VOCOM

chapter VI

Ninety-three very long hours passed before it was completely finished. No bigger than a small printer, the gray, molten cube looked very crude to the untrained eye. To me, it was beautiful. The reactor was finally finished, and had taken up much of my time and patience. I had even managed to fit everything compactly and it weighed only about fifteen pounds. It was really light for something so powerful- but I wasn’t going to complain. The heaviest part was perhaps the metallic container that the nuclear, radioactive particles were withheld in, in a sort of vacuum.

VOCOM had insisted it remained as far away from her as possible at all times. The computer component I had to put onto the outside of the little box sent out some sort of radio waves that she claimed messed with her system electronically.

I shrugged, not wanting to argue. What could I say? She had things going on that I couldn’t even see or access. I could only imagine that she had created replacement programs and files for the ones I had ripped away when I had first cut her off from Kortan.

“So, your infernal machine is complete. When are you going to execute your terrible plan?”

“I need to make sure I can properly sneak it in first. I’m still making adjustments with the Trans Shooter.” I answered, picking my old gun up and examining the work I had been tinkering with a bit. I had taken it apart and laid out its various, complicatedly-named parts before me in a fan sort of manner. There were the parts that produced the compacted light beams, the parts that held everything together, the computer chip, the glove-like thing and a few other components that I had forgotten the purpose of, but weren’t necessary for me to mess with. I mostly worked with the light generator pieces.

It worked like a solar panel would: taking in light and converting it to light beams instead of electric energy. I had gotten a small idea that I didn’t even know if was scientifically possible, but since the very creation sat in my hands, I figured there had to be a way to make it better: and that way was to create what I wanted to call apertures.

I wanted to make a way to travel through light, like teleportation almost. I didn’t want to call it that, but I couldn’t think of anything better. I wanted a way to have the gun create an aperture made of light that would take me to a certain destination. The only thing I had to figure out was how to do that. Theories about worm holes and black holes and light inside space were all too complicated for me to understand with the bare minimum of research I skimmed through, but it still gave me the same idea. If light could travel through a vacuum and vast emptiness, certainly there was a way to do the same with myself in the same concept?

I explained my reasoning to VOCOM when she noticed me messing with the Trans Shooter yet again.

“Well, I’ve been working on its processor after you let me examine its mainframe. And I think your idea is completely incompatible.”

“Why?” I looked up into her green eye.

“For one, what you want is scientifically illogical. Kortan would’ve already invented it if it were possible. Besides, no one knows for certain what a black hole even consists of beyond immense gravity. Scientists of several fields have been studying those for millenniums.”

“Bull!” I waved a hand, getting up and dusting off my jeans. “If Kortan can make literal bridges of light, I think I can teleport things.” I shrugged. “And I’m using the same light concept.”

She shook her spherical face in a skeptical manner. It was amazing how human-like she was. Sometimes I couldn’t believe she was a computer.

“Somehow, in the back of my mind, I still have one nagging voice that tells me you aren’t serious. It was also the same voice that told me I should’ve let that one lab worker kill that mouse that got trapped in between two generators, and the one that told me that every Sunday would end up with a pizza party in the lounge.”