she couldn’t see in since the light of the fires reflected off them. “And, just how do you expect to get in there?”

That brought the Inspector up short. He took stock of the building’s wall and realized what she’d already seen: There was no entrance to the building there. He stepped up to the wall and started running his hands across the rough bricks, as if he expected to find a secret button that would open a secret door. He worked his way from the juncture with the building on the north side to the one on the south side, went back and scanned the windows with his device.

He turned back to Galloway, looking defeated. “I don’t know.” He thought it over again, then looked as if he’d solved the problem. “We’ll climb up to the roof and find an access panel up there.”

Chastity slanted her head down and frowned at him. “You can’t be serious,” she accused him pointedly.

The Inspector looked up at the building, four stories tall, then looked back at her and laughed uneasily. “Yeah, of course I’m not serious!” he said lightly. “I was just checking to see how you’d react. There has to be a door somewhere. I mean, who’s ever heard of a building without a door?”

Galloway smiled tightly. “I’m sure you have,” she jibed.

The Inspector held up his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged,” he admitted. “But, humans can’t walk through walls, so it just wouldn’t make sense. Well, that and you haven’t developed transporter technology yet, which could make getting inside a building without a door easy.”

From the look on Galloway’s face, he knew he’d rambled about things he would’ve been better off not mentioning.

“Anyhow,” he said to turn the conversation back to the matter at hand, “the door may be on another side of the building or it may be through an adjacent building.”

The nurse gave him a small smile and nodded. “Now you’re thinking.”

The Infinity Knight rounded the corner and quickly reappeared, spreading his hands in a flourish. “I found one! I found a door!”

The nurse joined him as he worked his optic pocketknife to open the lock on the door, then they hurried through the darkness toward the building next door. The Inspector bumped into empty desks and kicked over a trash can because he was too focused on his device than the small amount of light it was producing.

Through another room and another before they got to the back of the building and searched the wall. It took several minutes before Chastity summoned him, finding a heavy iron door. It took a lot of work with the lock-picking tool on his optic pocketknife to unlock it and a little finagling to clear the rust that sealed the door shut.

The hinges hesitated and squealed as the two forced the door open and they found themselves facing a dark hole.

“Be careful,” Galloway warned as the Inspector stepped through the door way.

The light from his optic pocketknife played around the dark hallway. There seemed to be a number of discarded and disused metal safes and other security equipment. Galloway hesitantly followed him inside.

“Nothing to worry about. Just an empty building,” the Infinity Knight assured her.

“An empty building with weird alien energy pulsing away in it and disrupting power in all of New York City,” she reminded him.

“Oh, right,” he responded sheepishly.

“Just be careful,” Galloway reminded him again.

 

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

A staircase took them up three floors to the top story of the building. The emergency lighting was still active, giving them enough illumination to see the steps and the walls that surrounded them. The Inspector remained intent on his optic pocketknife, though he held it a short distance away from his body at this point. The device’s display showed more and more green lights, indicating that they were getting close to the power source.

Chastity abided by his request that she keep quiet, considering that she had no idea of what they were going to face once they reached this mysterious power source. Frankly, the Infinity Knight himself had no idea what they would find, but he hadn’t said that out loud.

The hallway that they entered was dim with emergency lights at long intervals along the walls. The Inspector looked slowly to his left, then to his right and placed his right index finger to his lips, letting Galloway know to be extra quiet. He walked exaggeratedly slowly with an almost goosestep, his left arm dangling toward the floor and slightly behind his body as he moved along the hall.

Chastity snickered at the man’s movements and the comical shapes it made, earning her an intense glare. She stifled the noise and the urge, even as he resumed his bizarre progression toward the nearest door. He stopped and straightened up. Again, he put his index finger to his lips and looked up at his Associate, who frowned slightly in response. He took the hint and dropped the act.

The Inspector performed one more scan of the room behind the door and decided that it was what they were looking for. He gently took hold of the door handle and pushed lightly down on it, only for it not to budge. He looked down and noticed the metal box with numbered buttons and two dark spots where lights probably should have been. But, without power, the handle was frozen.

