Chapter 27

“And I just wanted to make sure that we’re all clear,” Dave was saying to the board room, chopping the air with his hand for emphasis, “How crucial this is…how integral this is to our ability to function properly as a company.”

Dave’s eyes scanned the two lines of Braden employees, who lined both sides of the long, smooth conference room table. He made sure to make insistent and unmistakable eye contact with each person as he spoke, going from Sophie to Ryan, down to Olivia, and then to Trent, Steve, and on across to James, and so on…all the way down both sides of the table. The only person who was conspicuously absent was Rick. Dave knew what Rick was up to, and he was prepared to answer anyone who asked about it. But right now, he was more concerned with making sure his employees all understood the situation.

It was obvious that this was no ordinary conference. Unlike other floor-wide meetings, no one else was talking. There was no free exchange of ideas, liveliness, no crackling energy in the air. Everyone was stony-faced and pale, deadly serious, and many wore open looks of concern on their faces. The tension was thick and heavy over the proceedings, and Dave knew how important it was for him to strike the right balance of reassurance and severity here. Sometimes the big moments came up, and he had to perform. This was one of those moments.

Dave picked up the sheet of paper that had been sitting in front of him and held it up. For a few moments, he said nothing, allowing the silence to sharpen the focus on the paper.

“You’ve all read and reviewed this non-disclosure agreement,” Dave continued steadily, breaking the silence at last, “And even though I’m sure you’re all quite clear on the specifics, I just want to emphasize, one final time, that last paragraph. Failure to adhere to this agreement will result in immediate termination, with a loss of benefits, and no severance package. Unvested employer contributions will be taken back from the offender’s retirement fund. I could go on down the line, but I know I don’t need to. Again, I’m not intending to be nasty, or to doubt anyone’s loyalty here – we have the best group around here. I truly believe that. But I need to go through this spiel with you all to stress the seriousness of this situation. The last thing I want to do is fire any of you. So please, don’t make me. Is that understood?”

All down the conference room table, everyone was nodding, some energetically, and some slower than others. It was obvious that many of the employees were still deeply uneasy about what they had seen, and that they harbored many questions that they knew Dave was not going to answer. Still, though, everyone seemed to know where their place was, and, dutifully, they all looked down at the individual pieces of paper in front of them.

“All right,” sighed Dave, nodding as he breathed out a reluctant breath. He didn’t enjoy having to make these kinds of speeches, and he wanted to make sure everyone understood that he was only saying all this because he had to. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I just ask that you all sign the agreements in front of you, so we don’t have to worry about any of this anymore.”

The slight rustle of papers was accompanied by many pens clicking open at once, as everyone bent forward and signed their forms, which were then passed down to Dave. He received them appreciatively and collected them all in a stack, which he rearranged and tapped smartly against the table, straightening all the papers out, and giving the meeting a staccato finale.

“Ok then!” he exclaimed, cracking into his best attempt at an appreciative smile, “I think that’s it, then. You’re all free to return to work.”

“But, um…Dave?” Sophie ventured, holding up her hand.

“Yes?” he asked simply. He had expected some sort of pushback, or at least some more questions, and it didn’t surprise him at all that it was Sophie leading the charge.

“So…Brooke…Lucas…” Sophie began, the concern evident in her voice, “Are they…they’re okay, then?”

“They’re just fine,” nodded Dave, smiling warmly as he looked down at Sophie, “Both recuperating, you know, from that…uhhh, well yes, from that ordeal. But doing well, yes, doing just fine. No need to be concerned.”

“But where?” piped up Olivia.

“Sorry?” Dave was beginning to feel the necessity of nipping these questions in the bud.

“You say they’re…recuperating,” Olivia replied, leaning forward into the conference room table. “Where are they?”

One floor below, Lucas awoke with a start. He was lying on his back, on something cold. His eyes were blinking up at a dark, high ceiling…his breath caught in his chest, and a harsh, forced exhale escaped his lips. All his muscles were sore; it felt like he had run a thousand miles, and never reached his destination. He blinked again up at the ceiling, and his awareness came into focus. Brooke…Brooke…where was she!? Her golden goddess touch…the ambrosial voice that made every atom in his body dance with devotional ecstasy…the impossible, dominating warmth of her eyes…her lips…the twin temples of her breasts…the room felt so cold, so harsh and metallic, stripped-down. It had to be a dream. He had passed out and was stuck in a bad dream, without her.

Desperately, Lucas lurched his head around, as he awkwardly and abruptly sat up on the metal table he had been lying on. He knew this place – it was Rick’s lab! Deep in his bones, he immediately understood that this was not a dream, that this was reality. Without another thought passing through his mind, his face seized up, and hot tears began to pool in the corners of his eyes. Before he knew what was happening, he was up on his hands and knees, bawling his eyes out on the metal table, his body wrecked by spasmodic sobs that shook him from head to toe. He didn’t even register that he was bare-chested, and that he was wearing a pair of oversized sweatpants. All he knew was that he was without Brooke.

