He went inside the command tent. I ought to message London he thought; James will want to know where we are and what to tell people. Just for a moment, he saw a shadow cross the reflection of the screen in front of him. And a voice, a whisper, but hard like a blade edge in his ear said "It's here".
"What?" He said to Stuart, who was sat behind him.
"I didn't say anything" Said Stuart, who just carried on typing into his computer. Josh made a mental note to find out what was always being typed into that machine.
He looked back at the screen. Just as he placed his hand at the keyboard, it went numb. It then started it's own crazed dance across the keys. Numbers appeared on the screen, followed by two words "It's here". For no reason at all, Josh cast his eyes upon the Kris hanging on the wall. The blade was black.
Josh chewed his lip for a moment. Surely it was impossible, Ben never spoke to anybody... much less to Josh. Nevertheless, he gingerly drew the blade, and looked into his reflection.
"What is it?" enquired Stuart, sensing all was not well.
"Find Jenna" Came the absent response.
Stuart dutifully went, zipping the tent door down behind him.
Josh closed his eyes. Concentrate. I identify with it, it does not identify with me. The personality is not the self...
He opened his eyes again and in the blade, two scarlet eyes stared back.
"What do you want?" Josh spoke accusingly. "It's here" Said the hollow whisper once more. "The lab. The octahedral prism. The murmurs the voices and the burning. The numbers are the Longditude and Latitude. Here I am prisoner, I cannot tell you more. There we will be separated. There you will learn." And the eyes faded into the blade, which then faded to a shiny steel once more.
Jenna came into the tent.
"Ben talks." Said Josh "We have to go to the longditude and Latitude on the screen".
"It could be a trick" Said Jenna
"Ben doesn't deal in tricks. He doesn't normally ask. I think we should go. Bring Dominic, Stuart and Felix."
It was only a short way to the coordinates Ben had provided. They stood, apparently looking at a patch of ice on the mountain.
"Now what?" said Jenna, clearly short on patience.
Josh pulled out the Kris again. Once more the blade was black. "Break the ice" came the foul whisper again.
"We need to shift the ice" said Josh.
Wordlessly, Andrew's brother Dominic walked up to the ice. In his words "I have spent the first 17 years of my life unable to talk, why do I need to now?"
His frame, for that is what it was, sat around his body like some close steel cage. Panels covered most of it, offering a sort of amour, and upon each of the arm came a multitude of interchangable attachments. Josh smiled as he remembered the day his brother had finally come to walk.
A fool's mistake at a hospital had cost Dominic's ability to walk and talk. Rendered dependent, he had been consigned to a wheelchair for a great length of time. Then Jeeves had been taken for the first time by the Righmen, fighting upon the streets of Reading Town Center. When Josh and his Felix, Jeeves's father, had made a pact to find him, Dominic had insisted he wanted to go and to help. Felix became inventive. Josh had gathered the flourescing blue orbs, and Felix had somehow extracted power from them, using little more than the tools and materials in his garage. He had then, with the knowlege of the nervous system provided by Jeeves' Mother Sandra and Josh, and pieced together an effective bionic body.
Over time the body had been added to and adjusted. The ability to talk had been returned to Dominic, and a bunch of other devices which enabled, among other things, ultrasound, a tune into radar, infra red vision. Everyone with any knowlege of technology in the command crew had added their bits and pieces. Dominic had the favourite maxim: "I was once viewed disabled. Now I am truly gifted".
For someone who didn't ever talk much Josh mused. He had a wonderful way with words.
Josh's thoughts were at this point interrupted by Dominics pneumatic drill shattering through the ice at a rate of knots. Shards of the cold transparancy flew left and right, riddled with cracks and tinkling as they clattered in the air, like some posessed hailstorm.
Eventually, Dominic came clear of the small tunnel. And said, selecting for today the voice of Sean Connery (Jeeves's personal addition) "Found a door. It's big and black and hard. He indicated his sibling. You must open it and run away."
Josh frowned. "Why run away?"
"There is Krimmen inside. I will squash him. Then we will go inside."