“Geez,” the Inspector muttered in frustration.

Chastity’s eyes widened at his vocalization and she whipped her right index finger to her mouth, matching his previous signal.

“Never mind,” he stage-whispered. “Nobody’s anywhere near here. The only thing we have to worry about is what’s behind this door.”

“And … if it can hear us?” she asked anxiously.

The Inspector pondered that, then dismissed it. “It’s going to know we’re here in a second,” he said, no longer keeping his voice down.

He dug into his pants pocket and retrieved the optic pocketknife, flipped through a couple of attachments and activated its green beam. The laser glowed intensely over the keypad on the door handle as he moved the optic pocketknife over it in a circular pattern. After a moment, there were snaps and pops and a wisp of smoke and the handle went slack.

The Inspector pushed the door open a crack and peered through. A diffuse white light pulsed slowly and unevenly through the gap between the door and its frame.

“Yeah, this is the right place,” he said absentmindedly.

He rescanned the room, then pushed the door open most of the way.

“Is it safe to go in?” Galloway wondered.

“Yes, it’s fine,” the Inspector assured her.

He stepped inside, his view taking in towering racks of electronics, all of which oddly had lights blinking across their surfaces, as if the machines had power while the rest of the city had none.

“What is this place, Inspector?”

The Inspector halted his forward movement suddenly, but didn’t look back to Nurse Galloway. “It’s a carrier hotel, a big junction for most of the Internet traffic between North America and Europe.”

“The Internet?”

“The World Wide Web, e-mail, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, every online service that people across the continent use pretty much runs through wires here.”

“Yootoob, twitter? What are you talking about?”

The Infinity Knight finally turned back to see the mask of confusion that Galloway wore. “Oh, too soon! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he muttered, slapping the side of his head. He straightened up and looked seriously at her. “Sorry, those things don’t exist yet. They’re services that you’ll be able to use in five to ten years. It’s amazing some of the things you humans do with the Internet in the near future … and the far future. You’ll be amazed.”

The Inspector and Chastity moved further into the room, stepped carefully over dozens — no hundreds — of cables that snaked their way along the floor and disappeared into the stacks of computer equipment. As they got closer to the middle of the vast room, the twinkling white glow became more intense and the tangle of cables thicker.

The Infinity Knight knelt and peered cautiously around the corner as they moved further in. He stopped and pulled his head back, looking concerned.

“What is it?” Galloway asked.

“Don’t know quite,” the Inspector replied. “But, I don’t think it noticed me — I  mean, us — yet.”

His optic pocketknife blazed to life as he activated it and twisted his wrist to aim it around the corner. The device emitted a soft electronic whine as it scanned the area that the Inspector had looked at. He pulled it back and looked at the results: Nothing definitive, other than those unusual phased-energy readings. But, there was enough information to determine that whatever was there didn’t pose an imminent threat to either of them.

“I’m going to take a closer look,” he informed her, getting up to his feet.

Galloway rose to her feet, as well.

“I’m right behind you,” she said.

The Infinity Knight stopped and spun around on her, the two bumping directly into each other.

“Ow!” Chastity cried out as the Inspector blurted, “Oh!”

Rubbing his face where Galloway’s head had collided with his, he looked sternly at her. “No, Chastity, you’ll wait right here while I check this thing out. If it does anything nasty, I don’t want you to be in the line of fire.”

She looked up at him after fixing her hair, disappointment clear on her face.

“I know you want to see this, but it’s not from Earth and I’d have a better chance of dealing with it than you do,” he said calmly. “And … well … I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

It was touching that he expressed concern for her, after all he’d put her through to this point. “Okay,” she agreed. “But, be careful!”

“I will,” he promised, and promptly tripped over a bundle of cables, collapsing to the floor. After he gathered himself up and jumped to his feet, he smoothed out the winter jacket he wore. “I’m fine. Nothing to worry about!”

