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Ceramic Dm (final judgement posted, New Champion announced!)
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<blockquote data-quote="MarauderX" data-source="post: 1624973" data-attributes="member: 9990"><p><strong>Summer Ceramic DM 2004 Round 1, Match 1</strong></p><p></p><p><u><strong>Recruiting</strong></u></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14743" target="_blank">The eye was frozen </a> in a look that Jerrid thought of as astonishment, if their builders ever meant these short, four-legged automatons to appear that way. His circuit-tracing sunglasses monitored the sluggish system, and while the unit still had power it wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. He pulled back from it and raised the thick sunglasses over his head. He had seen this thing happen to a simpler automaton that the police used, and now Jerrid assumed the same techno-virus had made it to the corporate sector. Jerrid felt the breeze pass as he stood near the entrance of the service bay. He peered again into the eye, and tapped on it lightly, nearly irreverently. </p><p></p><p>“What do you think the problem is, Mr. Dokken?” asked a languid voice. </p><p>The voice came from Dr. Markus Tiflime, a man whose tone was self-assured from having money and control, neither in small measure. Dr. Tiflime had succeeding in building the first acropolis in Neo York City ten years ago after mixed acceptance by the city’s inhabitants. Three years following this accomplishment Dr. Tiflime succeeded in combining four of the largest manufacturing and distribution companies and melding them into cohesive force, called it Gilgamesh, and outsold nearly every other company in about one quarter of the entire market. Dr. Tiflime was now the vice-president in charge of research and development within Neo York City. Jerrid was looking at one of what was probably a fleet of new automatons. </p><p></p><p>“Well, it looks as though you got a techno-bug, which will require some memory replacements before a reboot to the system,” said Jerrid as he tried to keep his explanation straightforward. Sensing no immediate response Jerrid continued, “I can copy all of the unit’s settings and memory to upload back into it after replacing the memory chips so that you won’t lose a thing, but it will take a little bit to run some diagnostics to make sure no harm was done to the secondary systems.” Jerrid knew this bug from before, and it wasn’t much of a problem to get around quickly if you had the cash to replace the memory chips.</p><p> </p><p>“Anyone can replace the chips, we don't need him to do that,” interjected one of the dozen engineers surrounding Dr. Tiflime.</p><p>A solid look from Dr. Tiflime silenced him like a ton of bricks and the doctor stood from his makeshift seat on a desk and walked up to the machine. “Is that the only way to rid the techno-bug?” he asked. </p><p>“The best way, and usually the only way I recommend,” answered Jerrid. </p><p></p><p>He was a little nervous now, as he had never worked for the private field before. He had been sent at the request of his supervisor as the best-recommended tech to diagnose and fix a problem on any automaton. Jerrid enjoyed his government job, but found out too late that being the best meant sacrificing promotion, as not many could do his job as well as he did. He had been passed over to be a lead foreman twice, and now he was thinking of moving on, if only to earn more respect. </p><p></p><p>Dr. Tiflime studied Jerrid for a moment before asking, “What would be another way, a way that someone else might do?” </p><p>“Well,” Jerrid said, letting the pressure slide off of his mind to let it work freely, “I might try swapping memory fragments out, which is the fastest but I bet it wouldn’t do the job. I could do the same thing using a scrubber program overlay, though it will take longer, and it might do the trick, though if I were to do that it might take five or six sweeps before getting it clean but by that time I could have replaced the memory chips twice, including diagnostics. But…it’s your machine...”</p><p></p><p>Jerrid stopped and thought that somewhere along the line he had lost Dr. Tiflime. They searched each other’s faces, and finally Dr. Tiflime opened his mouth to speak. </p><p></p><p>“Let’s say we do this another way then. We can learn a thing or two from you here since it’s said you are among the best around, and we would like you to join us for the rest of the week, perhaps even the next. I would rather use that scrubbing technique you mentioned, as we are in the cutthroat business sector and can’t allow any loose memory chips to fall into our competitors’ hands somehow. I know that you are top in your field for several government agencies, but I think I could swing a deal to lend us some of your time. Do you think you’d be interested?” </p><p></p><p>“Sure,” Jerrid replied, “as long as I’m clear with my boss.”</p><p>Dr. Tiflime said, “That’s not a problem, we are already set to work. What would you like for lunch? We have anything you wish for as long as you are here, but that doesn’t mean you get to work at half speed to extend you stay you know. I’m sure you and my team will do a great job. And…thanks.” With that Dr. Tiflime turned his gaze across the room to the limousine that had carried Jerrid there and got in. </p><p></p><p>Jerrid turned to the other techs and engineers, and watched them slink away until he was alone wondering how to order lunch.</p><p>Jerrid returned to the service bay to see it full of the techs once more. He gathered that they had set up a continuous diagnostics run to keep track of updates as they happened. Jerrid thought that strange and unnecessary at first as he explained the unit needed to be completely depowered, batteries included, to let the scrubbers charge only the memory segments they were working on.