Wolf 3.0

The Great Hall

And as we are watching the scene with Mentor in it the room snaps out into a blur and disappears.

I'm brutally waking up as all of us in the wolf pack are materializing in a fast-transfer within the hospital intake area of the Wolf 3.0 Support Facility. Cassandra gives us a quick blast where we are. We are deep within the massive Moon2 satellite. She's been here before for routine health maintenance. An intake team from a flying ambulance swarms in around Hunter, whose crumbled body is covered in blood. The nurses in augmentation gear use telepathic levitation to lift the young hunting specialist onto a high-tech gurney. She painfully turns her head to look at me and I tell her Don't worry Hunter, these people are the best. You will get through this, you will hunt again. She looks back at me, shivering, terrified, not believing what I am telling her.

I scan the complex and nothing is familiar. I have been to hospitals and veterinarian offices before, and they are not like this. Cassandra, while we're waiting here, just telling you this looks like a different time and place than where I was before I was brought to join the pack.

She doesn't respond verbally, but BOOM floods my brain with a huge torrent. Moving images, sounds, and voices flood in on and on for forty-five seconds, which then WHAM stops, followed by a few keywords: 22nd century, Hand of Time, shamanic technology, satellite, wolf preserve. Then she says, That, Talleyrand, is a MINDFLASH. Get used to it. You must pick up things quickly around here. They happen fast. There's another shuttle of wolves coming back from Earth deployment. They will need this facility, and we will need another team.

I relay back a phrase I've been hearing from one of the humans. What's the Second Black Plague?

Shhh! She gives a side-eye. Also, look — the woman coming over here is one of the CEOs. Quick image of a hand finger-snapping, to both show the attitude and describe who's coming over.

The woman is not medical. She wears what looks like futuristic matching casual business-wear in light blue. I might have seen something like it in the Sunday New York Times "T" Magazine section, which appeared once a month and had extremely bizarre avant-garde fashions in both the editorial portions and the ads. I guess this is C-level work-wear for the future. My master subscribed only to the Sunday Times, and when it came, he would flip through all of it for fun, with me looking over his shoulder, reading, but he didn't know it.

She has a small facial tattoo on her forehead, shoulder-length blond hair, a slightly pockmarked face, tinted glasses. Rory Chan Miller, Cassandra tells me. She directs the medical swarm, calling in meters, equipment, and for lighting. There is a furious vortex of activity around her and Hunter, getting the wolf ICU ready for immediate automated emergency surgery.

Wait, there's another vortex forming around Mentor. I shoot a quick message over to Cassandra: What's going on with Mentor? She can't see him from where she is next to Hunter and cranes her head, but it doesn't make a difference.

I turn toward the CEO. Excuse me, Ms. Miller? Do they still use Ms. now? This feels strange, a wolf telepathizing with a human.

Then see her nametag, Rory. She's having a telepathic conversation with someone else, and I can hear it.

There's a phrase crossing Rory's mind: "2.0". She keeps her eyes steady on the back-turned Mentor as she telepaths over his shoulder to Cassandra, who's also in the conversation. It is like a couched whisper: I don't think he knows.

Cassandra beams back: He knows. Please don't take him!

Rory cuts off that conversation and beams a quick directive to the swarm of orderlies who are surrounding Hunter and getting ready to move her.Hospital unit: Hunter is 3.0, like the rest of them, not 2.0. Save her.

For the rest of you orderlies. I want you to move the rest of the wolf pack into the big room and get them out of the way. Use en-mass teleporting if you have to. Quickly!

She is upset and knows Cassandra is prying and turns away, hiding her face and blocking the telepathy.

Something's happening, but the crowd of orderlies and wolves is so hectic all I can do is move along with the rest of the wolves. The orderlies take Hunter through the leftmost of the two automated exits at the back of the intake area, into the ICU, and a medical team hovers around her as the doors slide shut.

Cassandra knows she's not supposed to be catching this, but calls out anyway. Wait a minute, Rory, that meeting in the big room—this is the meeting I called, right?

Rory shrugs back at the wolf, face impassive. I don't have time to talk about it, and turns back. . Cassandra is puzzled.

We are now in the Holograph room, with a holograph showing a reproduction of the Earth's surface, with a title: Wolf 3.0 Rollout. The vast display suddenly winks out, and the window goes to transparency mode, showing a stunning, distracting panorama of the earth below.

I'm saying Wait a second! Cassandra, what's going on with Mentor over there?

Cassandra sees it too. A sudden motion at the other end of the entry area. Orderlies are now pushing Mentor toward the rightmost exit at the back of the intake area.

Mentor! Cassandra blasts at him. The she-wolf tries to dart underneath the crowd of orderlies to get to him, but they are carrying him away in a harness and squeezing between two large power doors.

She sees and flashes a picture of someone else behind the doors. A tall man with a long ponytail, and aviator classes, wearing a chambray shirt and worn matching jeans. His shirt has an expensive applied indigenous bird pattern stitched into the back. At the moment, he has his back turned to Mentor.

I can recognize him even with his back turned and his this-is-my-office threads.

Cassandra, I know him! He's the one who brought me into the reserve to you guys. He brought me to you guys from the where—when—I came from.

She looks too, but like me she has to move with the crowd. That's Joe, we just call him Joe. He's the other CEO, the head of shamanic technology.

A monitor is giving us a view of the back room where Mentor is being taken. Cassandra, who is closer,  flashes me a shared view of the examination room inside, herky-jerky, seen through Mentor's eyes. With the view is her telepathic voice , subdued. It all started with him and Rory. Everything here.

He turns around. One orderly plunges a hypodermic into Mentor and the struggling wolf goes limp on the blue blanket.  We lose the telepathic signal and jump to another orderly for more input. The crowd of herded wolves we are in is being herded away toward the big room on the other side.

Cassandra can only get a steady stream of telepathic static and blurred images from what Mentor is seeing, and fading sensations. We are losing his visual contact and all we have is the monitor.  It flashes into a blur.  

We're getting Mentor's view again.  Joe looks sick. He applies an electrical device, then puts his hand over Mentor's eyes and closes them.

Cassandra says Talleyrand!  The view has gone blind. Mentor has shut down.

With one last massive shove, the orderlies have forced us into the big room. They are closing the doors, and as we are watching the image of Mentor snaps to a blur and nothing can be distinguished..

Through the diminishing space between the doors, I see a flashing alert appear on an electronic sign overhead in the intake room: REPLACEMENT COMPLETE. The orderlies stay outside. It's just us Wolf 3.0 wolves in the room now.

And everything is okay and back as it was. Finally. Or is it?