“Ah yes! Lucas!” came the casual, pleasant sound of a new male voice, “Awake at last, I see.”

Lucas tried to catch his breath as he blinked rapidly, staring through the thick tears toward the sound of the voice. A tall man in a white lab coat had just entered through a silent sliding door. Lucas snorted and wiped his eyes a few times, managing to shuffle his body to the edge of the table and sit up, so that his legs were dangling off the side. He still felt internally crushed and alone without Brooke, but already, this man’s presence was forcing him to try and at least present himself upright. Subconsciously, even though Lucas had been in Rick’s lab many times, he had never remembered there being a door there before.

“I’m Dr. Drayton,” continued the man, coming up to Lucas in that same casual gait, with his hands in his pockets, “And I…well, I suppose you can say I work for Rick…er, with Rick, more like.” He peered closely at Lucas, who suddenly felt the reality of this man’s size now that he was up close – Dr. Drayton seemed quite tall, and quite large in general, although, of course, he was nothing compared to…to what she had been.

Lucas had opened his mouth to ask about Brooke when Dr. Drayton spoke first.

“So important question, Lucas, before we get started here – I can see your vitals are all intact. Very encouraging. No need to be alarmed as to your condition. But I must ask: what do you remember from today?”

Lucas closed his mouth and then opened it again, but no words came out. The truth was that he remembered quite a lot, but towards the end, as his mind had melted, everything had become fuzzy, or just…impossible. There was no way to express what he had seen.

“About what recently happened between you and Brooke, I mean,” Dr. Drayton clarified, tilting his head slightly and blinking rapidly a few times. Lucas felt his hysterical outburst subsiding as the doctor looked at him closely. Dr. Drayton’s balding head and kindly demeanor helped him feel reassured, but there was something else going on. Already, Lucas felt like he was plotting his next continuation. He had to do whatever it took to be reunited with her.

“I…uhm, remember some…some of the stuff,” was all that came out of his mouth. Dr. Drayton’s eyes remained fixed, unblinking, as he slowly, empathetically nodded his head.

“Mhm, mhm, you do?” the doctor said, with an almost-nonchalant easiness. He paused for a moment, and then asked. “Care to expound on the details a bit?”

Lucas immediately felt himself closing up. His shoulders even bent inward slightly, like he was actively attempting to withhold his memories. Dr. Drayton’s steady gaze suddenly felt piercing, and, despite the doctor’s friendly, offhand demeanor, Lucas felt like he had crossed a line.

Dr. Drayton’s head tilted again, ever so slightly.

“No?” he asked, smiling slightly.

Lucas shook his head. “No, uhh…I…I don’t think I’d like to, no.”

The doctor paused for a moment, his head still tilted, that same slight smile on his face. Lucas felt his jaw hardening in defiance. He was not going to let Dr. Drayton barge his way in between him and Brooke. What had happened between them, their relationship, their connection, was none of Dr. Drayton’s business. He didn’t know what they had experienced together. He knew nothing…nothing…about them. And Lucas wasn’t going to let him find out. All that was on his mind now was finding out where Brooke was, and re-joining her. The mere thought of her eyes, her lips, her otherworldly smile, her indescribable body, made Lucas feel almost dizzy with desire. He could feel his heart pumping blood straight down to his cock, which was already beginning to harden at the thought of her. But Lucas knew that he had to repress these thoughts, these desires. He couldn’t be too obvious with it all – something was going on, and he was going to play it cool, doing whatever he could to find his way back to her.

Dr. Drayton’s chuckle interrupted the feverish flight of Lucas’s thoughts.

“All right Lucas, all right,” he laughed, straightening his head, “At ease…no worries at all. Just thought I’d ask. Let’s get your vitals checked. Here, let’s just prop up this table on an incline here and have you just relax back into it. There we go. Nothing major. Just gonna check your pulse, blood pressure, oxygen levels, you know, the basics. You had quite a time of it there, didn’t you?”

Lucas felt annoyed by Dr. Drayton’s last question, and responded with the barest hint of a shrug. He badly wanted to ask about Brooke, but he managed to keep the question inside him for a minute or so while he was being checked.

“So is Brooke…is she in the lab, or, I mean…where is she?” he blurted out, completely vacating his disinterested facade without meaning to. His cheeks immediately flushed a deep red in reaction to the sound of his own thin voice, and its poorly-disguised desperation. All he could think about was Brooke’s voice…that deep, feminine, ethereal fullness…like a luscious whisper and a waterfall all at the same time. He needed to hear it again…he needed her.

“Oh she’s close by,” Dr. Drayton replied absently, clearly focused on getting Lucas’s blood pressure read correctly.

“She’s close?” asked Lucas immediately, but then he forced himself to dial back the anxiety in his voice. It was too shrill, too obvious. “I–I mean…uhm…is she…okay, and all?”

