Page 10 of Resolution
“I have to attend the General’s staff meeting,” he said. “The lab is taking longer than expected to run all the tests I need on the last blood samples so you’ll have to sit in the room and monitor the equipment for me.”
“What if we get unexpected patients?” she asked, setting aside the files and rising.
“Let the nurses handle it. Hurry up, we’re not supposed to leave the machine unattended and I have to leave.” He rushed down the hall toward the lab and opened the door with a code which Melly promptly committed to memory.
The room was brightly lit and Melly had to suppress a gasp at all the hundreds of ruby red blood samples stored in racks inside stasis chambers, whose front panels were clear to allow easy viewing.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Sharpton asked, taking her reaction for astonished approval. “Anyone who comes through the gate gives blood or they’re tossed out.”
“What are we testing for?” she asked, following him to a massive unit set in the corner.
“That’s classified,” His answer was testy.
She blinked. “But?—”
“You sit here and you watch these indicators,” Sharpton said, pulling out a chair for her. “When you see this light go on, you either add more blood vials here or if the light is red, you wait for it to project results. They’ll be meaningless to you, lacking any context, but that’s the final step in the process. The machine will cycle into standby mode then and eject the vials into this tray here. Store them in the stasis keeper by number and leave the room.”
“I don’t understand.”
He glared at her. “I don’t have time for this. What in the solar hell is so complicated about watching the pretty lights and handling the specimens?”
“Nothing,” she replied with her own arch look. “But I fail to see what we’re accomplishing. My patients would take priority over babysitting a machine.”
He grabbed her arm so hard she knew she’d be bruised and shoved her into the chair with surprising strength. “Nothing takes priority over this, absolutely nothing, you understand me?”
Yanking her arm free, she rubbed at the sore spot. “Don’t touch me again.”
Sharpton cast a weary glance at the ceiling as if praying for patience. “My apologies. Since you’re so damn curious there’s a research facility further north and we feed our data to them on a certain schedule. We do the tests they ask us for. We cannot miss a reporting deadline. No more questions—I’ll be late to the meeting and the general takes a dim view of tardiness.” He headed for the door.
“You could have simply told me about the research facility,” she said to his departing back. “Of course I’m delighted to support any effort at finding a cure for this awful virus.”
He grunted but made no other reply and shut the door behind him.
Melly sat for a few minutes, staring at the big machine as it whirred and clicked and did whatever it was doing. But how does testing the blood of uninfected people help with research on the virus? She got up and walked around the testing device, but the surfaces were smooth and unmarked. There were symbols below the buttons and lights and next to the tray where the machine was to return the vials but they weren’t in any language she’d ever seen, which of course proved nothing. The Sectors was a galaxy spanning civilization and there was probably no law that a medical device had to have labels in Basic. Her handheld was running low on power and as yet she hadn’t found anywhere to recharge it but she pulled it out and took a few quick pictures of the symbols Maybe Jeff would recognize the language.
As the machine showed no sign of completing its task, Melly wandered through the room, taking note of the various types of samples in the clear stasis containers. She noticed quite a few of them had a second label below the first one with the individual’s name and the date the sample had been drawn. This other label had a red star on it and a date but no other mark. For lack of anything better to do she counted the red stars and there were several hundred.
Frustrated, she sat down again. At least some of the answers Jeff was seeking might be right here in this room but she couldn’t find a way to probe any more deeply.
The machine made a harsh buzzing sound, which caused her to startle and suddenly a series of brightly colored holos began springing up in the open floorspace in front of her. A voice droned out what she assumed were the results but again the language was one she didn’t understand and the translator node implanted in her brain had no frame of reference to even guess. One phrase kept occurring over and over as various parts of the holo display were highlighted and she repeated it, trying to commit the alien syllables to memory. Jeff had a much more sophisticated language implant and perhaps his military grade translator could make sense of it.
Why is Sharpton running such sophisticated tests on an alien machine? Does he understand what it’s saying?
Now the machine was displaying holos of twisting strands she recognized as DNA, and again various segments were highlighted with commentary from the disembodied robo voice. One last set of three displays appeared and among the results a single column of bright red stood out to her. The machine’s voice actually sounded excited as the highlights played over this piece of data.
Then the whole thing winked out and was gone. A chime sounded and the sample tray receded into the device, emerging a minute later with a set of blood sample vials in cushioned slots. She retrieved the samples from the full tray and as soon as she’d emptied it, the tray receded once more and emerged with three final vials.
Melly’s blood ran cold as she picked them up and read the names—Jeff, Tamsyn and herself.
“So one of us had that big red marker, whatever it is,” she said out loud, a shiver running through her. She had a bad feeling about this and wished she knew enough about the machine to erase the results pertaining to herself and her husband and friend. For an instant she was tempted to steal the three vials and destroy them but of course the machine already had the data. I’ll ask Cody if he can hack this thing and remove our results. Running a fingertip over the spot on her arm where his bug had implanted itself painlessly under the skin she debated extracting it and applying it to the testing device on her own.
The sound of the door unlocking made her pivot so fast she nearly dropped the vials but closed her hand on them and rushed to the correct shelf, sliding them into place and closing the stasis keeper’s door as Dr. Sharpton stepped inside.
“Oh you just missed the machine’s report,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “All kinds of pretty data holos although of course I have no idea what any of it meant.”
“I can play it back, thank you. You can go—there are a few patients in the waiting room. I’ll take it from here.” He was already at the machine and she saw he’d opened a small control panel and was tapping away on it. Sharpton glared at her. “The patients, Dr. Jericho.”
“Yes, I’ll go see to them.” She figured it was useless to ask him any more questions and walked into the corridor mentally repeating the phrase she’d memorized to be sure she had the syllables and accent right.