"Ah."
Josh walked up to the door. It was indeed as Dominic had said. He looked at it. For a moment. Ben's whisper returned; "To the left, a code. 223366." Josh dutifully tapped in the code. The door sprung open, and Josh found himself face to face with a Krimmen. Oh yeh. He turned on his heel and sprinted away. As the Krimmen emerged from the tunnel, it uttered out "You have one man who cannot move his body, and a few humans, come out and it will not hurt."
"Not going to anyway" Said Dominic, switching to Darth Vader for effect. Jenna laughed loudly.
The Krimmen found himself suspended in the air by what could be described as his neck, his huge, Tar black body hanging beneath him. "Your assessment of my mobility was incorrect" Said Dominic. And his grip tightened, and his adversary was no more.
The corridor away from the entrance was well lit. It had steel walls either side and fluourescent tubing along the ceiling. The blue tiles on the floor reflected in the wall surfaces, and there was a peculiar lack of echo in their footsteps.
"It's funny that this did not show on the ultrasound..." Mused Jenna.
Felix took a screwdriver from his belt and placed it on the wall. The wall clung to it, and as he moved the screwdriver away it moved like a fluid. "It's not solid, so it messed up your computer."
"Your friends go left." Said Ben's whisper, as they passed a red door with a sign on saying "Control room".
"In there..." said Josh, wondering if it would have been a better idea to let Ben simply take control of the situation directly rather than feeling like a glorified puppet.
The others went in, Stuart and Felix exchanging curious glances as they did so, Josh carried on to the door at the end of the corridor, about ten yards ahead. and went inside.
Inside the control room, there was a row of chairs on one side, with a computer control desk in front of eight screens. Underneath each screen stood a speaker. The rest of the room was made apparently of black tiles. All of the lights were off. Opposite the wall with the screens was another screen, which was giving out a faint light. On it appeared a grainy image of eight rectanlular shapes stood upright in an octahedron, with wires and varous trailing from them in the room they were observing. In the backround seven indescernable shapes could be made out in tubes, and in the eighth there stood a broken tube. There was only one light illuminated.
"You can tell this was built by a British engineer," chuckled Felix
"How?" said Stuart
""This button is labelled 'on'"
Josh walked into the room and hit a switch to his left. Suddenly the room immersed itself in a peculiar green glow. In front of him stood an octahedron of mirrors. Each facing each other around a small circular platform in the middle. Behind them stood a row of tubes, all now replicating the green glow. Inside them he could see bodies. Human bodies. His body. The hair colours were strange though, even in the strange light he could make out Blue, green, red...
Presently, a voice boomed out over a set of speakers. "Josh, can you hear us?"
"Yes. Who's us"
"It's Jenna, we found an on switch."
Presently a light flittered on above the circular platform. It was white, but seemed somhow unnatural.
Meanwhile, in the control room, a voice said in Jenna's ear. "Hello there, can I help you?"
Jenna swung round to punch the unnamed intruder, but her fist simply travelled through his face, her momentum carrying her round full circle.
"Don't do that, it feels frightfully strange."
The person stood before them, wearing brown shoes, cream trousers, a green tank top over a white shirt. he had a polkadot red bow tie at his collar.
"Who are you?"
"I am House, I am the first computer to actively use the improbability principle."
"The what?" Said Stuart, frowning. He knew a lot about computers. He had never heard of such a principle.
"Oh, I'm sorry, you aren't the new technicians we were expecting. Ah well, that means that the world did go to rack and ruin after all does it? And Pogo appears to have gotten out. What a mess."
Jenna straightened in her chair. "This is near where we found Pogo!".
"You found him?" Said house "Splendid! Did he do anything exciting."
"Quite a lot actually.- Do you know how he works"
"Oh yes, but there is a computer model for that in due time. I think Josh requires your attention, Stuart, if you come with me I can show you the computer database where you can get the information you need."
Stuart shrugged at the others and followed down a set of steps which had lowered in the floor. The others directed there attention towards the screen, wherein Josh had stood in the middle of the Octahedron.