“She’s fine,” replied Dr. Drayton simply, pumping the sphygmomanometer and staring at the dial reading. “She’s…” and here, the doctor gently swayed his head back and forth, with his eyes still fixed on the dial, as he appeared to weigh his words. Lucas sat there, unblinking, completely hanging on the doctor’s every word. At this point, he didn’t even care that his obsession…his addiction…was obvious. All he wanted was to know where she was, and how he could get to her.

“Resting,” finished Dr. Drayton, nodding at the dial as he released the pressure from the sphygmomanometer.

“Resting?” asked Lucas, clearly puzzled. Why did Brooke need to “rest?” Why did someone who could control the fabric of spacetime, who knew the deepest secrets of the quantum world, need to “rest?” None of it made sense to Lucas, and he could hear his tone beginning to grow more unpleasant. He was not happy about being separated from her, and Dr. Drayton wasn’t giving him the answers he wanted.

“Mhm…resting,” nodded Dr. Drayton simply. He folded his sphygmomanometer up and set it aside, and then looked back into Lucas’s face, studying his eyes closely. Lucas stared straight back at him, affecting an air of defiance, as if to communicate to the doctor that he wasn’t buying his cryptic, evasive answers. After a few moments, without even thinking, Lucas opened his mouth, fully intent on demanding to see Brooke without delay. But Dr. Drayton was already one step ahead of him, and upon seeing Lucas draw a breath and open his mouth, the doctor smiled broadly, shook his head, and gave a little chuckle, just loud enough to nip Lucas’s impending outburst in the bud.

“Haha, don’t worry, Lucas…don’t be so tense!!” Dr. Drayton smiled, reaching out and clapping him on the shoulder. Lucas felt taken aback by the doctor’s casual familiarity with him, as well as the unexpected force of the doctor’s hand against his body. Lucas was reminded, yet again, that he hadn’t seemed to have regained any of his previous size or height.

The doctor jerked his thumb casually back the way he had come, through the long, sheet-metal silver door in the wall on the other side of the room.

“She’s just resting in there,” he declared Dr. Drayton simply, his genuine eyes obviously preoccupied with getting Lucas to calm down.

“Wait…she’s in there!?” Lucas exclaimed. In an instant, he had hopped down off the table, and would have sprinted straight for the door, if Dr. Drayton’s hand hadn’t come down on his shoulder once again, though this time with the implied message that he should stay put. Lucas was instantly aware of how much smaller he was than the doctor; the top of his head only came up to the lower half of Drayton’s chest. Lucas would have felt more discouraged and embarrassed at this realization, but he was still dead-set on going through that door to be reunited with Brooke. His heart was hammering away like mad, fueled by the knowledge that she was actually so close to him still. Subconsciously, Lucas wondered why it was that her presence in the other room wasn’t more obvious. Shouldn’t there be some kind of immaculate golden light shining underneath the door? Shouldn’t he be able to smell her ambrosial scent though the walls, and hear the deep, perfect cadence of her breaths in his ears? Why was there nothing!?

“Yeah, heheh, she’s in there,” Dr. Drayton repeated, evidently a bit amused at Lucas’s eagerness to go see her, “But just…hold up a bit, you need me to get into that room.”

“But that’s…that’s Rick’s lab!” stammered Lucas, after staring at the door for a few seconds, and watching Dr. Drayton stride past him towards it. “I…I have access there!”

“Nope, afraid not, Lucas,” replied Dr. Drayton, shaking his head and giving Lucas a semi-apologetic, matter-of-fact smile. “Maybe you did at some point, but the events of the last few weeks…” – and here, he gave a low whistle – “Yeeeeahh, it’s a veeerrry short list of people now who have a clearance to Rick’s lab.”

Lucas was about to protest indignantly again, but Dr. Drayton was still out ahead of him.

“But Lucas, Lucas, haha, you’re getting all worked up again,” he chuckled, beginning to type a code into a keypad next to the door. “Relax. I have access, and anyway, Rick’s expecting you, so don’t worry – we’re going in.”

“W-wait so…so Rick’s in there…with Brooke?!” blurted out Lucas. He didn’t even know if his words were spoken in jealousy or incredulity or what – they had just tumbled out of his mouth. Dr. Drayton was bending down slightly, allowing his retinas to be scanned.

“Uhm…well, yeah…” he replied simply, “He’s in there with Brooke…and a lot of other things too. You’ll see.”