He then stepped more carefully around the corner and disappeared. Chastity peered around the corner and watched as the Inspector approached a cloud-like object that seemed to float a few feet above the floor, hundreds of cables descending from its underside. The cloud was emitting white light, flickering and twinkling in a seemingly random pattern.

“So, what are you?” the Inspector asked the cloud, not sure whether to expect a response.

The cloud hung there twinkling and pulsing, but not making any sound. In fact, it was the absence of sound that was of note. The Infinity Knight activated his optic pocketknife and scanned the cloud up close. Nothing seemed to change.

“Phased energy, a dense mix of silicon, water, rubidium, tungsten and ruthenium tris-bipyridine dichloride,” the Inspector read from the readout, then racked his brain for where he knew of such a mixture occurring. He let out a grunt of triumph. “A chemical computer! Of course! But, what is a chemical computer doing here?”

“Um, Inspector?” Galloway prompted from the corner. “The cables?”

The Infinity Knight looked down at the cables on the floor, then where they connected to the cloud, then around the room.

He scrunched up his face in confusion. “The Internet?” he asked her.

She looked around the room at the cables that had attached themselves to all the computer equipment that was functional, despite the power outage. “If that’s what this place is for, that’s gotta be the reason it is here.”

The Inspector nodded slowly. It made sense. “I like your logic, Chastity!” he said slowly. “And, the fact that it’s connected to the Internet might explain the power outage.”

“How?” she wondered.

The Inspector resumed scanning the cloud. “Your power grids are all linked to the Internet, so power output, fluctuations and outages can be monitored. It allows a power plant to be powered up or down remotely, without anyone actually being on site.” He paused in his scan and looked at her. “Meaning, if someone were able to access a power plant’s computers, it could shut them down! Oh, how could I have missed that!”

Galloway watched him as he slapped his head with both hands four times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid me!” he muttered.

“So what?” the nurse asked. “They shut down the power plant and New York’s without power.”

The Inspector looked at her with pity, as if he somehow wished he had such a small scope of the universe. “It’s not just New York. It’s the world. Just about every power plant in the world is connected by computer, by the Internet. So, it’s not just New York that’s dark, it’s the whole world, Chastity. And this —” he pointed at the cloud floating next to him — “just put the whole world in the dark. It’s the source of your ‘Millennium Bug.’ Everything that people blame on computers not being designed for the turn of the millennium wasn’t caused by programming limitations. No, it was by a chemical computer from another planet.”

The cloud-computer continued to sway slightly in the air, its lights continuing to lazily glow and blink.

“That’s a computer?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah, big, ol’ alien computer,” the Inspector replied, sweeping his hands outward like a billowing mushroom cloud. “And, it’s taken control of your Internet, shutting down computers across the world, leaving everyone in the dark. Literally!”

“Can’t you do anything about it, Inspector?”

The Infinity Knight let his arms drop to his sides and appeared uncertain. “Well, of course I can,” he said with conviction he didn’t feel. “Just a matter of figuring out how this big, ol’ alien computer works, doing a little reprogramming and, bam!, everything’s back to normal.”

He dusted his hands as if he’d just finished the job.

“Um, Inspector?” Chastity prompted.

“Yes, Chastity?” he replied.

“Are you waiting for something or are you going to get started?”

“Oh, right,” he blurted.

He made a few adjustments to his optic pocketknife and its green light glowed to life again. He pushed the device closer and closer to the cloud, which crackled with energy as his optic pocketknife tried to probe it. He readjusted the device and resumed scanning.

Neither he nor she saw as a loose cable stirred on the far side of the room. He was so intent on the cloud-computer that nothing seemed likely to pull his attention away. She kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to do something to change the situation.

She only noticed the cable a fraction of a second before it struck, too little time to be able to warn him.

The cable lashed onto the wrist of the hand in which the Inspector held his optic pocketknife and yanked it to one side. The optic pocketknife tumbled from his hand and disappeared into the tangle of cables, which seemed to come alive, wriggling around like so many snakes.

“Inspector!” Galloway finally managed to cry out.