</p><p></p><p>“No, we can’t do that,” explained the first engineer. “The unit needs to keep power to its systems, and we’ll have to work around a shut down.” Now Jerrid understood why it might take a week to repair, and as they worked it was becoming clear that it would take much more than a week. But they didn’t work normal hours; they sat hunched over screens and wiring until the tense late hours of the night. </p><p></p><p>Jerrid arrived early on Saturday to reveal that the room had never emptied that night. Four of the short security automations that had stood staunchly at the entrance gate had been added to the large room, and the techs and engineers didn’t seem to care. But it made Jerrid nervous as they spent another day running through the systems. It was difficult for them to chase the technobug as it replicated through the still-operating systems and Jerrid had picked up on a few of the engineers’ techniques to help trap it, and soon they were making progress. That night Jerrid passed up plans to join several of his government coworkers and stayed late at the Gilgamesh headquarters. </p><p>While the work was frustrating Jerrid and the others had cautiously earned each other’s trust and respect. His sunglasses were usually over his eyes, and they highlighted the different circuits as they pulsed, and he used them to peel away the system connections to direct where they should next trap the bug. They continued on into the night, often having to backtrack through memory segments they had just cleansed. </p><p></p><p>It was one of these times when the bug succeeded in starting some of the routines in the machine. The model number BNR-2112 blazed beneath its synthetic green skin before the entire unit faded in front of their eyes. Jerrid raised his circuit-tracing glasses and stared at where it had been, and one of the engineers reached out towards where it had been. His hand collided with the unit, and Jerrid jumped back, realizing what had happened. The other techs buzzed and tapped on screens and switched wires, and soon the unit reappeared, red numbers first. </p><p></p><p>Jerrid looked at the others and none of them would look him in the eye.</p><p>“Invisibility tech has been illegal for 60 years now,” said Jerrid.</p><p>“65,” corrected an engineer, “but it’s the best thing for quick security our industry has.”</p><p>“So, you use it anyway?” asked Jerrid.</p><p>Another tech defended. “We use it as a security measure, and have been for about three years. No one uses it for any other purpose, and it’s programmed to deactivate whenever they move, which is part of the reason why we can’t just swap out memory chips.”</p><p></p><p>They looked Jerrid over as the silence grew.</p><p>“Look, I’m a tech, I work on the machines, and have seen modifications on police equipment that’s far from what even they would consider legal,” Jerrid said. Again a nervous silence filled the room. “Hey, I’m not going to run to the cops and tell them, ok?”</p><p>The engineers looked sidelong at one another. “It’s not the cops we’re worried about, but we can’t expect you to realize that after working for the government. You’ll be fine as long as what we do stays here.”</p><p></p><p>Jerrid nodded and sat down. He turned back to the unit so they couldn’t see he eyes fluttering as he thought of the implications of what they were doing. Invisibility had been illegal soon after its invention as it allowed the Crusaders to launch their second war on global mega-corporations. That was long before Jerrid was even born, and he had only ‘seen’ invisibility in a museum as a child, and the public had been assured that invisibility would be impossible to defeat the modern sensing technologies that used heat and sound to find hidden units. Jerrid immersed himself back into the work with the others, pretending to ignore the illegal ability that the unit had. </p><p></p><p>At night Jerrid visited a police tech service center he had been at a month ago. They remembered him and gave him a seat after he gave an explanation of needing to do research. He pulled up the police tech files on invisibility detection and found that simple modifications were easy to make, and began incorporating as much as he could into his circuit-tracking sunglasses.</p><p> </p><p>Several more days passed in much the same way, and unit BNR-2112 had turned invisible several more times, which Jerrid called an annoyance to ease his nerves as much as earn his teammates’ trust. Jerrin changed spectrums on his sunglasses until they could outline the frame of the automaton when it turned invisible. He looked around the room and saw the ghostly white wire frames of two more automatons as they stood in the rear corners of the room. He forced himself to breath slowly and he returned to cleansing the system memory.</p><p> </p><p>Then Jerrid started to take longer glimpses of the system files and realized that the unit had already been in operation for over nine months. He had never seen this type of automaton before, and thought ‘why would I have see it, it can turn invisible’ as he smirked. But it wasn’t like Dr. Tiflime’s high-profile company to hold onto something long without releasing it to make a profit. Jerrid considered the unit itself was complex enough without the invisibility that they could have turned a handsome profit already. Jerrid wondered why and decided to dig a little deeper.</p><p> </p><p>That night, Friday, Jerrid stayed late as usual, but with only two other techs in the room busy rechecking diagnostics, he began quick scans of the unit’s history as he used the scrubber program. The night had passed quickly and the day started to glimpse into the bay as he looked through some of the video images in the unit’s life, flipping through monochrome images to stop at every twentieth or so. Jerrid stopped on one and suddenly froze. Jerrid looked up to see where the other techs were before studying <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14742" target="_blank">the image</a> on his tablet screen.