Chapter 9: Reports of Death

When the break was over, I found that Dean Conisi had come through. I would become an Associate Professor in August. That was close enough for me, and we shook on the deal. I did ask for a letter, before notifying my contacts that I decided to remain at Coleridge.

Jenny resumed her flirting, although in a milder form. I resumed ignoring her innuendos. I must say I enjoyed her interest, even though I knew it couldn't go anywhere.

After a few days I noticed she became tense whenever I admired pretty students too obviously. I became more circumspect when Jenny was around. It was not fair — I had the problems of a jealous girlfriend, without any benefits.

Still, it was my choice not to go out with any of Brenda's more appropriate candidates. I felt a vague sense of loyalty to Jenny. Maybe I was a sucker for redheads?

The hardware design discussions went well. On Wednesday, I called my lawyer.

"Hi, Clara, I have more work for you."

"Good. Another amendment for Universal Systems Security?"

"No, this is another company, SecureDesign. They want to license a hardware design based on my algorithm. I already filed a patent application. This would be a license, along with maintenance."

"You know, Mitch, we could have done the patent application for you."

"I know, Clara, but I can do it as well and much cheaper. Besides, I would need to do about half of the work documenting the basic mechanism and sketching out the claims anyway, so I might as well do the search and everything."

"Okay. Who's going to provide the first draft, us or SecureDesign?"

"We are. I am going to email the skeleton with the business terms. I need you to flesh it out into a reasonable contract and then help review their changes."

"Sure. If I get it today, I'll get the initial draft by end of the week."

"And your ludicrous bill by end of the month?"

"Oh no! Our last bill was ludicrous. As a good client, the next one will be merely ridiculous."

Gotta love lawyers who can quote from Spaceballs!

I was working on the Grimoire and contemplating the next logical enhancement. Should I start working on the visual cortex? I was still hesitant to try it.

There were several things I was curious about. The olfactory enhancement was interesting, but I didn't know if modern technological life really benefited from a bloodhound-like nose.

I really wanted to improve my memory. That would help with my research, simplify preparation for classes, and probably make programming easier. The Grimoire had instructions for improving memory, but I was apprehensive about that as well. It had too many similarities to improving the visual cortex.

My musings were interrupted by a strange rapidly changing sound. It took me a second to realize that I was hearing an unusual plasm vibration. I felt the change was something quickly approaching, but before I could identify the direction or distance of the phenomenon, the room in front of me blurred momentarily; when it cleared I saw a child in front of me.

I gasped. "Who ... what are you?" I realized that it wasn't a boy; it was a short slender ape? It was bipedal and upright, a little over four feet high. It was covered by short fine fur, and had a shiny belt around its hips. It didn't look like any ape I ever saw, but it wasn't human, either.

While I was completely flabbergasted, my visitor looked surprised as well. At least its eyes were wide open and its mouth was open as well in an expression of surprise. I realized my own mouth was open and closed it. I swallowed, my thoughts skittering around with wild surmise.

The being in front me narrowed its eyes, and said a few almost-familiar words. He — I couldn't tell its sex but it clearly was sentient — jerked his head, and I was nearly knocked of my feet by a sharp pressure of plasm.

Ever since the fight in the shed I maintained a full-body plasm shield. This saved me from an injury now. Before I could say anything, there were other blows, coming from different directions. I could see the thick strands of plasm impacting my shield. I hurriedly created plasm anchors to prevent myself from being shoved all around my living room. I heard my armchair scrape across the floor under the pressure, and the walls to which I was anchored groan. The apartments were built with reinforced concrete; the pressure must have been immense. I realized that the words were in the Nalu language, except the pronunciation was strange. I played back what he said, while trying to say "please, wait" in Nalu. I just translated his words as something like "never ... animal", when the visitor did something to change the frequency and phase of the plasm around me — including my shield, and yanked me underneath.

He and I passed right through the floor and into the ground. There was no visible light, but I could "see" the tints of plasm around me. The Nalu was pushing me and himself through a river of plasm somewhere underground. We accelerated with incredible speed, passing through the ground as though we were ghosts. My ears were deafened with rapidly changing pseudo-sound of plasm all around me. I couldn't judge the speed, but it felt like we were moving as fast as a plane.

After what felt like a couple of minutes, the angry Nalu reversed whatever he did to the plasm around me, and we became solid again. It was still pitch dark, but I could tell by the plasm around me that we were underground in some chamber. The Nalu muttered something and left — I could hear the plasm sound of him doing the ground-passing transition again.

Before I could think, I realized that my shield was getting squeezed. Unlike in my apartment, instead of alternating blows it was squeezed from all sides, and the pressure kept rising. My shield, strong as it was, was giving way, like hard rubber being compressed. It was squeezing my lungs, and I fought panic as I couldn't breathe.

How was he putting so much pressure? I told myself not to panic and think! Unfortunately, my relaxation ritual consisted of slow breathing — something I could not do right now.

I thought the vibrations were building in magnitude, but stayed at constant frequency. It felt as though they were bouncing from some sort of plasm enclosure just inside an underground chamber, and reinforced each other. It was a kind of resonance that kept building, and would eventually — soon — crush me.

I tried disrupting the resonance. It was hard to work with my lungs not working, and outside the shield, but I was able to create a layer of plasm that absorbed and distorted the vibration enough to break the resonance. To my relief the pressure on my shield quickly dropped. But now I had to get out — I really was running out of air.