The Infinity Knight grabbed the cable that held his right wrist and tried to pry the wiring away. Each time he managed to lift the end of the cable away, it quickly re-coiled around his wrist. He suddenly realized that his optic pocketknife was gone and he looked wildly around to locate it, so he struggled against the cable again. Other loose cables loomed behind him and Chastity called out another warning that the Inspector heard.

At the same moment, the cloud’s cables suddenly retracted spasmodically. One of the loose cable ends sizzled with electricity as it pulled away from a writhing nest of other cables. The cables pulled away to reveal the optic pocketknife, which the Inspector stretched out his left hand, trying to grab hold of it.

“Guess I didn’t warn you,” he said, addressing the cloud that he was now facing away from. “Hacker-proof. Only designed to respond to my RNA sequences.”

Unfortunately, the cable that had hold of his wrist didn’t allow him enough slack to reach the device that now sat undisturbed in the midst of writhing cables.

“I … can’t … reach … it,” the Inspector muttered impotently.

“Can’t reach what?” Galloway asked.

“Optic … pocket– … pocketknife,” he managed to say through the pain that was asserting itself as he continued to strain to reach his favorite utility device.

Chastity hesitated only a fraction of a moment before leaping onto the mass of cables and snatching the device from the clearing the cables had made for it. She held it up to him in triumph, only for the Inspector to shout out, “Chastity! Behind you!”

The cables struck out at her, coiling around her neck first, then her ankles and reaching for her wrists. She considered her situation quickly and called for the Inspector’s attention. She quickly tossed the optic pocketknife at him.

The device struck him square in the nose, but happily bounced right into the Inspector’s free hand. More cables had risen up and slashed toward him as Galloway screamed for help. She was dragged back away from the cloud as the Inspector activated the optic pocketknife. The cable holding his wrist sparked, then went slack. He tried to ignore the pain the action caused as he untwined the cable from his wrist, spun around and sent a pulse of light at the approaching horde of cables, which sparked and dropped to the floor.

“Inspector!” Galloway called out in horror.

She was almost completely enveloped by cables by the time he reached her.

“Chastity!” he called out. “Chastity, this is going to sting a bit. Get ready!”

He activated the pulse and the cables sparked in several places, one after the other. Her body convulsed and she screamed out in pain as an electrical shock raked her. But, the cables let go of her and he unwrapped her. He knelt down in front of her, pulling away the cables and offering his hand to help her up.

“What did you do?” she muttered breathlessly.

“Proton pulse,” he replied. “Interrupted the flow of electrons in the cable. Needless to say, I think this computer is fully aware that we’re here and its defense mechanisms have kicked in. It’s got a very, very complex firewall that would take time to break through before I could even learn enough about it to try reprogramming it.”

“Then, maybe we should get out of here?” Chastity suggested.

The Inspector considered that option for a brief time. “No,” he said decisively. “If we leave without shutting this thing down, it’ll only get more and more access to computers across the world and who knows what it’ll do with that. Shutting down power may have just been a way to divert everyone’s attention from its actual intent. The fact that I was able to track it down while the planet’s population is otherwise busy means this computer wasn’t expecting anyone like me to be here. I’ve got to stop this thing and stop it now.”

The Inspector aimed his optic pocketknife at the cloud-computer and rose to his feet, pulling Chastity along with him. Once he was sure she was on safe footing, he stepped over to the cloud-computer. He stared directly into the heart of the strobe-lighted device.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, but you probably understand what I did to your cables,” he said firmly. “I have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing and I’m going to ask you to stop it. Otherwise, I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.”

He waited, wondering whether the cloud-computer would respond in any way. Behind him, Galloway watched the standoff. Behind her, though, there was a rustling of cables and the tinkle of metal cable connectors bouncing off each other. She turned around to find a wall of black cables towering over her.

“Um, Inspector?” she said quietly.

“Hang on, I’m waiting for this thing to respond,” the Infinity Knight replied.

“No, Inspector!” she said urgently. “It is responding!”

The Inspector spun around to face the wall of cables bearing down on them. He barely had time to think to raise his optic pocketknife and fire a proton pulse that raked along the front of the wave. The cables sparked one after the other and collapsed in a jumble about a foot from Galloway’s feet.