</p><p> </p><p>It told Jerrid more than he wanted to know. He reversed back to see the complete recording, and Jerrid realized that by doing so he would be in jeopardy. But he had to see what had happened, and now might be his only chance. He tapped buttons on the tablet and the video skipped over a set of ability test runs. It landed on the image of Dr. Tiflime and the engineers he was now working with, along with the woman. She was on the opposite side of the room from them, and she looked down as if embarrassed. Dr. Tiflime cleared the room except for the two of them and Jerrid read the nametag on her blouse – Dr. Marroquin. There was no sound as she spoke and shook her head. Then Dr. Tiflime was shouting, screaming at her and waving his arms wildly. She suddenly slapped him hard and a look of astonishment crossed both of their faces as she backed away from him.</p><p> </p><p>His face dropped all emotion and he stepped away to scoop up a control device from a service desk. Dr. Marroquin’s nametag began to glow red on the automaton’s display, and the video angle moved as it lunged towards her. She didn’t see it coming as it slammed into her chest, clearly aiming for the name badge. She was hurled into a corner of the room, and lifted herself up on one leg, as something was wrong with the other. She shouted now, desperately screaming as she steadied herself.</p><p> </p><p>As the robot’s arm rose into view, Jerrid knew what came next. He stopped the replay just as the cone-shaped black laser struck her. He looked over his shoulder to check on the other techs.</p><p> </p><p>“Look, we had hoped that you wouldn’t be so stupid,” the first said. </p><p>“But I wasn’t-“ Jerrid said. </p><p>“You weren’t and now you aren’t,” replied the second tech as he pulled two thin rods from behind the desk. </p><p>Jerrid held up the tablet to look at Dr. Marroquin’s grim expression as unclipped his required nametag from his shirt. Jerrid said, “So you knew, you were probably here, and you never said a word.”</p><p></p><p>The two techs looked at one another as they stood ten feet on either side of him now. “Mr. Dokken, we aren’t techs. Dr. Tiflime doesn’t hire slow techs. He recruits young, fast ones like you. And you’re supposed to do what you are told, and fix the problems that Dr. Marroquin left for us to deal with. She’s the one that infected the thing to begin with, though it took far longer for the bug to take effect to prevent the thing from killing her.”</p><p>“It didn’t kill her, Tiflime did!” said Jerrid as he pressed the tablet with his thumb. </p><p>“Yes, we thought you’d see it that way,” said the first tech, “and we can’t risk you not changing your mind.”</p><p></p><p>The second tech moved towards Jerrid, arms outspread cautiously. The first circled around the automaton to flank Jerrid from behind before they started to close. The letters BNR-2112 glowed as Jerrid worked the digital control tablet. The automaton came to life and struck out with a metal limb at the nametag with a distinctive crack of bone to send the first tech sliding on his back into the desk. Jerrid then directed the unit between him and the second would-be tech. Jerrid worked the tablet controls rapidly but it moved sluggishly, lumbering to separate them. Suddenly it stopped completely and they both watched it fade from sight. Jerrid sprinted for the service entrance to the room and pulled down his sunglasses. The automaton was still lumbering there, enough to crash into a service table, which had kept Jerrid’s pursuer at bay for only a moment.</p><p> </p><p>Jerrid ran along the outside of the building instead of through the open park near them and heard footsteps and the whirring of automatons approaching. Jerrid threw the tablet that he still had in his hand towards the park and it rolled and clattered on the manicured brick as he ran.</p><p></p><p>Jerrid darted around a corner and peered down the sloped street to the main gate when, through his sunglasses, he saw more of the invisible automatons headed towards him. He realized they were trying to cut off his escape, and the picture of Dr. Marroquin’s fate popped into his head again. Just then the gate began to swing open and Dr. Tiflime’s limousine eased through. Jerrid bounded forward, running full speed down the sloped sidewalk. He knew his timing needed to be perfect, and gathering all of his strength, he leapt through the air over the invisible automaton just as <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14741" target="_blank">Dr. Tiflime looked out the limousine window to see him in mid-air</a>, fully understanding why Jerrid was jumping over the ‘empty’ sidewalk. Grimly he told the automated driver to go in reverse, full speed back to the gate.</p><p> </p><p>Jerrid leapt over two more of the invisible machines, his foot catching on the latter to send him rolling down the pavement. He felt his tech glasses slide from his head and skitter into the street. The limousine engine loomed close and Jerrid snatched up his glasses and jumped up to land on the trunk of the limousine as it careened towards the closing gate. Jerrid and Dr. Tiflime locked eyes through the tinted glass of the rear window, each in a panic of their own over what to do next. Then Jerrid tried to hang on as the car skidded to a halt, but was thrown from it. He rolled to land against the gate as it clanged closed. </p><p> </p><p>Dr. Tiflime leapt out of the car and began shouting orders to what seemed like no one, but Jerrid knew better and slipped his glasses on to see two automatons closing towards him, each lifting an arm carrying a black laser. Jerrid watched the lasers gather strength as his mind raced. The lasers fired, as Jerrid dived between the two machines. </p><p> </p><p>A gaping hole was formed in the gate, formed from the two conical lasers that had missed their target. Jerrid pulled himself up off of the pavement and dove through the opening. Dr. Tiflime’s screams and threats faded as the gate began to open again. Jerrid wasted no time jumping through alleyways and slipping into buildings and underground connections to avoid being seen. Jerrid had sprained his ankle, probably from the limousine ride he thought, but didn’t start feeling the pain until twenty streets were behind him. </p><p> </p><p>He thought about what to do next, and decided that the best might be to head to the police tech service center he had been at a few nights ago. They knew him there, and might be able to look up any history on Dr. Tiflime, the Gilgamesh mega-corporation, and any connections they had to invisibility. It was a short trip and might be the best place to gather his thoughts and ask for help.