MHG-V1-2 (Initial Draft)

Chapter 19 - Time to wake her up

A.19

Ken sat down exhausted in the hallway, outside the room he had been clearing out for the last 2 hours. He couldnt believe there had been so much stuff in there, and it had taken all his effort to drag it out of the room, down the hallways to the elevator, and out to the courtyard where the rubbish collection people would pick it up some day in the future.

"Is it almost ready?" Ken asked between deep breaths.

"Almost." Teruko replied into his ear. "You've been working hard, I'm almost feeling jealous!"

"I thought you trusted me." Ken retorted, closing his eyes as sweat trickled down his face.

"I do." Teruko giggled. "So how does it look?"

"Its as clean as I can get it." Ken said, standing up again and taking another look in the room he had just cleared out.

The room was about the same size as Teruko's, and it was just around the corner from hers too. They would be practically flatmates now.

"So am I going to have to carry something in here?" Ken asked, his body starting to feel hot as he thought of doing more work.

"Well we're just making the bare bones needed for this to work.. assuming it does work." Teruko said. "So there wasnt really any need for you to clear out all that space. The machine the 3d printer is making now isnt really all that big.

"What about the power supply?" Ken asked.

"You're going to have to do that." She said. "Can you look in the small room behind this one? There should be a spare power cable in there.

Ken went into the room and looked around. There was a bunch of dead network interfaces arranged in a stack. And then there was a power box sitting in one corner. A massive power cable lay coiled up in a heap on the floor. Ken walked up to it and picked up one end. It was about 5cm in diameter.. more like a firehose than a power cable.

"Connect one end to the power box and then drag the other end out to the room." Teruko said. "You'll have to hope that its long enough, unless you want to try drilling through the wall."

"Dont tempt me." Ken said, as he picked up one end and plugged it into the power box, then picked up the other end and pulled heavily to try and drag the massive thing outside.

It took a lot of dragging but it eventually moved and followed him as he went out into the corridor and down towards the room he had prepared for Ayaka.

He managed to get it about a meter into the room before it pulled taut and he couldnt pull it anymore. Ken sighed. It would have to do for now.

"You should take a rest." Teruko said. "Do you want me to order you something? The printer will be another 30 minutes at least."

"Okay." Ken said.

"Oh, the holopad has arrived. Can you go pick it up?"

"Sure." Ken said, no chance to sit down. He briefly considered that exercising more often might be good for him, but quickly let it pass. There was no way he had time for that, and he certainly wasnt the athletic type.

Ken made his way through the corridors to the main elevator and rode it down to the ground floor. Then he walked out through the foyer, across the courtyard and up to the front gate, where a delivery truck sat waiting outside.

When he opened the door, the delivery man, ran up and passed him a portable device to sign.

"You're a bit young, arent you?" The delivery man asked as Ken handed it back.