The Infinity Knight spun around to face the cloud-computer. He was visibly angry. “I warned you and I don’t give out warnings lightly,” he spoke clearly in a low tone. “No more games!”

He focused his optic pocketknife on the bobbing cloud and activated it. The proton beam swept over the cloud’s surface, causing it to sizzle softly, but otherwise there seemed to be little change. He scanned the device with his own and found nothing had changed. He ran the proton beam over the cloud-computer again, with the same result.

“It must have some sort of force field in place,” he reasoned, sounding a little frustrated. “What can I do to get through that?”

Chastity walked up to stand beside him, staring wonderingly at the cloud that floated a few feet away from them. An idea struck her. “Inspector, you said this thing has water in it, right?”

The Infinity Knight recalled the results of his scan, but couldn’t follow her thought process. “Yes, so?”

“So,” she said dramatically, “why not just boil it away? Won’t that interfere with its operation?”

The Inspector considered that idea. “It’s worth a try. Although I’ve never seen this particular type of cloud-computer, others I’ve dealt with a minimum requirement of water to operate. Even with the force field, the energy should be able to get inside it. Might as well try.”

He flipped through a couple of attachments on his optic pocketknife and activated a wide-beamed laser. He ran the laser along the side that faced them, then began walking around, trying to make sure that the laser was evenly heating the cloud.

The longer he worked at it, the less convinced he became that it was working. He deactivated the optic pocketknife and looked at the flickering lights glowing through the cloud. They seemed to have sped up somewhat, but otherwise, there was no sign that the laser was having any effect.

He stepped back around to stand next to Galloway, appearing dejected.

“Didn’t do anything,” he complained.

Chastity looked between him and the flouting cloud-computer and back. She tried to formulate ideas, even though she knew that the thing was clearly not of Earthly origin.

The Inspector sighed loudly. “If only there were a way to disrupt its power source!”

“The cables?” Galloway offered helpfully.

He shook his head. “It’s internally powered. Designed to prevent anyone from powering it down. It can pull some power from local sources via the cables, I suppose, but I just juiced it up with optic pocketknife’s laser.”

Galloway pondered that. “How is your optic pocketknife powered?”

The Inspector remarked offhandedly, “Perpetual self-recharging battery. Generates all the power it could ever use.”

“A battery?” the nurse repeated.

He looked up, sensing her excitement. “Yeah, why?”

“Well, for most things that run on batteries, if you install the battery backwards, it operates backwards,” she said with assurance.

“My gosh!” the Inspector cried, smacking himself on the forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Chastity, you’re smart as a whip!”

She smiled uncertainly at the comment. “Thanks … I think.”

“You’re more than welcome, Chastity. You may have solved this problem for us all!”

The Infinity Knight closed all the attachments on his optic pocketknife and turned it over. He had to search the back for its panel and struggled to pry it open. “Man, is this hard!” Then, his fingers lost their purchase on the panel and his hand flew up and punched Galloway, knocking her head to one side.

“Oh, Chastity! I’m sorry!” he blurted, dropping his tool and taking her face in both of his hands. “I didn’t mean to do that! I’m really, really sorry!”

Galloway gingerly touched the cheek that he’d inadvertently struck. “Doesn’t feel like you did any damage,” she remarked. “Just be more careful with your hands.”

Their eyes met; he was looking longingly into hers. Despite all the craziness that she’d been through, she felt a certain attraction to him. Yet, something drew her out of the moment: The sound of something hard and metallic slithering nearby.

“Inspector!” she whispered urgently.

“Chastity,” he replied.

“The cables!”

“Cables?” the Infinity Knight asked absentmindedly.

“The cables!” she cried urgently.

He stumbled back, surprised by her vehemence. At the same moment, the sounds of the cables moving around them reached his ears. “Oh, right, the cables.” He slapped himself on the forehead again and turned around.

