Serial Designation

Chapter 7

Carl, Radar and I storm down the stairs to greet whoever was at the door, leaving Carl-2 alone on my desk ("You didn't close me! I'll run outta battery!!"). We get downstairs to see Mom opening the door to let Eve inside.

"Thanks, Ms. Malt," she says in her usual shy voice. Radar trots up to her, and she bends down to pet him, smiling kindly.

"Hey, Eve, what's up?" I ask.

"Oh! Ice! Nix! Listen." She abruptly stops petting Radar (much to his annoyance), stands up, and digs in her pockets for something. "When I was driving home in my Pod, I almost ran over a dead Designation—I-it must have overheated or something, 'cause it didn't have any damage done to it. But, I remembered what you said about Carl—Hi, Carl—having that red chip in his head, you know? And then—" She finally found what she was looking for, and pulled out two somethings from her fur coat pocket: a red computer chip and a green one. "I don't know if they're shot 'cause the thing was dead anyway, or what, but I thought I'd bring them to you to see if you could do anything with it."

She put the chips into my hands and looked warily at me like she expected me to say she was useless for doing this.

To be honest, I really didn't see any use for them. I already knew that the red chip was the bad one, the green was good, Carl was proof of that... but still, it wouldn't hurt to have multiple subjects to see if they were all the same. I thanked her and put the chips in my pocket to check them out later.

The tip of Radar's tail had opened up to form a satellite, which had a light on it that was flashing red. Radar was also built to detect any Designations in the area, and his senses always acted strangely around Eve. We all learned a while ago that Eve was just a normal human, and that Radar must be malfunctioning a bit.

"Blasted... my apologies." Radar bapped his own tail with his paw, and his tail closed and pointed itself at him, as if glaring at him.

Mom walked over, picked Radar up, and said to Eve, "Does your brother know you're here? If you'd like, you can stay for dinner."

"Oh, I'd hate to burden you with an extra mouth to feed, Ms. Malt, if even for a night... But no, he doesn't know. I'll have to call him..."

Mom insisted that Eve stay over for dinner if her brother was okay with it. Eve made the call in the next room, and said that he said that it was fine with him. Mom had just gone to the kitchen to start cooking when our Message Board had turned on.

"Breaking News!" it said. "Nah, jk. Upon the death of Ms. Beverly at the School for Housing against Insane Things and Stuff (S.H.I.T.S.), we have not been able to find a replacement teacher. If this is the case for the next 48 hours, the School for Housing against Insane Things and Stuff (S.H.I.T.S.) will be closed. In the meantime, don't get stupid about the real world, children. Deuces, try not to die." The board flashed a peace symbol before it switched suddenly to a video call with a couple of very snazzy-looking people.

One person was in a chair, her hands clasped in front of her on a table. Her near-black hair was tied back into a ponytail, and her crisp black suit made her look almost threatening combined with the look she was giving us behind her very dark sunglasses. The other person was to her right, standing up, although we couldn't really see his face. Only his midsection and everything below was visible, plus his hands on the table as if he was doing some intense interrogating.

The woman slowly turned her head to look up at the man. "Sit down, ya moron," she said.

"Oh! 'Kay." The man stepped back and pulled out the chair that was in front of him and sat down. He had short blonde hair that was spiked up at the front, and he abruptly hid his face with his hand to dive out of the frame, to come back a second later, now wearing the same sunglasses as the woman, also sitting the same as she was, too.