Isolation-#Wattys2015

Excerpt 16- Heatwave

When Sarah and I came back to the lounge, she showed Jacob and Tyler the few pages of data that she had printed out. They had similar reactions to it that she did.

"Bastard is up to something", Jacob said flipping through the data.

"But what?", Tyler asked, "what use could he possibly get from a giant squid?"

"Large amounts of Red Code for one", I answered, "if he manages to get even half of it he could harden his skin to the point where the High-Power may not stop him."

"Red Code takes a long time to process and reform to the point where it's reusable", Tyler said, "there's lots of heating and refrigeration involved and it has to be 99.9% pure before it can be reused, otherwise it's like injecting yourself with red water. He'd have to have a HELL of a cooker up there before he could even begin to think about processing it all."

"Cooker?", I asked.

"A biologist's slang word for an H-200 Starlight Chemical Processor", Sarah said, "they run on self regenerating circuits and are custom built depending on what you need it for. Red Code processors are nearly impossible to find as off-the-shelf products, and they take a while, 2 months to a year to make, which means if Martin is looking to steal Red Code from that creature, then he had his Cooker warm and ready to go before we even knew what he was doing."

"If he was ready to go the second the drones got his creature", I said, feeling a rather dark wave begin to sweep over me, "that means our 12 hour delay in finding out that he was even up to something in the first place has just given him a wider time table, who knows what he could have gathered in the 12 hours that we were catching Z's?"

"Doesn't matter what he has now", James said walking out, "we have much more pressing matters on our hands."

"Like what?", I asked.

"The biggest heat wave I've ever seen", James said, "it's bringing temperatures close to 200 degrees Celsius and is covering most of the planet already."

"Okay I just got here a couple of days ago", I said, "and it was humid as hell and hot as hell, then there was a cold front coming in this morning and now it's gonna be 200 degrees outside?"

"Every so often we get these holes in micro space", Tyler said, "Micro space is an area of the universe that is infinitely hot and has more gravity than a black hole due to the nature of all the superheated oxygen and plasma state water stored there. When these holes open, maybe it has something to do with Dark Matter or a temporary spacial rend, but there is such a gravity difference that a phenomenon man has yet to understand, termed "Micro Bursts", take place. During a Burst, gravity in Micro space is temporarily nullified and the superheated air rushes into the atmosphere, but since the water and air are so hot, they can't cool down quick enough. The results are the strongest heat waves you'll ever see, you get boiling water as rain, wind with a 80 degree heating factor and it has destroyed a few planets, turning them into barren, dry as a bone desert wastelands. And were about to be on the receiving end on one of the biggest Micro Bursts in history. It also looks like the sun is having one of it's fits as well and that's not going to help."

"What's that gonna do to us here in the lab?", I asked.

"The iron and concrete walls will keep the heat out for a few hours", James said, "but the temperature outside is already well above 90. Since the climate controls have no back up power, the main generator at Ransol must come online, very soon."

"How far is it?", I asked.

"It's a hundred sixty mile, two day long long walk from here", James said, "two hour drive with one of our dune buggy's, but you'd have to drive close to the top speed of 80 miles an hour to get there before you over heated."