Between him and the cloud-computer, a single cable stood, the Inspector’s optic pocketknife pointed in his direction in a coil of the cable. Another cable rose from the floor and attacked the device, only to get shocked and fall away. Another one rose up and prodded where the Inspector had been trying to open the device’s back panel. Strangely enough, the panel popped open easily.

Before the cables could do anything else, the Infinity Knight wrapped his right hand around the optic pocketknife and yanked it from the cable, which didn’t have a good hold on it.

“Thanks!” he said sarcastically.

The battery required a little jimmying to get out, but it popped back in with no trouble and shut the panel. The Inspector flipped open the display screen and activated the tool.

Rather than the green light jumping out at the cables, a beam of white light seemed to be sucked out of them and they dropped into heaps on the floor. The Inspector smiled slyly and looked at Galloway.

“Nicely done!” he said, more to himself than to her.

“It just made sense to me,” she offered.

But, the Inspector wasn’t paying attention to her. He focused his tool-of-all-trades on the cloud-computer and activated it. Again, the white light was drawn out from the alien machine, its lights at first flickering very, very rapidly, then slowing and speeding up again. The longer he had it active, the slower the lights seemed to move. The cables stopped moving as the computer’s power reserves were being drained.

Without warning, the cloud flickered and fizzled.

“That’s it!” the Infinity Knight cried out. “It’s dropped its force field.”

The cloud slowly spread out a little. The Inspector reduced the drain on the machine and started punching buttons on his optic pocketknife. The cloud-computer shivered slightly and quit spreading out.

“Inspector, what’s it doing? What’s going on?” Chastity demanded.

He continued working. “Hacking.”

“Hacking?” she prompted.

The Inspector stopped what he was doing and looked at her pedantically. “Breaking its computer code to figure out what it’s been doing and trying to reverse-engineer the code.”

“Oh,” she said sheepishly.

While the exchange took place, the cloud-computer shrunk and shrunk again. Upon seeing that, the Inspector muttered a mild curse.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he told the vanishing alien machine.

He worked furiously to complete the hack and recode the programming to resolve the power outage before the cloud shrank into nothing. Before he could finish, the cables hanging from the cloud-computer’s base crashed to the floor, along with a shower of shiny powder and the chemical computer ceased to exist. All the tiny lights on the stacks of computers went dark.

“No!” the Infinity Knight groaned. “No! No! No!”

“Inspector?” the nurse asked after a moment.

He turned to face her, deactivating his optic pocketknife. “It … it’s gone,” he said simply.

“So, the power should be back on, right?”

He looked at her sadly. “No,” he replied. “I didn’t have enough time to undo the damage it did to the power grid.” He paused. “Worse, it’s inserted itself into the Internet. Physically, it’s gone, but it could re-manifest elsewhere.”

He turned to where the cloud-computer had been, knelt down and picked up a pinch of the shimmering powder, then stood up and let the powder trickle to the floor from between his fingers.

“What is that?” Galloway asked.

“Metal dust, the stuff that made up the chemical computer,” the Inspector replied.

After quickly surveying the scene, he opened his optic pocketknife, turned over the battery, shut the panel and activated the device, chopping off the end of one of the cables. He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, gingerly picked up the severed cable and pocketed it.

“What good is that?” Chastity wondered.

“There’s still residual energy from the chemical computer,” he said, patting his jacket pocket. “I might be able to trace it with the help of this.”

“Do you have any idea of where it might go?”

“Well, I’d say it needs two things right now, power and metal,” he replied. “Which it could probably get at the nearest power-generating station.”

“The East River Generating Station!” she blurted. “That’s the nearest power station.”

“Where is that?” he inquired urgently.

“I think it’s on East 14^th,” she replied.

The Inspector grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her along behind him. “Let’s go!”

 

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Getting inside the power plant proved less-than-difficult for the Inspector, Chastity Galloway in tow.

The Con Edison workers didn’t seem to care who they were; they were just more hands to help them get the plant up and running again. Workers decked out in off-white safety suits and blue hard hats hurried back and forth, while their co-workers set up small banks of lights and generators.

