The Story of Ethan Myhers

Chapter Four

Chapter 4

The six hours went by extremely quickly, in that time Claire had prepared everything asked of her and much more. Everything on the list was complete, all security clearance was checked over by myself and by her, she had all the extra offices online and had started the second kitchen up and running for the demand that was about to hit. Much of the raw data had been crunched and had flown past my desk in some form of theory, hypothesis or graph showing a pattern of some description.

I had finally made it to the lift and was heading down to be sub-basement to see how Simon was getting on, we hadn’t used the sub-basement since we where give the property many years ago. The inter-comm didn’t even work, so getting the lift down was the only way of contact aside from the computers, witch where not fully networked down there yet.

The lift jolted to a stop and the doors opened, I walked in to the brightly lit concrete cave that was the sub-basement, I had forgotten how sterile it was down here, it was manly used for storage now, and my god it was huge. As I walked down I passed countless small storage rooms, two or three small labs. I came up on the main lab and there was Simon standing dictating to people reading of clip boards, and I must say I was astonished at what he had done in such a short space of time.

He had converted the lab into a medical wing, 14 beds with all the standard monitoring equipment he could find, and observation room over the lab had a technician kitting it out with a full mutli screen computer system, that was too be connected to the main server and the cameras in the now medical wing.

‘Jesus Simon I am damn impressed you are a miracle worker’ Simon then spun round and smiled clearly happy with all he had done too.

‘I can’t take all the credit, all of this stuff was in storage from the last guys using down here, I mean they had everything all the  testing equipment needed, all the rooms are kitted out with a full set of cameras, hell there are even security doors, and it can all be monitored threw remote feeds on the computers, granted this all needs connected back to the main power and the computer system plumbed back into in, but if I didn’t know any better I would say this place was designed for this sort of thing.’ There was a short pause and then he asked the inevitable question ‘Ethan what exactly was this place used for prior to the military giving office space here?’ it was a fair question this place seemed geared to something much more sinister than a standard lab.

‘I don’t know, when the government let us use this place 6 years ago we ask them then too, and were told to enjoy the new office space it was cutting edge, after that I didn’t want to know what they previously used down here for. I just knew it didn’t happen anymore!’

Simon just stared blankly at me for a few moments processing what I had said, ‘Ethan I will only say it once but you have been tracking this thing for a long time and you get handed this place which it would seem is just perfect for what we need when a crisis happens you have to admit that seems a little convenient?’

‘Doesn’t matter what it is, or how it came to be the fact is I’m here now and I’m just glad I have what is needed to sort out the problem at hand, won’t do us any good having those thoughts just yet.’

Simon nodded and as he said he dropped it and moved on, ‘I took one of the smaller labs and got it up and running its lined with lead, so having cameras fitted in it now and the security on the door will be up and running soon, I’m thinking a nice wee home for our probe. Give me another hour or so to get everything down here up and running and another 3 hours or so and I will have it all hook into the main servers up stairs. After that I can start on the secondary tasks down here.’

‘Fantastic Simon, you really should have been on the military in another life!’ we both laughed, Simon was not the biggest fan of the military, he seen the need for it, didn’t see the need for him to be in it though.

‘Emmm can’t see that worken at all that well!’ he winked and turned back to his clip board and started running down the list of tasks that needed to be done, and the progress that had been reached. As I turned to leave ‘if you get a chance look into the intercom at your end, damn thing is a pain in the ass not working, we will need it soon, I will make sure the top level is up and running.’

‘Will do Ethan’

With that I turned and head back towards the lift, instinctively checking my phone, forgetting that there wasn’t signal down here anyway.

The moment I came out of the lift an email popped up on the screen of the phone, Simmons would be here a short while before the team and probe to start setting up the military side of everything thing. ETA was about an hour or so.

Just at that moment the intercom beeped, ‘Ethan, Ethan?’ I had to laugh I expected it working soon but 5 minutes was impressive ‘Simon?’

‘OK I’m going to be ready get the main server networked down to here, you will need to log on and give all the permissions at your end and such. After that I can start powering up all the security systems down here, I reckon it will take a few hours to sort it all and fix any of the issues that pop up. I will have feeds ran into the observations rooms and up threw you as well, the feed will be ran through the security office as well. Oh and I got the intercom working too.’

‘I see that, good job. Let me know when you need me I’m headen to finish some paper work’ and with that I headed to my office.

In the next hour we got a lot more done than I had expected to, we had started to get all the different feeds and cameras coming threw to upstairs, although not all of it was linked to the main sever it was coming along, just a bit more time needed for that. All the checks for security where more or less sorted, and I had managed three more smokes not bad for an hours work. I found myself getting up heading out of my office and towards the main entrance I was on the phone to Simon who was heading back downstairs to finish the final prep work for Simmons arriving. I walked out the main entrance and the sunlight hit me, I had forgotten how bright it was, my balcony being stuck out the back of the building. I stood there in the warmth of the sun for a few minutes.