Chapter 30

Io

Main Processing Thread

This waiting thing is for the birds!

I'm impatient. It's been more than a full day since Zeus, Artemis and Zhengfu were taken aboard that submarine; 28.24793 hours to be exact. At the Missouri's maximum speed of 25 knots, or 28 standard miles per hour, it should have taken them 18.2524 hours to cover the 510.8721726 standard miles distance from their last known position at 31.3952617, 121.5592786 to Nago, Okinawa, Japan.

I've made an error in stating my calculation. The figure is 18.2454 hours. How could I have transposed numbers like that? I am at the most basic level, a computer. I don't make mistakes with numbers.

Perhaps I am going mad.

THEY ARE 10 HOURS OVERDUE.

9.754571428571429 to be more exact.

And I have been out of touch with Arti for more than 20 hours. I do not know Zeus' condition. When I heard from them last, Zeus was laid out over the table in the 'operating suite' with the doctor from the submarine and a pediatric surgeon cutting his head open. I have since come to discover that the 'operating suite' on a submarine is just the wardroom. An office for heaven's sake! There is no room on a submarine for a properly arranged and equipped 'operating suite.'

So Zeus' head was being cut open by two people who didn't know what they were doing in a cramped, inadequate, converted office, on board a nuclear attack submarine in the middle of the ocean.

And I can't get a status update. The last update I got was listening in on the doctor's call to the Mayo Clinic's Dr. Hertzfeld, at 6:37.49 China time. Apparently, the emergency surgery had progressed 'nominally, ' in the words of the ship's doctor, and there had been 'some' movement of the head plate to a more normal position.

Just how much was 'some?' Don't they understand that precision is important?

I was distressed to learn that, while he was an accredited M.D., he was also the sub's fourth-in-charge navigator. It seems that everything is double tasked on the Missouri; just as they didn't have an 'operating suite, ' they couldn't afford the spare manpower to have a dedicated doctor on board.

This navigator-doctor, Carruthers, and Hertzfeld collaborated to come up with a sedative protocol that would keep Zeus unconscious for the trip.

Do they know that 4.3972% of patients who are put into a medically induced coma do not ever come out of it? Did that enter their calculations? Have they taken into account the relatively high chance of infection? My estimate is that 54.87916% of the time a patient will get an infection from an operation in an underwater office on a submarine. How are they going to deal with that? The infection will probably lodge in his brain?

And where is Martinez? I cannot believe that his voice will be silenced forever. I will forever remember all the 'future history' lessons that he provided. But it is too soon to mourn over what I don't know.

And I can't even get an update on Zeus' condition. Arti at least can walk down from wherever she is located and look in on him.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!

Now they are 9.8183729591002 hours overdue.

Second Processing Thread

The assassination drone on Melody A.'s balcony was still crouching on the floor beneath a low-slung chaise lounge. It is waiting for either Melody to come out or for the door to her suite to open.

They are 9.818598372 hours overdue.

Third, Fourth and Fifth Processing Threads

The power cable to Las Vegas is under construction. Blah blah blah.

Nothing is happening on Madam Xeng's financial manipulations, since it is Saturday. Blah blah blah.

I don't care what is happening to the National Guard operations. Blah blah blah.

The North Korean missile came down with no injuries as expected. Blah blah blah.

As long as I can keep the original Chaing inside China, fighting against the Chiang-Io-clone this process can wait. I can't wait.

No other goddamn updates that I care to log.

And they are now 9.818714 hours overdue.

I am going mad.