A set of lights blazed to life behind them just after the Inspector and Galloway walked through the doors into the station. He blinked a dozen times before his eyes adjusted to the bright light and stark shadows that their bodies made.

Chastity looked around nervously, knowing that she really didn’t belong there, despite the Inspector’s assurance that they wouldn’t be bothered. His cover story of “city electrical inspector” should have been enough, he said. But, she wasn’t as certain as he appeared to be.

The Infinity Knight retrieved his optic pocketknife and began scanning the building. So far, there were no signs of power other than the generators. He filtered out the electrical power and searched for phased energy. Nothing.

Suddenly, he turned, ignoring the fact that he still held the device in his hand and called out, “Where are the computers?”

Galloway groaned inside. If he really were a city inspector, he’d know where to find the computer, wouldn’t he? A couple of electrical workers stopped and looked at him sideways, as if they were wondering the same thing.

“Everything’s computerized,” one of the men called back in a mocking tone.

The Inspector grinned stupidly. “Main computer? I’m guessing … in the control room?”

“Off to the left, down two corridors, to the right,” the other man said.

As the Infinity Knight and Nurse Galloway left the room, several of the workers laughed uproariously at the exchange. Yet, no one seemed to think it strange that someone who claimed to be a city inspector wouldn’t know where to find the main computers.

Chastity looked back, but kept moving along with the Inspector.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” the Infinity Knight told her. “They don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“But, they were laughing at you, Inspector,” she reminded him.

“Sorry, too busy trying to save the world to worry about getting laughed at.”

They looked at each other and smiled, then disappeared down the hallway.

* * *

Once they’d found their way into the control room, the Inspector examined the various stations, sometimes getting into workers’ ways in order to do so. He moved out of the way and explained why he was there before moving on to another station.

After having made a full circuit around the control room, the Inspector strode back over to where Chastity stood, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. He withdrew the cable remnant from his pocket and scanned it before turning to rescan the entire room.

Oddly, the optic pocketknife picked up only traces of low-level phased energy. Still, he looked around excitedly.

“It’s here,” he said quickly to Galloway. “I know it’s here.”

“Where?” she wondered.

“Can’t explain right now,” he said, hurrying off toward one station in particular that no one appeared to be using at the moment.

The Inspector held the cable up in front of the console with one hand and scanned the station with his optic pocketknife in the other. His eyes lit up just like his tool.

“Oh, yeah! That’s it!” he cooed.

Chastity walked swiftly across the room and stood next to him.

“I found it, all right!” he exclaimed to her.

“Found what?”

“The chemical computer,” he said. “It implanted itself inside this console. All I have to do is get to it.”

Chastity looked at him as if he were crazy. “That’s all you have to do?”

“Well, it still doesn’t have the power it needs to protect itself, but it’s operating enough that I should be able to access it.”

He opened panel after panel and scanned once and again until he found the closest point of access to the cloud-computer’s hideaway.

Shoving himself inside the massive cabinet that was the station console, he worked for several minutes, scanning, reworking and zapping the hardware where the cloud-computer had inserted itself. He cursed a few times as it seemed that the cloud-computer was trying to escape, but he managed to hold it in place while hacking into its operating system and finding the programming that it had used to tap the Internet. He found billions of lines of code, some of the most-complex computer language that he’d ever come across, but it was only a matter of determining which symbols meant what and soon enough he had the program figured out.

He worked for a couple more minutes, using his optic pocketknife to re-engineer the software and inserting a self-destruct code that he could trigger at any time. Finally, he launched the reverse-engineered programming back through the Internet gateway from which the cloud-computer had accessed the power station’s computers.

He stood up and dusted his hands, hoping it would be obvious that he’d completed his task.

“Did you do it, Inspector?” Galloway asked promptly.

“Um, yes,” he said, crestfallen. “That was the purpose of dusting my hands off.”

“Then, why isn’t the power back on?”

The Inspector surveyed the room and realized that she was right, that nothing had changed. “Oh, it’ll take a few minutes for it to work,” he said uncertainly. “The programming has to work its way through the Internet and undo all the stuff that the chemical computer did. Give it an hour, tops.”

