The flight to the testing facility was quiet. Mew couldn’t figure
out why seeing the ring work would in any way make her more capable of helping
them figure out how to get either of the last two controls to work but the
entire colony was depending on the ring to get away from the wave. For a split
second she was worried that the whole thing may have been a trap to interrogate
her privately concerning Rusty, Toll, and the lost station but she couldn’t
figure out what there was to gain by pumping her for information and decided
fairly quickly that they must just be really lost in relation to the ring
controls.
About an hour into the flight she had gotten bored with staring
out the window. “Do either of you know who I’ll be working with?” She asked.
The skinny one put the cruiser on auto pilot and turned his chair
around. “Once the aliens arrived and the senate became aware of the situation they
tasked the Department of Satellite Design and Maintenance with regaining access to the ring.” He explained.
Mew nodded. “If there’s an entire department working on this, what
do they need me for?” She asked.
The skinny one smiled sadly. “D.S.D.M consists of three people. Cordon,
the head of the department and seventy four year old brains of D.S.D.M. His
recently graduated assistant Brent, and Lucy their administrative manager.” He
listed them off.
Mew was a little stunned. “Three people? D.S.D.M consists of three
people?” She asked in shock.
The skinny one nodded. “You’re the fourth.” He said with a smile,
turning his chair back around.
The cruiser cleared the mountain range it was flying over and they
were greeted to the sight of the Colony’s capitol city. Mew had seen it from
space often and never got tired of it, but as a civilian pilot planeside she
had never gotten permission to fly this low and enjoyed the unique view of the
oldest and most spectacular city on the planet.
They moved into standard transit lanes and made their way through
the city, passing everything of interest quickly. They reached the far side of
the city where the grand and fashionable architecture gave way to the boring
simple utility of the industrial districts.
D.S.D.M was housed in an unassuming squat windowless building with
a simple black and white sign to identify that the giant warehouse was
something more than a storage facility. The skinny one landed the cruiser in
the parking lot and Mew’s door opened automatically.
When they had left her father’s home it had been a beautiful sunny
day, the weather in the capitol was heavy dark clouds that threatened to rain
at any moment. As they made their way to the only door in the nearest side of
the building a crack of thunder made them scamper a little quicker to avoid the
coming rain.
The fat one shoved the door open roughly, the skinny one snuck
inside just behind him and he turned to hold the door open for Mew. She stepped
inside to familiar music. It was a recording of a band that Toll listened to incessantly.
At first she didn’t mind his obsession but as time passed she did everything in
her power to try and get him to play other music, none of it worked.
The music was being played over the intercom system throughout the
entire building. They reached the end of the entrance hallway and the skinny
one stepped up and held the door to the actual lab open for Mew.
She stepped through in time to see an old man in a worn and grungy
white lab coat coast by on his rolling office chair. “No, we have nothing new
to share with the senate. We’re still trying to figure out how to get the
console to interface with any equipment we have that's even remotely functional.” The
old man said as he spun and then kicked himself back the way he came.
The fat one huffed in annoyance. “It doesn’t look like you’re doing
much of anything.” He accused.
The old man’s chair slowed, he rotated himself and kicked off
again lifting a hand in the air and pointing to a bank of computers where his
two assistants were working. One of the machines chimed and a robotic voice interrupted
the rock band on the site wide sound system. “Integration test one hundred and
twenty six unsuccessful.” The voice finished its sentence and the music faded
back in.