With that, the metal sheet door audibly unlocked and began to slide smoothly open. Lucas felt a sudden wave of nausea, and he doubled over slightly, feeling like he was about to throw up. His nervous apprehension at being on the threshold of seeing his goddess again was almost too much for his body to handle. But as the door opened, Lucas found himself stumbling past Dr. Drayton into Rick’s lab, in excited and desperate anticipation of seeing Brooke’s gigantic, radiant form beaming down on him in Rick’s lab. Of course, it made sense that she could be in there – the ceilings were plenty tall enough to accommodate such a giantess, although surely she had the power now to grow or shrink herself at will, to fit anywhere. There was nothing, nothing, that she couldn’t do. She was his everything, his goddess, his –

But here, Lucas suddenly screeched to a halt. He was in Rick’s lab, staring desperately around, but he didn’t see Brooke anywhere. The lab looked empty…more or less. At the far end of the room, there was what looked like an unconscious young woman with brunette hair suspended in fluid, in some kind of tank or capsule. Lucas’s eyes shifted from her and kept scanning the room – there was Rick, standing behind his desk, nodding and looking like he was about to come over. Lucas started turning around and around, his head going up and down as he looked for her. But that goddess, that impossible female behemoth, was nowhere to be seen. He felt the injured aggression flare up inside him and he turned to Dr. Drayton, who had come up beside him.

“She’s not in here!” Lucas declared angrily, his voice rising up an octave as he spoke. “What were you talking about!?”

Dr. Drayton’s eyes shifted over Lucas’s head; he was making eye contact with Rick, who had walked up behind. For an instant, Lucas saw Dr. Drayton’s eyes roll slightly, and this of course made him even madder. What was this guy doing!? Was he just fucking around with him to make him look like an idiot?? Where WAS she?? Lucas was about to open his mouth to yell at Dr. Drayton when the doctor’s eyes averted straight down to his, stymying his speech. Slowly, the doctor raised his eyebrows and pointed back over Lucas’s head, toward the far end of the lab. Lucas turned in the direction of his finger, but saw nothing he hadn’t seen before. He whirled back.

“What!?” he exclaimed. It was ridiculous – Lucas was on the verge of stamping his feet. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“There,” said Dr. Drayton simply. “She’s right over there.”

“No she’s NOT!” cried Lucas, now actually stomping his foot into the smooth lab floor. “Stop FUCKING with me!!”

He would have continued his tantrum, but he felt a pair of large hands on his shoulders. It was Rick, who was turning him around to face where Dr. Drayton was pointing.

“Yes she is, Lucas,” came Rick’s calm voice above him. “That’s her. That’s Brooke in the tank over there.”

Lucas’s vision went wobbly for a few moments, like he was in the midst of some unreality. But his vision returned seconds later, and he was now staring straight ahead at the capsule of liquid, and the brunette-haired, naked, normal-looking young woman floating inside. Her hair was obscuring her face.

“B-But…but that…that’s not her,” Lucas stammered. “It…can’t be. She was –”

“Yes, trust me, we know,” Rick chuckled. He was walking Lucas over to the tank now as they spoke. “She was about 18 feet tall and curvier than a…ahhaha, well, anyway, yeah, we saw her. It was almost scary how she had literally like just told us something like that might happen, and for us to have the Cube ready to absorb her excess power…was glad she told us too, right Drayton?”

“Would’ve taken a long time to power up,” Dr. Drayton chuckled, following them. “No telling what would've happened if she had woken up before we’d gotten a chance to purge her system.”

“But then again, that’s Brooke for you,” laughed Rick, “Three thousand steps ahead of us…anyway, Lucas, sorry, this is all gibberish to you, I know. But the point is, THAT’S Brooke in the tank there – she’s back to her original size, her original mind, before any of this nanobot stuff started.”

“Just like she said would happen eventually,” Dr. Drayton added, smiling as he seemed to stare up dreamily at the plain-looking Brooke floating in the fluid. “God only knows what she’s set in motion.”

“Well, of course all of that is a little over our heads,” replied Rick, indicating his head slightly to Dr. Drayton, communicating that it was time to switch gears, “And it’s obviously waaaaay over Lucas’s head here.”

Lucas was far too bewildered to even muster up an indignant response. His head was spinning – he had absolutely no idea what Rick and Dr. Drayton were talking about. Rick appeared to have anticipated this response, because he had already retreated from his amused insults and was looking straight down at Lucas, preparing to explain everything. Lucas hated how he had to back up slightly to even see Rick’s face, now that he was staring up at his colleague’s chest. At 4’0, Lucas was two whole feet shorter than the 6’0 Rick, and even shorter than the 6’2 Dr. Drayton. But right now, all he was really concerned with was learning what the hell was going on.

“I know, Lucas, I know,” chuckled Rick, holding up his hand. “This is all one giant mindfuck for you right now. But let me just explain – the basic points are easy enough to understand. So…uhm…eheh, well I guess I’ll just start with HER.” He pointed to the tank of fluid. “THAT’S Brooke, mmkay? I know you can’t fathom how, and maybe it’s hard to remember what she was like before…umm, you know, before the nanobots got into her. But that right there is Brooke de-botted, so to speak.”

