Schroedinger's Shop Rite, chapter 3.
Oct. 8th, 2006 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evilbeej1727
My obscenity echoed in the silence. I decided to wait a little longer before completely utterly wigging out. Until, say, I was sure of some sort of audience. If there was anyone watching me over some sort of closed circuit security camera, they weren't making themselves in any way obvious.
Bastards.
Hypothetical bastards.
I fell off the table and cursed again, this time under my breath. It took me a minute to get up, because I was tangled up in my makeshift sheet toga and I was totally unused to having a robotic foot.
Once I was on my feet, I started poking around the place, looking for my stuff or a lightswitch or a weapon. "Some lights would be--"
The lights came on.
"--good. O-kay. Someone's listening. Or something. Hi! I'm not dead. Autopsy lab. Nice."
It was, in fact, an autopsy lab; I looked inside my toga and decided never to look inside my toga again, because there was the stitched-up 'Y' and I didn't want to think about what that meant. Well, actually, no. I'm lying. I knew exactly what that meant, and I was really curious as to why I was up and about, if I was supposed to be dead.
Trailing cotton sheet and going thump-clack thump-clack like a pirate with a metal leg, I looked in cabinets and on counters; I found a scalpel and palmed it, and kept looking. There were lockers in the corner, and I opened them one by one. I nicked a lab coat from the first one and ditched the toga-- the name tag on it wasn't in the Roman letters I was used to, but it also wasn't in Interlac, so there was one little hope down the drain.
The last locker held the clothes I'd been wearing, but my laptop bag and the lunch cooler thingy weren't in there. I got dressed the rest of the way, ditching the lab coat again--
--wearing my own clothes did a whole lot for my presence of mind. One hurdle jumped; now to find Jen and the rest of my junk. And hell, maybe figure out where we were. I was convinced that Jen was here somewhere. We were together when we left, and I'd had a good hold on the hoodie she'd been wearing when everything went completely batshit.
Scalpel gripped tightly in one fist, I went for the door. No handle. There was a keypad next to it, and those weren't any Earth numbers *I* knew. Remembering the lights, I said hopefully, "Open?"
The door stayed closed.
I wrapped my hand in my parka sleeve and readjusted my grip on the metal scalpel handle, then stabbed it into the keypad.
Nothing happened; the scalpel hadn't even managed to dent one of the buttons. I growled and cast about for something heavy to bash it with, then remembered I had a robotic foot-- it should at least be good for *something* other than walking on.
With possibly the single most graceless high-kick in the history of kicking, I crunched the damn keypad in, lost my balance, fell on my butt, and tore a hole in my parka sleeve with the scalpel.
The door slid open.
"Okay!" I said again, staring at it for a second before scrambling back to my feet and then leaning around the corner, looking out the door. It was a very boring hallway, with doors on either side, and it was very long. This made me crankier than I'd already been, because-- hell. Long hallway. If anyone came out any of those doors, I wouldn't have anyplace to hide. That's presuming I wasn't already being watched, and also presuming I hadn't set off sixteen kinds of alarms by bashing in the keypad.
I got mad again. "I have a scalpel," I yelled, "and I will stab it into anyone who tries to cut me open again or replace anything else with robotics or keep me from finding Jen and my stuff!"
No answer. "Just-- fair warning," I added sternly, and felt like a dork.
With a long-suffering and obviously quite put-upon sigh, I went out the door of the autopsy lab and started walking. The hallway was quite long in both directions, and I'd arbitrarily picked left; I had no sense of direction at the best of times, so I paused before I'd even gone past one more door, and carved a big 'L' in a circle in the wall, with a really rudimentary shooting star next to the L. Then I walked some more.
The next door on the left -- the same side of the hallway I'd come out of -- had indecipherable writing on it and a keypad next to it. Just like all the other damn doors. I thumped on it with my fist.
No answer.
I *could* go thumping on all the doors until someone answered. I *could* break into all the rooms, and see if Jen was in one of them, still unconscious. I *could* just yell really loud and hope that she was close enough, and that the rooms weren't soundproof, and that she'd hear me.
