Lucy Chapter 3: First Interlude

Filed: Lucy @ 6:19am on February 14, 2011 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 547
This entry is part 3 of 9 in the series Lucy

A young man wearing jeans an a white t-shirt is standing in front of assorted sizes metal containers in a big warehouse. The containers are connected to each others and have various windows and controls on the outside walls.

At this moment, he is looking at a naked woman on an exercise bike pedalling as hard as she could.

In his hands is a rugged tablet computer filled with vital statistics on the woman identified as “Lucy Patrick”.

His dark drown hair is un-kept and he is sporting a 3 days untrimmed beard which somewhat matches his damaged sneakers.

Lost in his thoughts, he is startled when an older man wearing a business suit tapped him on his shoulder.

“It’s her we need lost in her thoughts, not you Philip.”

“I wasn’t lost in my thoughts at all. I was calculating the rate of mental concentration decay. It’s not progressing as fast as we would hoped. She still has 27% concentration.”

“That’s why I am here. The client is unstable. Karen is in place, but we don’t have another day.”

Philip lost his temper and threw the computer on the ground in a fit of rage.

“Damnit. I told everyone we needed to keep a few vessels in reserve, that in case of an emergency, we’d be fucked. Did the board listen ? No. It never listens to the guy who invented the process.”

“Well, the board still gives you priority, but they called the Enclave to send someone as a backup.”

“A wiping ? They are considering a wiping as a backup ? You know has much as I do that it’s messy and unpredictable. The brain always finds a way and in a few years, we’ll lose the client. It’s always the case. That’s why I invented resetting, so it would be permanent, like the client paid for.”

“Resetting is indeed perfect, but it can take weeks. The Enclave is now confident they can stabilize the client with maintenance visits.”

“Sure, so they can extort more money. Can I try boxing her in ?”

“Philip, you’ve never successfully completed a boxing. It’s theoretically feasible at best.”

“Jim, that’s what everyone was saying with Resetting, especially the Enclave who didn’t want to lose their precious contract and yet, we’ve had great success when time wasn’t the issue”

“If you try boxing her in and fail, will it prevent wiping ?”

“Nothing can prevent wiping. It’s so barbaric, it’s a brute force attack. If anything, it will make the wiping easier, not that they would give us a discount.”

“I’ll let you decide then. I’ve always trusted you blindly.”

“Hey, if I am right, boxing her in might even let us do a reset in less time. Oh, but then we won’t know the difference…”, added Philip, once again lost in his thoughts.

“What do you mean ?”

“Let me work. I need to setup the machine.”

Philip ran toward a forklift parked in the corner of the warehouse and drive it toward the container containing Lucy.

Gently, he removed the container located on the right of the bicycle one, and placed it along the wall with over 30 other similar containers.

He brought the forklift in front of a garage door which he unlocked using a key on a chain around his neck. Inside rested a single red container.

“Poor Lucy”, thought Philip, himself horrified to look at his own creation.

Series Navigation«Lucy Chapter 2: Strike oneLucy Chapter 4: The Machine»

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