Right then, the soft current of the fluid in the tank shifted slightly, and the woman’s hair wisped and floated lazily back, revealing her face. Lucas stared hard at it, and he felt a desperate ache inside his stomach. It was Brooke. There was no mistaking it. Her skin looked better than it had initially, and her features were…maybe a little more proportional. But gone was the unearthly beauty, the radiant visage, the killer curves…her breasts were barely even visible anymore. They had reverted back to their original “mosquito bite” size. Lucas felt crushed, but he couldn’t succumb to grief yet – he was still too dazed by what was going on.

“So she’s…she doesn’t have any more bots in her?” he heard himself ask in a flat voice, still staring up at her floating in the tank.

“Nope,” Rick replied, shaking his head. “Per Brooke’s protocol that she set in place a couple weeks ago – heh, uh, never mind about that so much – uhmmm…point is that we flushed all the bots out of her system, and they’re all right over there, fully contained in the Cube.”

Rick turned and pointed over Lucas’s head, and Lucas turned around to notice, for the first time, a shiny pillar of obsidian and stone standing near the middle of the lab. Looking closer, he saw that the pillar was intricately etched with strange-looking symbols, none of which he recognized; the pillar itself was a bit taller than he was, but he had no trouble seeing what Rick was pointing to, on top – a lavender-colored cube, about the size of a melon, was floating in midair, just above the center of the pillar. Every few seconds, in the midst of its rotation, the cube would break silently apart into a dozen different blocks, and then come back together again, differently arranged, though back in the identical cube shape as before. Whatever was going on, it was clear that this was incredible, cutting-edge technology, verging on the futuristic. Lucas felt himself mentally trying to backpedal.

‘It’s…some kind of magnet, doing all that’ he thought to himself.

“That right there,” Rick continued, clearly impressed by the contraption, “Is where all Brooke’s nanobots are now. We followed the protocol she laid out for us, and according to our sensors, we got them all.”

Lucas just stood there, staring at the cube coming apart and moving back together again. It was mesmerizing, almost otherworldly. Seeing the smooth, silent lavender blocks of the cube moving in midair, somehow reminded him of Brooke, and right on cue, Rick continued his explanation.

“Of course, none of us came up with the Cube,” he was saying, chuckling to Dr. Drayton as he shook his head, “Brooke was the one who made the breakthrough a couple weeks ago. It was ridiculous how she did it – haha, like, on a whim she had gotten the idea to delve into reverse transcription for the purposes of delivering genetic packaging to a vector, using – get this – a human T-lymphotropic virus as the starting point –“

“HTLV,” added Dr. Drayton, in what he thought was a helpful clarification.

“HTLV,” nodded Rick as he excitedly continued, “All for the end goal of harnessing the group dynamics of artificial swarm intelligence to mimic the patterns of Ant Colony Optimization.” He paused for effect, staring down at Lucas with a big grin on his face as he spread his hands out incredulously. “Like…who comes UP with that kind of stuff!?”

“Brooke does,” laughed Dr. Drayton. “Or…well, at least…she did.” He glanced back wistfully at the tank, where Brooke was suspended in the fluid.

“Oh I see,” Lucas heard himself saying. He felt like he was walking through a lucid dream. “So you guys have a kind of magnet thing under that pillar there, and it’s keeping that cube-thing–”

“Who said anything about magnets?” cut in Rick, his brow furrowing slightly, like he had been interrupted in the middle of a delightful daydream. But the next moment he was blinking away his irritation as he stared down at Lucas. He looked up again, making eye contact with Dr. Drayton, and together, the two of them shared a chuckle. Lucas was starting to feel sick again.

“I don’t…I don’t get it,” he blurted out. “You mean Brooke’s been secretly working with you in your lab for weeks!?”

“Well not really secretly,” laughed Rick. “I mean, we all knew about it.”

“I didn’t,” declared Lucas flatly.

“Well no, you didn’t,” Rick replied quickly, with a slight roll of his eyes. “You would’ve pitched a fit if you’d known, but never mind about that – the point is, we had her working in here for just a few weeks, and…I mean, in that short amount of time, just LOOK at what she accomplished!”

Rick indicated to the rest of the lab with an expansive sweep of his hand, and, for the first time, Lucas was actually able to focus in on his surroundings. He had been so fixated on finding Brooke, and then on the image of her floating in the tank, that he had been entirely oblivious to everything else. But now that he was looking around, he realized that there was an incredible variety of futuristic-looking gadgets and contraptions nearly everywhere he looked. A long, sleek metal tube took up most of the space on one of the longest black lab tables, and every few seconds, the tube built up to a brilliant, glowing red, before subsiding again into silver, and each time the tube glowed, thousands of attached microfiber filaments stood on end, like hairs on the head of someone charged with static electricity. On another table, a large, oval beaker, the size of a large fish tank, was audibly bubbling and “glooping” with some kind of viscous mixture of liquids, which mixed together inside to form shimmering pinks, silvers, and golds, before reverting suddenly to jet-black. And, in another corner of the lab, a large metal contraption had been built, ostensibly to contain a slowly rotating, hollow 3-D white shape, no bigger than a coconut, that looked impossible – as it rotated, its dimensions appeared to bend in on themselves, so that the shape itself was a consistent optical illusion. Like the Cube, it too was floating in midair, without the aid of anything visibly holding it up. All around, Lucas became aware of the various gentle sounds – the humming, buzzing, glooping, whirring – of all the futuristic technology.