</p><p> </p><p>Jerrid made it to the police service entrance half an hour later, slowed down by his throbbing ankle. He kept his sunglasses on as he peered around anxiously like a mouse in an open field with nowhere to hide. He started spilling what had happened to him to the other techs and soon an audience of police had gathered. Before long the lieutenants were questioning him about what had happened, and Jerrid’s nerves began to settle. He retold what he had seen and cursed for having thrown the tablet into the park. He wasn’t thinking at the moment, as he hoped to distract his pursuers. He thought, but all I really have to do is convince the police that Gilgamesh is using invisibility and they will be able to go in and see for themselves, and again Jerrid smirked. He would let it be their problem now as he enjoyed the lavish breakfast that was presented to him. </p><p></p><p>There was a snap and Jerrid knew it was the door being locked. He was locked into the police’s little interrogation room. Sure he had worked for the police these many years, but his eyes were finally opened. Gilgamesh was the manufacturer of a majority of the police automatons, which had protected and kept the human police from many dangerous situations. One phone call from Dr. Tiflime could probably spin everything end over end for him. The police might have even known about the invisibility the entire time, and purposefully looked the other way. Jerrid pushed away from the table and stopped eating his vast breakfast. The pastries, eggs, and sausage were consistent with the rich food he had had at Gilgamesh, not fitting with the profile of a police headquarters. </p><p> </p><p>Jerrid paced in the diminutive room for an hour, wondering if they were studying him and deciding his fate. Would they hand him over to Dr. Tiflime? Would they protect him? Would the police instead charge him with something on behalf of Gilgamesh, like terrorism and destruction of property? These thoughts of his doom wrestled inside his head when unexpectedly the lights went out. </p><p> </p><p>Jerrid heard the lackadaisical voices of annoyance for the delay, and Jerrid’s sunglasses automatically switched to low-light vision. Jerrid thought this was the perfect opportunity for one of those invisible automatons to make their way in without possible police invisibility detection devices sensing it, and he had to use the same opportunity for freedom. He threw himself at the door and it tossed him back onto the floor without flinching. Jerrid looked at the one-way mirror interrogation window and swung his chair into it. Again and again he struck and left spider web blows on the glass. Eventually it began to give, and Jerrid started to rip it like a thick curtain to allow him through.</p><p> </p><p>The room was empty, except for a few pieces of recording and viewing equipment, and a door hung open at the end. A man appeared and disappeared from the doorway, as if he was looking for a device of some kind. Jerrid looked beyond and saw that many had similar low-light glasses and were walking up and down the stuffy corridor. Jerrid decided to bluff it. If they had the same low-light glasses he did, they wouldn’t be able to discern the color of uniform that he had on and might be considered an officer himself. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, Jerrid walked confidently down the corridor, furrowing his brow and hustling to give the facade of doing something important. He made it to the front lobby before the lights kicked back on.</p><p> </p><p>No one seemed to notice or care as he made the last fifty steps towards the door, but as soon as he left the building he heard the trigger of alarms. A detection system had read his fingerprints on the door as he had pushed it open, and cursed himself for not remembering as he had once fixed the system himself. He crossed the street and turned a corner, but he was sure he wouldn’t be able to run much further. He heard police automatons clamber out into the street to begin canvassing for him and Jerrid hobbled to the next block. What he saw stopped him cold, and made him want to flee back to the police station for protection, no matter what they did to him after that. </p><p> </p><p><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14740" target="_blank">His glasses outlined a sleek invisible car </a> right in front of him. He stammered and fell as he tried to reverse his momentum on his bad ankle. The door to the car opened and a woman in slimming business attire grinned and asked if he needed a ride. Jerrid was too scared to reply as she skipped over to him. </p><p>“I’m not with who you think, I’m a friend of Dr. Marroquin’s,” she said, “We worked together until recently. My name is Sayta and I’m a friend.”</p><p>Jerrid took her hand and she pulled him up and towards the car. Again he stammered and she looked at the police automatons over his shoulder.</p><p>“You have a choice right now. You can get dragged in by the police, tortured and made an example of by them,” she then replied, “or you can come and work for us. It’s your choice.”</p><p></p><p>Jerrid collapsed into the back seat of the car as it sped off, dodging the traffic that couldn’t see the car and before long they were cruising on the shoulder of the cross-town highway and Jerrid slept. </p><p> </p><p>Sayta helped Jerrid out and it took him several minutes to gather his wits. He looked around and was stunned to see everything as he had left it hours ago. A desk was wrecked. Tables overturned. In the park he saw the sunlight glint off of a control tablet. And his glasses picked out the BNR-2112 on the chest of the ghostly automaton to the rear of the room as it approached. Dr. Tiflime worked the tablet and its arm extended the black laser towards him. </p><p></p><p>“I think we have an understanding now, don’t you Mr. Dokken?” the doctor asked. “You see, you’re a wanted man now. You work for me and even if you do escape, where would you go? What would you say that anyone would believe? You’re the best tech out there, and we’d be grateful to have you on board here at Gilgamesh. Do you think you might want to work here?”