I decided on combining options one and three, pocketed my stolen scalpel, and yelled, "JEN! WHERE ARE YOU?"
Still no answer.
I thumped on the next door, yelling; I went down the line of doors on that side of the hallway, battering on them all and yelling until I was hoarse. "JEN-NI-FER! GODDAMMIT WHERE ARE YOU?" Over and over, until I reached the end of the corridor, which was around a very short corner at the left end of the hall. I fished in my coat pocket and took out a Sharpie, then wrote on the wall where I could still see it from the other end, 'N'. Arbitrary north. Vandalism for safety and sanity.
Suffice it to say, it took me quite a while to exhaust that hallway, and it wasn't until I hit the door to the RIGHT of mine that I hit any kind of paydirt. I'd gone back over the hall twice, smashing keypads and opening up doors, pulling sheets off of bodies, tired and frustrated and angry enough to absolutely fail to care about property damage, and when I opened the door next to mine, I saw a body-free table with a note on it:
'G-- I hope you see this. Your stuff is in the locker under your table. I told them I was with someone when I woke up, and they showed me where you were. I have the TI-82. I modded your Mac to follow it. I don't know where we're going but I don't have time to go back to your room and leave this with you. --J.'
"IT FIGURES. I HATE EVERYTHING!" I yelled, kicking the table with my good foot, and then yelling with rage when it really hurt. I limped back next door to the lab I'd come out of, and sure enough, there was a long wide door at the bottom of the table upon which I'd awakened. My bag was inside, but the lunch bag was gone. This *also* made me cranky because I should have been hungry by this time, but I wasn't.
I opened my laptop right there on the autopsy table, brushing my hair out of my face, and nearly shrieked when I felt the stitches at my hairline. "Okay, okay," I said to myself, hyperventilating, making myself slow down. "Okay. You're fine. You don't know what's going on, but you're fine. You're okay. Jen is around. You're not dead. They thought you were dead and did the cutty and made you a robot foot for god knows what reason, but you're not dead, you're okay, just with-- a robot foot."
Computer open, I opened the shortcut on the desktop that said 'OPEN ME' and felt like Alice.
It was a map, and on the map was a green arrow and a green dot. The green dot was at one side of the map, and the green arrow was on the other side of the map. I squinted at the screen, then picked up the laptop and turned around. The little arrow turned around, too.
"Right. Okay. Nice. If I'm in a video game someone's gonna get *hurt*," I muttered.
Out the door I went, bag slung over one shoulder, laptop in one arm, other hand free to open doors or grab that scalpel, depending. Follow the dot, follow the dot. "A heads-up display in the goggles would have been a better idea," I complained out loud to the empty hallway.
Idly, following that dot, I checked the various indicators on the top bar of my screen. Wireless network, hovering showed that it was named, uh, something not in English enough that the name showed up as a line of squares. The time was 10:33 PM. That was weird enough -- the clock in the house had said 10:30 PM when Jen activated the time travel thingy. Out of curiosity, I hovered the cursor over the time to get the date--
--it was the same date as when we left.
Obviously, the computer thought three minutes had passed since we left.
I stared at it, stopping in my tracks.
"Wait, what?"
Three minutes for us to be unconscious for god knows how long, for my freaking FOOT to get REPLACED by a ROBOT FOOT, for an AUTOPSY to get done, for me to WAKE UP FROM BEING DEAD or something, for me to go through that hallway however the hell many times I went through it and cause all that destruction, for-- for everything from since we left the house?
Three minutes.
"NO WAY."
I got a good hold on the laptop, holding it in both hands so I wouldn't lose my grip and drop it, and I started *running*. I was watching the map, the little green arrow on the map, and I was making sure I headed for the green dot, going around corners when the map warned me to, going through doors and up stairs and down halls and in an elevator once, and I was really starting to panic. At least I was getting closer to the dot. I wasn't looking at the clock. I was STUDIOUSLY not looking at the clock.