“Mhm…” Rick was nodding, looking around at all the equipment with his hands on his hips as he beamed with pride, “Almost everything you see is a breakthrough in a different field – and sometimes multiple fields at the same time! – all the result of Brooke working in here for a few weeks.”

“Absolutely mind-boggling, isn’t it?” Dr. Drayton grinned. He too was looking around, shaking his head incredulously. Both he and Rick had turned their backs to Lucas – they were lost in the wonder and majesty of the new technology. It was clear that the two of them had been restlessly sitting on this secret for some time, and now that they were showing it to Lucas, they were able to abandon themselves to their amazement. It didn’t matter who they were showing it to.

“And to think that she was able to accurately predict the pathways of the neutrino bombardment in those hydrogen bubbles!” Rick gushed, speaking more to Dr. Drayton than to Lucas as he gestured over to the large oval beaker. “The implications are…just…!” And here all he could do was throw up his hands in helpless astonishment.

“Or the way she created that broadband thermal energy extraction device from hyperbolic metamaterials!?” Dr. Drayton replied, equally as enthusiastic. “We’re talking cross-pollination with three or four advanced fields…and one morning out of the blue she was just like ‘Hey, why don’t we just try this?’ and we were like…uhhhh….”

“I miss her already,” chuckled Rick, and glanced quickly back at Lucas before locking eyes with Dr. Drayton. A moment later, the two of them had stepped towards the nearest table, laden with the amazing new devices, speaking in low whispers to one another.

Lucas had hardly heard a word of what they had said, however. It would have only further upset him to learn more about all that had been done behind his back, but that wasn’t why he hadn’t heard anything. Right as Rick had begun to gush about Brooke’s brilliance, Lucas’s eyes had locked onto something in the far corner of the lab. It was some kind of rectangular object, enmeshed in what looked like an open purple container, which glowed a deep blue around the edges of the rectangle. Lucas blinked, and unknowingly stepped a little closer. There was something familiar about this object…something that seemed to call to him to come closer…and the closer he looked at it, the more colorful and enticing it became. There was some sort of screen on it, with gently flashing lights…and a red button that appeared brighter and brighter the closer he got. The open case the object was in seemed like some kind of strange purple foam, as as it became sharper in his vision, the foam itself appeared to slowly twist and ooze in place. Lucas managed to stop himself and blink again, and the foam’s movement seemed to stop…but as he continued looking at it, the movement started again. The screen lit up again, flashing a few enticing green lights which quickly morphed into luxurious reds that matched the button below the screen.

Before Lucas even realized what he was doing, he was standing directly in front of the object, enmeshed in its open container right at his chest-height on a pillar of obsidian. Lucas glanced quickly over his shoulder – Rick and Drayton were still gesturing to each other with their backs turned, utterly consumed by their excited techno-babble. Lucas turned back to the object. In his heart, he already knew what it reminded him of – the device he had used to grow Brooke before…the device that, by his hand, had enabled her to transfigure into that Goddess. His heart leapt in his chest, burning with a new flame. He felt a strong desire to steal the device, even though he had no idea what it really was, or how it worked.

A glance back over his shoulder again…they hadn’t shown any indication that they knew he was there…he could just snatch it and hide it in these huge, baggy sweatpants he had on. They wouldn’t know…he could just take it…take it…take it…

He reached out his hand and grabbed onto the device’s bottom handle. There were even subtle finger indentations, and they matched his hand and fingers perfectly. Lucas didn’t even have time to consider the weird uncanniness of this sensation – all his mind told him was that the device fit him perfectly, which showed that it was his to take. He lifted it out of the strangely twisting purple foam, which came to a strange and sudden stillness as Lucas pulled out the device. It was heavier than he expected, but he could still lift it with one hand. In one swift motion, he stowed the device away in his deep pocket, taking care to make sure that none of it was sticking out. The next moment, he was already walking quickly and silently back to his original position behind Rick and Dr. Drayton. His heart was thumping away like mad; he had done it! He couldn’t believe how easy it had been.

“No, no that wasn’t what she was saying!” Rick was saying, shaking his head, “She was thinking of the thermophotovoltaic energy conversion! That was her whole point!”

“Wait…no, but I thought that was a secondary consideration to the thermal infrared imaging,” Dr. Drayton countered, rubbing his chin and looking puzzled as he furrowed his brow. “I mean, remember? When she developed that crazy model for the cosmic infrared background, placing it like, what was it, about 2 billion years after the initial singularity?”