</p><p>Jerrid looked around the room at the others. They were all ashamed, waiting for the same answer that they had given, and he saw Sayta weeping silently. Quietly he nodded agreement. Not today, maybe not tomorrow or next week, but one day Jerrid promised that the world would know about Gilgamesh.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MarauderX, post: 1624973, member: 9990"] [b]Summer Ceramic DM 2004 Round 1, Match 1[/b] [U][B]Recruiting[/B][/U] [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14743]The eye was frozen [/URL] in a look that Jerrid thought of as astonishment, if their builders ever meant these short, four-legged automatons to appear that way. His circuit-tracing sunglasses monitored the sluggish system, and while the unit still had power it wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. He pulled back from it and raised the thick sunglasses over his head. He had seen this thing happen to a simpler automaton that the police used, and now Jerrid assumed the same techno-virus had made it to the corporate sector. Jerrid felt the breeze pass as he stood near the entrance of the service bay. He peered again into the eye, and tapped on it lightly, nearly irreverently. “What do you think the problem is, Mr. Dokken?” asked a languid voice. The voice came from Dr. Markus Tiflime, a man whose tone was self-assured from having money and control, neither in small measure. Dr. Tiflime had succeeding in building the first acropolis in Neo York City ten years ago after mixed acceptance by the city’s inhabitants. Three years following this accomplishment Dr. Tiflime succeeded in combining four of the largest manufacturing and distribution companies and melding them into cohesive force, called it Gilgamesh, and outsold nearly every other company in about one quarter of the entire market. Dr. Tiflime was now the vice-president in charge of research and development within Neo York City. Jerrid was looking at one of what was probably a fleet of new automatons. “Well, it looks as though you got a techno-bug, which will require some memory replacements before a reboot to the system,” said Jerrid as he tried to keep his explanation straightforward. Sensing no immediate response Jerrid continued, “I can copy all of the unit’s settings and memory to upload back into it after replacing the memory chips so that you won’t lose a thing, but it will take a little bit to run some diagnostics to make sure no harm was done to the secondary systems.” Jerrid knew this bug from before, and it wasn’t much of a problem to get around quickly if you had the cash to replace the memory chips. “Anyone can replace the chips, we don't need him to do that,” interjected one of the dozen engineers surrounding Dr. Tiflime. A solid look from Dr. Tiflime silenced him like a ton of bricks and the doctor stood from his makeshift seat on a desk and walked up to the machine. “Is that the only way to rid the techno-bug?” he asked. “The best way, and usually the only way I recommend,” answered Jerrid. He was a little nervous now, as he had never worked for the private field before. He had been sent at the request of his supervisor as the best-recommended tech to diagnose and fix a problem on any automaton. Jerrid enjoyed his government job, but found out too late that being the best meant sacrificing promotion, as not many could do his job as well as he did. He had been passed over to be a lead foreman twice, and now he was thinking of moving on, if only to earn more respect. Dr. Tiflime studied Jerrid for a moment before asking, “What would be another way, a way that someone else might do?” “Well,” Jerrid said, letting the pressure slide off of his mind to let it work freely, “I might try swapping memory fragments out, which is the fastest but I bet it wouldn’t do the job. I could do the same thing using a scrubber program overlay, though it will take longer, and it might do the trick, though if I were to do that it might take five or six sweeps before getting it clean but by that time I could have replaced the memory chips twice, including diagnostics. But…it’s your machine...” Jerrid stopped and thought that somewhere along the line he had lost Dr. Tiflime. They searched each other’s faces, and finally Dr. Tiflime opened his mouth to speak. “Let’s say we do this another way then. We can learn a thing or two from you here since it’s said you are among the best around, and we would like you to join us for the rest of the week, perhaps even the next. I would rather use that scrubbing technique you mentioned, as we are in the cutthroat business sector and can’t allow any loose memory chips to fall into our competitors’ hands somehow. I know that you are top in your field for several government agencies, but I think I could swing a deal to lend us some of your time. Do you think you’d be interested?” “Sure,” Jerrid replied, “as long as I’m clear with my boss.” Dr. Tiflime said, “That’s not a problem, we are already set to work. What would you like for lunch? We have anything you wish for as long as you are here, but that doesn’t mean you get to work at half speed to extend you stay you know. I’m sure you and my team will do a great job. And…thanks.” With that Dr. Tiflime turned his gaze across the room to the limousine that had carried Jerrid there and got in. Jerrid turned to the other techs and engineers, and watched them slink away until he was alone wondering how to order lunch. Jerrid returned to the service bay to see it full of the techs once more. He gathered that they had set up a continuous diagnostics run to keep track of updates as they happened. Jerrid thought that strange and unnecessary at first as he explained the unit needed to be completely depowered, batteries included, to let the scrubbers charge only the memory segments they were working on. “No, we can’t do that,” explained the first engineer. “The unit needs to keep power to its systems, and we’ll have to work around a shut down.” Now Jerrid understood why it