“And, in the meantime?” she asked, genuinely wanting to know what he had planned.

He looked at her in askance. “We wait.”

 

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Heeding Chastity’s advice, the Inspector had waited until the foundry in Brooklyn had opened a couple of days later and obtained an amount of cash that would pay for the work to replace his timeship’s beryllium spheres.

It was a little annoying to simply give someone else the schematics for the engine parts and let them manufacture them, but what had to be done had to be done.

The shop’s foreman had asked some pointed questions about what exactly he was asking to be made and why. The explanation of engine parts didn’t satisfy the man, but when the Inspector plopped down stacks of hundred-dollar bills that would more than pay for the work and materials, the foreman decided not to ask anything else and made the job a priority.

It had taken more than a day for the shop to process the beryllium and cast the six spheres, which gave the Inspector some free time to wander the city, though he would have rather been back on his way to Kayaclasch to give his report and obtain a new assignment.

He used some of the time to convince the police that his phone box wasn’t a threat to anyone after all, though they had first taken him into custody, after the hospital had reported Doctor Dan Duffy missing and given them his staff photo.

He’d ended up calling Chastity Galloway to clear things up. She hadn’t seemed all that surprised that he’d ended up in jail after all they’d been through. Fortunately, she was feeling forgiving when she’d arrived.

Back in Brooklyn, the foreman was nice enough to load the four-foot-diameter spheres onto a truck and haul them down to Central Park, where the Inspector’s ship now sat unattended. The foundry workers were amazed at what they saw, as they helped the Infinity Knight bring the beryllium spheres into the ship and install them on the engine.

The Inspector had narrowly dismissed the idea of allowing the foundry to take the damaged spheres back for their own use. It really wouldn’t do to allow humans to get their hands on Infinity Knight technology, low as that may have been. Besides, after all the time and space that had flooded through the engines, there’s no telling what kind of side effects that would have on Earth if the beryllium were reused. Time rift, sudden spatial displacement across the universe. He wouldn’t leave something behind that could cause problems in the future, he decided.

Once the beryllium spheres were back in place and power started to return, that familiar, yet often-ignored, tingle in the back of his mind reasserted itself; the DARSIT had reconnected with him psychically.

As the foreman and his crew drove away, the Inspector waved to them and turned back to his timeship. To his surprise, Chastity Galloway stood there, next to its door.

“Well,” he said awkwardly. “I guess this is goodbye?”

She smiled and shook her head “no.” “Don’t think you’re getting rid of me that easily, Inspector.”

“So, you’re asking to come along with me?” he said brightly.

She looked seriously at him, as if considering her words before she actually said them. “Well, I’m sort of out of a job now, thanks to you. My boyfriend’s dead, again because of you.” She paused a beat. “And, I’m sort of thinking about traveling for a while. Get out of New York for a while, see some new sights, experience new things.”

The Inspector grinned. “I think I could help you out with that.”

Chastity reached out to take his hands in hers. “I was sort of hoping you would.”

They looked each other in the eye, then pulled each other into an embrace that led to a passionate kiss. The moment stretched on and time seemed to slow down. When the kiss broke, they both were overwhelmed by how powerful it had been.

The Inspector looked away for a few seconds, then looked back at her. “Okay,” he said, as if he’d just made the decision. “I’d be happy to have you join me.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m sure you would,” she agreed.

He let go of her and turned to face the snow-covered park and all the surrounding buildings. Finally, he turned back to Chastity and strode over to the DARSIT, grabbing its door handle and swinging the door open.

“After the lady,” he said in a haughty tone.

“The lady?” she replied, grinning. “The lady shall go first, thank you.”

She walked through the open door and he followed, closing the door.

A few seconds passed and the door swung open again and the Inspector poked his head out, taking a big breath of cold air. Then, he tossed the big, puffy winter coat onto the ground in front of the DARSIT, swung the door shut and the timeship phased out of normal space and into the time stream.

And, New York City went back about its normal routines.

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