“I don’t…uhhh…god, was that her point?” Rick asked, putting his head in his hands as he joined Dr. Drayton in hunching over slightly. The two of them stood there stooped over in silence before Rick straightened up. “I uhm…hehheh, yeah, look at us, out of our depth already.”

“If only we could ask her now,” Dr. Drayton said wistfully, turning back around to look at the normal-looking Brooke floating in the tank. As he turned around, he caught sight of Lucas again, who did his best to look innocent. But Lucas didn’t have to play any part, because at that moment, Dave came striding into the lab.

“Oh look who it is!” smiled Rick. “Dave, maybe you can help us – Drayton and I were trying to get to the bottom of Brooke’s experiments with the infrared –”

“Later, ok?” Dave interrupted, holding up his hand. Rick closed his mouth and nodded, as Dave was in the midst of talking as he gestured down to Lucas. “So you two filled him in already, yes?”

“Yep,” replied Dr. Drayton, and Lucas suddenly found all three of them staring down at him. As he was only 4’0, and Rick, Dr. Drayton, and Dave were all 6’0 or taller, it was quite an imposing trio. But somehow, that device hidden away in his pocket made him more confident. A minute ago he would have felt terribly intimidated; now, he only felt it slightly. He felt a restless, anxious desire to go home, where he could be free to take the device out and…play with it. But Dave was speaking directly to him now, and in a stern, authoritative voice that compelled Lucas to pay attention:

“So okay, Lucas…I’m going to be blunt. At this point, you’re far too ingrained in this project to fire, but there is absolutely no question that if you were anyone else, you would have been terminated a long time ago.”

Dave let the words hang in the air. Lucas, despite the jolt of confidence that came from his recent theft, felt stunned. He could do nothing but stand there and absorb Dave’s stern words; he didn’t need to ask why, and he knew he couldn’t protest. Snippets of his behavior from the past weeks flashed through his mind. There was no question that he had really let himself go with that old device…no question at all…Dave catching him getting off in the bathroom had just been the icing on the cake. And yet still, Lucas didn’t feel ashamed. If anything, he felt a little annoyed that Dave was lording himself over like this – wasn’t it enough that the three of them towered over Lucas? Did he really have to rub it in like this!?

“I take it your silence is tacit acknowledgement,” continued Dave. “So let’s hope that’s the start of you turning over a new leaf, Lucas. Because things are going to be different around here going forward.”

“Different?” asked Lucas in a dry voice, suddenly a little afraid. “Different…how?”

“Well, for starters,” Dave replied, angling his head slightly to the side as he put his hands on his hips, “You’re no longer going to be the Braden Office Manager.”

“Wh-What!?” cried Lucas, his eyes going wide. He could feel the red flushing hot into his cheeks, partially in anger, and partially from the embarrassment of knowing, deep down, that he was fortunate to be keeping a job at all.

“Come on Lucas,” Dave cut in, shaking his head as he continued speaking sternly, “None of this should be a surprise. You’ve shown a marked and consistent inability to handle the responsibilities of that position, especially since we’ve embarked on this ambitious project with the nanobots. I can’t have my Office Manager being a liability.”

“But I – I’m…w-wait, so who’s going to be the manager instead!?” blurted out Lucas. He hated how juvenile he sounded, but at this point his responses were running on pure emotion.

“You’ll find out tomorrow when you come in at 8 am sharp,” Dave answered briskly, “Along with all the other floor engineers you’ll be joining.”

Lucas stood there gaping. Ryan, Olivia, Sophie…James, for godsakes! He was back down to their level. All that work he had done to get to that manager position, all that toil…flushed down the toilet. He was stewing there in all his 4-foot anger and shame, but even in the midst of it all, he still hadn’t forgotten the device in his pocket, and he made sure not to make any sudden movements that might betray its presence.

“And you should know too,” Dave went on, “That I held a meeting with the rest of the floor today about the…incident. Everyone has been instructed not to speak about it, not amongst themselves, and definitely not to anyone outside of Braden.”

“Oh…you did?” asked Lucas blankly. He hadn’t even considered the company-wide implications of what had happened. At the moment, he didn’t really care.

“For obvious reasons,” Dave was already saying, “This was a very sensitive event, both from a company as well as a legal perspective. Everyone has signed non-disclosure agreements, and so we will be keeping all of this under wraps. I trust I can at least depend on you to honor that too?”

As Dave spoke, he held down a clipboard with a document on it, and a pen to sign it with. Lucas silently nodded and scribbled his name on the bottom-indicated line. At this point, he was just doing his best not to appear too sullen. Dave was really laying it on thick, and he just had to take it without a fuss. He could already feel his mind sliding back to the device in his pocket.

“And last, and most important,” Dave announced, raising his voice a little as he withdrew the clipboard and pointed directly down at Lucas, “It is going to be up to you to look after Brooke and make sure that she becomes a successful employee.”