might take a week to repair, and as they worked it was becoming clear that it would take much more than a week. But they didn’t work normal hours; they sat hunched over screens and wiring until the tense late hours of the night. Jerrid arrived early on Saturday to reveal that the room had never emptied that night. Four of the short security automations that had stood staunchly at the entrance gate had been added to the large room, and the techs and engineers didn’t seem to care. But it made Jerrid nervous as they spent another day running through the systems. It was difficult for them to chase the technobug as it replicated through the still-operating systems and Jerrid had picked up on a few of the engineers’ techniques to help trap it, and soon they were making progress. That night Jerrid passed up plans to join several of his government coworkers and stayed late at the Gilgamesh headquarters. While the work was frustrating Jerrid and the others had cautiously earned each other’s trust and respect. His sunglasses were usually over his eyes, and they highlighted the different circuits as they pulsed, and he used them to peel away the system connections to direct where they should next trap the bug. They continued on into the night, often having to backtrack through memory segments they had just cleansed. It was one of these times when the bug succeeded in starting some of the routines in the machine. The model number BNR-2112 blazed beneath its synthetic green skin before the entire unit faded in front of their eyes. Jerrid raised his circuit-tracing glasses and stared at where it had been, and one of the engineers reached out towards where it had been. His hand collided with the unit, and Jerrid jumped back, realizing what had happened. The other techs buzzed and tapped on screens and switched wires, and soon the unit reappeared, red numbers first. Jerrid looked at the others and none of them would look him in the eye. “Invisibility tech has been illegal for 60 years now,” said Jerrid. “65,” corrected an engineer, “but it’s the best thing for quick security our industry has.” “So, you use it anyway?” asked Jerrid. Another tech defended. “We use it as a security measure, and have been for about three years. No one uses it for any other purpose, and it’s programmed to deactivate whenever they move, which is part of the reason why we can’t just swap out memory chips.” They looked Jerrid over as the silence grew. “Look, I’m a tech, I work on the machines, and have seen modifications on police equipment that’s far from what even they would consider legal,” Jerrid said. Again a nervous silence filled the room. “Hey, I’m not going to run to the cops and tell them, ok?” The engineers looked sidelong at one another. “It’s not the cops we’re worried about, but we can’t expect you to realize that after working for the government. You’ll be fine as long as what we do stays here.” Jerrid nodded and sat down. He turned back to the unit so they couldn’t see he eyes fluttering as he thought of the implications of what they were doing. Invisibility had been illegal soon after its invention as it allowed the Crusaders to launch their second war on global mega-corporations. That was long before Jerrid was even born, and he had only ‘seen’ invisibility in a museum as a child, and the public had been assured that invisibility would be impossible to defeat the modern sensing technologies that used heat and sound to find hidden units. Jerrid immersed himself back into the work with the others, pretending to ignore the illegal ability that the unit had. At night Jerrid visited a police tech service center he had been at a month ago. They remembered him and gave him a seat after he gave an explanation of needing to do research. He pulled up the police tech files on invisibility detection and found that simple modifications were easy to make, and began incorporating as much as he could into his circuit-tracking sunglasses. Several more days passed in much the same way, and unit BNR-2112 had turned invisible several more times, which Jerrid called an annoyance to ease his nerves as much as earn his teammates’ trust. Jerrin changed spectrums on his sunglasses until they could outline the frame of the automaton when it turned invisible. He looked around the room and saw the ghostly white wire frames of two more automatons as they stood in the rear corners of the room. He forced himself to breath slowly and he returned to cleansing the system memory. Then Jerrid started to take longer glimpses of the system files and realized that the unit had already been in operation for over nine months. He had never seen this type of automaton before, and thought ‘why would I have see it, it can turn invisible’ as he smirked. But it wasn’t like Dr. Tiflime’s high-profile company to hold onto something long without releasing it to make a profit. Jerrid considered the unit itself was complex enough without the invisibility that they could have turned a handsome profit already. Jerrid wondered why and decided to dig a little deeper. That night, Friday, Jerrid stayed late as usual, but with only two other techs in the room busy rechecking diagnostics, he began quick scans of the unit’s history as he used the scrubber program. The night had passed quickly and the day started to glimpse into the bay as he looked through some of the video images in the unit’s life, flipping through monochrome images to stop at every twentieth or so. Jerrid stopped on one and suddenly froze. Jerrid looked up to see where the other techs were before studying [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14742]the image[/URL] on his tablet screen. It told Jerrid more than he wanted to know. He reversed back to see the complete recording, and Jerrid realized that by doing so he would be in jeopardy. But he had to see what had happened, and now might be his only chance. He tapped buttons on the tablet and the video skipped over a set of ability test runs. It landed on the image of Dr. Tiflime and the engineers he was now working with, along with the woman. She was on the opposite side of the room from them, and she looked down as if