I looked at it.
10:33 PM.
My obscenity echoed in the silence. I decided to wait a little longer before completely utterly wigging out. Until, say, I was sure of some sort of audience. If there was anyone watching me over some sort of closed circuit security camera, they weren't making themselves in any way obvious.
Bastards.
Hypothetical bastards.
I fell off the table and cursed again, this time under my breath. It took me a minute to get up, because I was tangled up in my makeshift sheet toga and I was totally unused to having a robotic foot.
Once I was on my feet, I started poking around the place, looking for my stuff or a lightswitch or a weapon. "Some lights would be--"
The lights came on.
"--good. O-kay. Someone's listening. Or something. Hi! I'm not dead. Autopsy lab. Nice."
It was, in fact, an autopsy lab; I looked inside my toga and decided never to look inside my toga again, because there was the stitched-up 'Y' and I didn't want to think about what that meant. Well, actually, no. I'm lying. I knew exactly what that meant, and I was really curious as to why I was up and about, if I was supposed to be dead.
Trailing cotton sheet and going thump-clack thump-clack like a pirate with a metal leg, I looked in cabinets and on counters; I found a scalpel and palmed it, and kept looking. There were lockers in the corner, and I opened them one by one. I nicked a lab coat from the first one and ditched the toga-- the name tag on it wasn't in the Roman letters I was used to, but it also wasn't in Interlac, so there was one little hope down the drain.
The last locker held the clothes I'd been wearing, but my laptop bag and the lunch cooler thingy weren't in there. I got dressed the rest of the way, ditching the lab coat again--
--wearing my own clothes did a whole lot for my presence of mind. One hurdle jumped; now to find Jen and the rest of my junk. And hell, maybe figure out where we were. I was convinced that Jen was here somewhere. We were together when we left, and I'd had a good hold on the hoodie she'd been wearing when everything went completely batshit.
Scalpel gripped tightly in one fist, I went for the door. No handle. There was a keypad next to it, and those weren't any Earth numbers *I* knew. Remembering the lights, I said hopefully, "Open?"
The door stayed closed.
I wrapped my hand in my parka sleeve and readjusted my grip on the metal scalpel handle, then stabbed it into the keypad.
Nothing happened; the scalpel hadn't even managed to dent one of the buttons. I growled and cast about for something heavy to bash it with, then remembered I had a robotic foot-- it should at least be good for *something* other than walking on.
With possibly the single most graceless high-kick in the history of kicking, I crunched the damn keypad in, lost my balance, fell on my butt, and tore a hole in my parka sleeve with the scalpel.
The door slid open.
"Okay!" I said again, staring at it for a second before scrambling back to my feet and then leaning around the corner, looking out the door. It was a very boring hallway, with doors on either side, and it was very long. This made me crankier than I'd already been, because-- hell. Long hallway. If anyone came out any of those doors, I wouldn't have anyplace to hide. That's presuming I wasn't already being watched, and also presuming I hadn't set off sixteen kinds of alarms by bashing in the keypad.
I got mad again. "I have a scalpel," I yelled, "and I will stab it into anyone who tries to cut me open again or replace anything else with robotics or keep me from finding Jen and my stuff!"
No answer. "Just-- fair warning," I added sternly, and felt like a dork.
With a long-suffering and obviously quite put-upon sigh, I went out the door of the autopsy lab and started walking. The hallway was quite long in both directions, and I'd arbitrarily picked left; I had no sense of direction at the best of times, so I paused before I'd even gone past one more door, and carved a big 'L' in a circle in the wall, with a really rudimentary shooting star next to the L. Then I walked some more.
The next door on the left -- the same side of the hallway I'd come out of -- had indecipherable writing on it and a keypad next to it. Just like all the other damn doors. I thumped on it with my fist.
No answer.
I *could* go thumping on all the doors until someone answered. I *could* break into all the rooms, and see if Jen was in one of them, still unconscious. I *could* just yell really loud and hope that she was close enough, and that the rooms weren't soundproof, and that she'd hear me.
