Geminus Anomaly (Novella)

T.R.A.C.E

Server Room D | 03:45 am

One of the computers was cycling the water system, turning the base showers on and off from three sub-levels below. It was pushing water everywhere. Cold water judging by the look of the poor soul trapped in three feet of it and soap suds, naked as the day they were born.

Wren tucked her body further into the mass of electrical wire, reaching her hand into her blindspot, feeling along the wall for a kill switch. It took her all of ten seconds to replace the AX-11C's fried cell with the working one. Communications between personal is still out across the labs which means Wren didn't get the call about the malfunction until twenty-seven minutes after the poor soul was balls deep in recycled shower water.

The soul in questions is one of the stations deck commanders and – not that she'd admit it out loud but Wren had dragged her feet the entire way from her quarters to the server room. A small act of rebellion that tasted oh-so-sweet. The Company had a saying, an old thing that started on a farm somewhere a few hundred year ago: if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Wren didn't know the specifics because she wasn't company but she sure as shit had to live in their mess and while the saying probably meant something on the large scale of philosophical nonsense all it meant to Wren was subpar equipment and second hand gear in a facility compound in the middle of nowhere. She'd have to get to her enjoyment somehow, and who could blame a girl for taking her time to fix a shower? Even if there was someone in it.

It wasn't the only piece of tech misbehaving tonight, the empty static in her ear proof of that. She had more important things to fix first like the bay doors, or the comms system, or the cereal dispensers. She'd settled on the comms system after drawing pencils with herself. Whosever's data bank she was currently under had a nasty habit of chewing the ends off the wooden sticks.

She drew the shortest one and didn't complain about it.

Because being able to hear the colourful curses coming out of Commander Marlowe's mouth was terribly important least he be drowning in shampoo residue. She really was saving his life, she told herself. In a very round-about sort of way.

The data bank over her was one of at least a hundred in Server Room D and the letters per room went all the way to Z and back to double AA. Some snow static flickers across the data banks. The system twitching trying to come back to life unsuccessfully. The white light tracked by the static cut a clean line across the floor, slicing the toes of Wrens shoes from under the system, highlighting the tapped edges. If it isn't broken, don't fix it applied to base uniforms too.

The engineer pulled the screwdriver from her teeth and flashed the light around the end of it at the coiled wires – the cell went live as soon as she turn it on – doing her best to ignore her shadow. The grating in the metal floor absorbed nothing sound wise on a good day. The systems incessant beeping was enough to drive the tech folks nuts but the hum of the computer systems around her were noticeably silent. Punctuating the steady pacing of rubber-soled shoes across the metal floor.

"I could write you up for this," came an authoritative voice.

"You want a pen?" Wren moved her shoulders to drag the torch up to Cormac. The white light hitting him square in the face, four paces behind her. "Comms are down."

"System check?"

"No, they all blinked out at the same time. The storm's interfering with everything connected to a power outlet." The data banks, or the supercomputer data analog system for short, shows no life signs on any of the minor or major systems. The snow on the screens just the twitching leftovers of trickle power.