embarrassed. Dr. Tiflime cleared the room except for the two of them and Jerrid read the nametag on her blouse – Dr. Marroquin. There was no sound as she spoke and shook her head. Then Dr. Tiflime was shouting, screaming at her and waving his arms wildly. She suddenly slapped him hard and a look of astonishment crossed both of their faces as she backed away from him. His face dropped all emotion and he stepped away to scoop up a control device from a service desk. Dr. Marroquin’s nametag began to glow red on the automaton’s display, and the video angle moved as it lunged towards her. She didn’t see it coming as it slammed into her chest, clearly aiming for the name badge. She was hurled into a corner of the room, and lifted herself up on one leg, as something was wrong with the other. She shouted now, desperately screaming as she steadied herself. As the robot’s arm rose into view, Jerrid knew what came next. He stopped the replay just as the cone-shaped black laser struck her. He looked over his shoulder to check on the other techs. “Look, we had hoped that you wouldn’t be so stupid,” the first said. “But I wasn’t-“ Jerrid said. “You weren’t and now you aren’t,” replied the second tech as he pulled two thin rods from behind the desk. Jerrid held up the tablet to look at Dr. Marroquin’s grim expression as unclipped his required nametag from his shirt. Jerrid said, “So you knew, you were probably here, and you never said a word.” The two techs looked at one another as they stood ten feet on either side of him now. “Mr. Dokken, we aren’t techs. Dr. Tiflime doesn’t hire slow techs. He recruits young, fast ones like you. And you’re supposed to do what you are told, and fix the problems that Dr. Marroquin left for us to deal with. She’s the one that infected the thing to begin with, though it took far longer for the bug to take effect to prevent the thing from killing her.” “It didn’t kill her, Tiflime did!” said Jerrid as he pressed the tablet with his thumb. “Yes, we thought you’d see it that way,” said the first tech, “and we can’t risk you not changing your mind.” The second tech moved towards Jerrid, arms outspread cautiously. The first circled around the automaton to flank Jerrid from behind before they started to close. The letters BNR-2112 glowed as Jerrid worked the digital control tablet. The automaton came to life and struck out with a metal limb at the nametag with a distinctive crack of bone to send the first tech sliding on his back into the desk. Jerrid then directed the unit between him and the second would-be tech. Jerrid worked the tablet controls rapidly but it moved sluggishly, lumbering to separate them. Suddenly it stopped completely and they both watched it fade from sight. Jerrid sprinted for the service entrance to the room and pulled down his sunglasses. The automaton was still lumbering there, enough to crash into a service table, which had kept Jerrid’s pursuer at bay for only a moment. Jerrid ran along the outside of the building instead of through the open park near them and heard footsteps and the whirring of automatons approaching. Jerrid threw the tablet that he still had in his hand towards the park and it rolled and clattered on the manicured brick as he ran. Jerrid darted around a corner and peered down the sloped street to the main gate when, through his sunglasses, he saw more of the invisible automatons headed towards him. He realized they were trying to cut off his escape, and the picture of Dr. Marroquin’s fate popped into his head again. Just then the gate began to swing open and Dr. Tiflime’s limousine eased through. Jerrid bounded forward, running full speed down the sloped sidewalk. He knew his timing needed to be perfect, and gathering all of his strength, he leapt through the air over the invisible automaton just as [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14741]Dr. Tiflime looked out the limousine window to see him in mid-air[/URL], fully understanding why Jerrid was jumping over the ‘empty’ sidewalk. Grimly he told the automated driver to go in reverse, full speed back to the gate. Jerrid leapt over two more of the invisible machines, his foot catching on the latter to send him rolling down the pavement. He felt his tech glasses slide from his head and skitter into the street. The limousine engine loomed close and Jerrid snatched up his glasses and jumped up to land on the trunk of the limousine as it careened towards the closing gate. Jerrid and Dr. Tiflime locked eyes through the tinted glass of the rear window, each in a panic of their own over what to do next. Then Jerrid tried to hang on as the car skidded to a halt, but was thrown from it. He rolled to land against the gate as it clanged closed. Dr. Tiflime leapt out of the car and began shouting orders to what seemed like no one, but Jerrid knew better and slipped his glasses on to see two automatons closing towards him, each lifting an arm carrying a black laser. Jerrid watched the lasers gather strength as his mind raced. The lasers fired, as Jerrid dived between the two machines. A gaping hole was formed in the gate, formed from the two conical lasers that had missed their target. Jerrid pulled himself up off of the pavement and dove through the opening. Dr. Tiflime’s screams and threats faded as the gate began to open again. Jerrid wasted no time jumping through alleyways and slipping into buildings and underground connections to avoid being seen. Jerrid had sprained his ankle, probably from the limousine ride he thought, but didn’t start feeling the pain until twenty streets were behind him. He thought about what to do next, and decided that the best might be to head to the police tech service center he had been at a few nights ago. They knew him there, and might be able to look up any history on Dr. Tiflime, the Gilgamesh mega-corporation, and any connections they had to invisibility. It was a short trip and might be the best place to gather his thoughts and ask for help. Jerrid made it to the police service entrance half an hour later, slowed down by his throbbing ankle. He kept his sunglasses on as he peered around anxiously like a mouse in an open field