West of Nothing

3. The Bridge

When the double doors slid back on the open space, Mason felt like he was walking onto the bridge of a starship. On a raised platform at the front sat a glass dome under a gantry holding lights and cams—that must be where the X-Bot was being contained. Overhead and just forward of it was mounted an arc of six jumbo monitors showing the X-Bot from different angles. The floor sloped gently upward from the front, theater style. There were three rows of equipment clusters, each with a mesh-backed chair and its own trio of monitors giving off an aquatic glow.

Mason pictured a Starfleet captain striding in and declaring, Charge torpedoes and prepare to engage! On second glance, he saw there was no captain's post. Besides, the Gray Man didn't seem like the type. Still, it was quite the setup they had here. He couldn't help noticing there was room for several more people; less than half of the equipment clusters were currently manned.

"Maxwell, status report," the Gray Man said.

A man with a bushy gray beard streaked with clay appeared on an overhead jumbo, which could apparently be slaved to any of the monitors or cams. "We just finished shooting it full of X-rays," said the grizzly man. "Maybe the radiography guys will see something we missed, but it's all looking pretty mushy so far."

"Mushy?" repeated the Gray Man.

The next face on-screen was a black man in his mid-thirties, mildly handsome but already going bald with a shrinking peninsula of hair. "We didn't light up any circuit boards or electrodes, and we're not seeing any ion gradients that would indicate a battery."

"You're saying it doesn't have a battery?" Mason blurted.

"Try to keep up, dickhead!" Though the voice came from a station halfway across the room, it was loud enough to make Mason jump. The acoustics in the place were music hall quality. "Who is this guy? Not another one of your cube jockeys?"

"This is Mason Donnelly," the Gray Man introduced him. "He has extensive experience in all aspects of microbot fabrication and assembly."

Damn, Mason thought. The guy made him sound like a freaking Freeman Dyson. Maybe he could use him as a job reference when this was over.

"Oh yeah, Corny mentioned something about a peeper guy," said the shouter.

"He's currently working through some legal entanglements," explained the Gray Man.

"Terrific. So he's a dickhead with a rap sheet."

"What's the deal with you?" Mason said. "You got Tourette's or something?"

"No, I don't fucking have Tourette's Syndrome!" A pimply Indian face with a red headband appeared on-screen. He was younger than Mason even. Eighteen maybe? Jumbo high-def didn't do his complexion any favors. "I don't have any tics, see. What I have is a speech disinhibition condition. There's some screwed up wiring between my frontal lobe and speech center that causes me to vocalize whatever comes to mind. It's involuntary, meaning I can't help it. So show some fucking respect, dickhead."

"Got it. But do you think you could call me something other than dickhead?"

"Sure thing, peeper."

Mason thought it best to stop while he was behind, lest he find himself even further behind.

"What's on this morning's docket?" the Gray Man asked, unruffled.

"We removed the pressure tubing on a spare lid to create an open-air hole," Grizzly said. "We're going to swap it out with the current one and see if the X-Bot makes a break for it." One of the jumbos showed a close-up of the lid, which was a couple inches thick and the size of a pie pan. There was an inch-wide hole slightly left of center.