I decided on combining options one and three, pocketed my stolen scalpel, and yelled, "JEN! WHERE ARE YOU?"
Still no answer.
I thumped on the next door, yelling; I went down the line of doors on that side of the hallway, battering on them all and yelling until I was hoarse. "JEN-NI-FER! GODDAMMIT WHERE ARE YOU?" Over and over, until I reached the end of the corridor, which was around a very short corner at the left end of the hall. I fished in my coat pocket and took out a Sharpie, then wrote on the wall where I could still see it from the other end, 'N'. Arbitrary north. Vandalism for safety and sanity.
Suffice it to say, it took me quite a while to exhaust that hallway, and it wasn't until I hit the door to the RIGHT of mine that I hit any kind of paydirt. I'd gone back over the hall twice, smashing keypads and opening up doors, pulling sheets off of bodies, tired and frustrated and angry enough to absolutely fail to care about property damage, and when I opened the door next to mine, I saw a body-free table with a note on it:
'G-- I hope you see this. Your stuff is in the locker under your table. I told them I was with someone when I woke up, and they showed me where you were. I have the TI-82. I modded your Mac to follow it. I don't know where we're going but I don't have time to go back to your room and leave this with you. --J.'
"IT FIGURES. I HATE EVERYTHING!" I yelled, kicking the table with my good foot, and then yelling with rage when it really hurt. I limped back next door to the lab I'd come out of, and sure enough, there was a long wide door at the bottom of the table upon which I'd awakened. My bag was inside, but the lunch bag was gone. This *also* made me cranky because I should have been hungry by this time, but I wasn't.
I opened my laptop right there on the autopsy table, brushing my hair out of my face, and nearly shrieked when I felt the stitches at my hairline. "Okay, okay," I said to myself, hyperventilating, making myself slow down. "Okay. You're fine. You don't know what's going on, but you're fine. You're okay. Jen is around. You're not dead. They thought you were dead and did the cutty and made you a robot foot for god knows what reason, but you're not dead, you're okay, just with-- a robot foot."
Computer open, I opened the shortcut on the desktop that said 'OPEN ME' and felt like Alice.
It was a map, and on the map was a green arrow and a green dot. The green dot was at one side of the map, and the green arrow was on the other side of the map. I squinted at the screen, then picked up the laptop and turned around. The little arrow turned around, too.
"Right. Okay. Nice. If I'm in a video game someone's gonna get *hurt*," I muttered.
Out the door I went, bag slung over one shoulder, laptop in one arm, other hand free to open doors or grab that scalpel, depending. Follow the dot, follow the dot. "A heads-up display in the goggles would have been a better idea," I complained out loud to the empty hallway.
Idly, following that dot, I checked the various indicators on the top bar of my screen. Wireless network, hovering showed that it was named, uh, something not in English enough that the name showed up as a line of squares. The time was 10:33 PM. That was weird enough -- the clock in the house had said 10:30 PM when Jen activated the time travel thingy. Out of curiosity, I hovered the cursor over the time to get the date--
--it was the same date as when we left.
Obviously, the computer thought three minutes had passed since we left.
I stared at it, stopping in my tracks.
"Wait, what?"
Three minutes for us to be unconscious for god knows how long, for my freaking FOOT to get REPLACED by a ROBOT FOOT, for an AUTOPSY to get done, for me to WAKE UP FROM BEING DEAD or something, for me to go through that hallway however the hell many times I went through it and cause all that destruction, for-- for everything from since we left the house?
Three minutes.
"NO WAY."
I got a good hold on the laptop, holding it in both hands so I wouldn't lose my grip and drop it, and I started *running*. I was watching the map, the little green arrow on the map, and I was making sure I headed for the green dot, going around corners when the map warned me to, going through doors and up stairs and down halls and in an elevator once, and I was really starting to panic. At least I was getting closer to the dot. I wasn't looking at the clock. I was STUDIOUSLY not looking at the clock.
I looked at it.
10:33 PM.