with nowhere to hide. He started spilling what had happened to him to the other techs and soon an audience of police had gathered. Before long the lieutenants were questioning him about what had happened, and Jerrid’s nerves began to settle. He retold what he had seen and cursed for having thrown the tablet into the park. He wasn’t thinking at the moment, as he hoped to distract his pursuers. He thought, but all I really have to do is convince the police that Gilgamesh is using invisibility and they will be able to go in and see for themselves, and again Jerrid smirked. He would let it be their problem now as he enjoyed the lavish breakfast that was presented to him. There was a snap and Jerrid knew it was the door being locked. He was locked into the police’s little interrogation room. Sure he had worked for the police these many years, but his eyes were finally opened. Gilgamesh was the manufacturer of a majority of the police automatons, which had protected and kept the human police from many dangerous situations. One phone call from Dr. Tiflime could probably spin everything end over end for him. The police might have even known about the invisibility the entire time, and purposefully looked the other way. Jerrid pushed away from the table and stopped eating his vast breakfast. The pastries, eggs, and sausage were consistent with the rich food he had had at Gilgamesh, not fitting with the profile of a police headquarters. Jerrid paced in the diminutive room for an hour, wondering if they were studying him and deciding his fate. Would they hand him over to Dr. Tiflime? Would they protect him? Would the police instead charge him with something on behalf of Gilgamesh, like terrorism and destruction of property? These thoughts of his doom wrestled inside his head when unexpectedly the lights went out. Jerrid heard the lackadaisical voices of annoyance for the delay, and Jerrid’s sunglasses automatically switched to low-light vision. Jerrid thought this was the perfect opportunity for one of those invisible automatons to make their way in without possible police invisibility detection devices sensing it, and he had to use the same opportunity for freedom. He threw himself at the door and it tossed him back onto the floor without flinching. Jerrid looked at the one-way mirror interrogation window and swung his chair into it. Again and again he struck and left spider web blows on the glass. Eventually it began to give, and Jerrid started to rip it like a thick curtain to allow him through. The room was empty, except for a few pieces of recording and viewing equipment, and a door hung open at the end. A man appeared and disappeared from the doorway, as if he was looking for a device of some kind. Jerrid looked beyond and saw that many had similar low-light glasses and were walking up and down the stuffy corridor. Jerrid decided to bluff it. If they had the same low-light glasses he did, they wouldn’t be able to discern the color of uniform that he had on and might be considered an officer himself. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, Jerrid walked confidently down the corridor, furrowing his brow and hustling to give the facade of doing something important. He made it to the front lobby before the lights kicked back on. No one seemed to notice or care as he made the last fifty steps towards the door, but as soon as he left the building he heard the trigger of alarms. A detection system had read his fingerprints on the door as he had pushed it open, and cursed himself for not remembering as he had once fixed the system himself. He crossed the street and turned a corner, but he was sure he wouldn’t be able to run much further. He heard police automatons clamber out into the street to begin canvassing for him and Jerrid hobbled to the next block. What he saw stopped him cold, and made him want to flee back to the police station for protection, no matter what they did to him after that. [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=14740]His glasses outlined a sleek invisible car [/URL] right in front of him. He stammered and fell as he tried to reverse his momentum on his bad ankle. The door to the car opened and a woman in slimming business attire grinned and asked if he needed a ride. Jerrid was too scared to reply as she skipped over to him. “I’m not with who you think, I’m a friend of Dr. Marroquin’s,” she said, “We worked together until recently. My name is Sayta and I’m a friend.” Jerrid took her hand and she pulled him up and towards the car. Again he stammered and she looked at the police automatons over his shoulder. “You have a choice right now. You can get dragged in by the police, tortured and made an example of by them,” she then replied, “or you can come and work for us. It’s your choice.” Jerrid collapsed into the back seat of the car as it sped off, dodging the traffic that couldn’t see the car and before long they were cruising on the shoulder of the cross-town highway and Jerrid slept. Sayta helped Jerrid out and it took him several minutes to gather his wits. He looked around and was stunned to see everything as he had left it hours ago. A desk was wrecked. Tables overturned. In the park he saw the sunlight glint off of a control tablet. And his glasses picked out the BNR-2112 on the chest of the ghostly automaton to the rear of the room as it approached. Dr. Tiflime worked the tablet and its arm extended the black laser towards him. “I think we have an understanding now, don’t you Mr. Dokken?” the doctor asked. “You see, you’re a wanted man now. You work for me and even if you do escape, where would you go? What would you say that anyone would believe? You’re the best tech out there, and we’d be grateful to have you on board here at Gilgamesh. Do you think you might want to work here?” Jerrid looked around the room at the others. They were all ashamed, waiting for the same answer that they had given, and he saw Sayta weeping silently. Quietly he nodded agreement. Not today, maybe not tomorrow or next week, but one day Jerrid promised that the world would know about Gilgamesh. [/QUOTE]
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