Lucas gaped again, but this time, his open mouth actually made a little squeaking noise. His mind had only just begun processing what Dave had said, but his heart was already beating away in excitement.

“That’s right, Lucas,” Dave nodded, mistaking the gape for outraged incredulity, “We’re back to square one. You hired Brooke, after all, and you’re going to be responsible for her development. And keep in mind, Lucas, that Brooke, floating in the tank right there, has been totally de-botted. Which means that she’s going to be back to her original –”

“I–I know,” Lucas interrupted, “They…uhm, Rick and…him…they already told me.”

Dave gave Lucas a hard, uncompromising look. “Alright,” he said after a brief silence. “So you know what’s expected of you. And be aware, Lucas – all of Brooke’s failures will fall directly back on you. I’ll be holding you responsible for them, not her. So it’s in your best interest to be as attentive and helpful to her as possible, you understand? Because your failure to develop her sufficiently as an employee will not be tolerated, and this time, it WILL result in your termination. Do I make myself clear?”

Lucas nodded. His head was so filled with conflicting thoughts and emotions that he couldn’t even bring himself to verbally answer…plus Dave truly was intimidating, looming over him like that, pointing his finger.

“Okay,” Dave declared, giving a quick, jerking nod, “Well that’s that then. You can go home now, Lucas. You’ve had a full day, to say the least, and you’ll need to get a good night’s sleep before you come in tomorrow and start with her.”

“So I’m…she’s going to be coming in tomorrow morning too?” Lucas asked, pointing at Brooke.

“Bright and early,” Dave replied. “And ready to work.”

“O-Okay! Well I’ll…I’ll just head home then,” Lucas managed to say. He was holding his hand to his thigh, to disguise any movement the device might make in his baggy sweatpants.

“And don’t bother trying to drive,” Dave declared, gesturing down to Lucas’s shrunken stature. “I’ve arranged for an Uber to pick you up. It’s waiting outside the building now. Here, put this t-shirt on before you go outside.”

He tossed Lucas a small but still-oversized white t-shirt to cover up with.

“Uh…well, thanks,” Lucas blinked, smiling up at Dave oddly. Dave gave a close-mouthed nod, and Lucas knew that he was dismissed.

Once he had left the lab, the sheet metal door closed shut, and both Rick and Dr. Drayton sighed out and turned back to all the assembled technology, apparently ready to resume their discussions. Dave, though, was staring at the closed metal door, sunken in thought.

“So…yeah, what’s on your mind?” Rick asked him after a few moment’s silence.

“I just hope he’ll be able to handle it this time,” Dave muttered. “It’s not going to be easy for him. Maybe I’m making a mistake, not just letting him go.”

“No, no, he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet,” Dr. Drayton chuckled. “That’s the whole reason you’re keeping him on.”

“Well, that, and…yeah, mostly that,” Dave agreed pensively. He took a deep breath and blew it out, turning to the other two. “Still though, that legal agreement Brooke arranged last week, in the event of anything like this happening…”

Rick blew out a low whistle, arching an eyebrow and shaking his head. Both he and Dr. Drayton were unsuccessfully trying to stifle grins.

“He’d be able to stomach the money compensation she’s getting,” Dr. Drayton said, “But the promotion!?”

“Yeah, I don’t envy you having to put up with that, Dave,” Rick laughed.

“Well it’s all in the documents,” Dave declared, “So there’s no way Lucas can get around it. His old team now belongs to her and he’ll be learning in the morning that she’s the new Office Manager.”

“His boss!” exclaimed Dr. Drayton, sharing an amused glance with Rick.

“Yes, his boss,” sighed Dave. “I’m not really sure what Brooke had in mind when she arranged all this, but I think it’s safe to say that she’s earned the benefit of the doubt, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Rick replied firmly.

The three of them stood there in the lab without speaking for a few long moments, and then Dr. Drayton glanced up and muttered:

“Huh…we didn’t tell him how we’re not allowed to tamper with her body going forward. That was the other legal stipulation she laid out for us, in the event of all this happening. Do you think…?”

“No, we didn’t need to mention that to him,” Dave replied dismissively. “Better not to even put the possibility in his mind. You saw how he lost control, even with the initial device.”

All three of them slowly glanced over into the far corner of the lab, at the obsidian pillar, and the slowly undulating purple mesh case that remained open. Unbeknownst to them, though, the dark, rectangular shape in the middle was only a simulation of what had been there before.

“I wonder why she even bothered to make it?” Dave murmured, staring at it.

“No idea,” said Rick quietly. “Maybe we’ll learn someday. Until then, haha…I’m not going anywhere near that thing.”

“Same here,” chuckled Dr. Drayton.

Far down in the street below, after sliding into his waiting Uber, Lucas was peeking at the device in his pocket. It vibrated, and grew warm. He thrust it back deep in his pocket, breathing heavily as his heart quickened; he tried to steady himself by looking out the window, ignoring the strange look the driver was giving him. He would wait until he got home.