Pyramid 76
Michael Gunter
Pyramid 76
Michael Gunter
Copyright © 2014 Michael Gunter
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The door-code wasn’t working. Again. For all the money poured into the place, it seemed very little of it went into keeping it from falling apart. Not that it mattered; the project wasn’t going to last much longer. Every version of the Pyramid experiment had either failed or grown so similar to another branch, they’d been combined to save expenses.
Dr. Phillip Carangy hit the button next to the door, switching on the intercom. They’d had to install it after the hundredth time the door-lock reset its own code.
“James, could you please let me in? I’m rather in a hurry; my cultures haven’t been flash-frozen yet and I’d like to do it before curfew.”
His thoughts wandered as he waited for his colleague to reach the door. James Brickner was disabled, courtesy of a bad wreck several months ago. The upper management hadn’t liked that at all, but Brickner’s mind functioned too well to “let him go”. His experiments just got done a little slower. They didn’t like it, but even bureaucrats couldn’t justify firing him just for appearance.
His train of thought was interrupted by the metallic swish of the door unsealing. He stepped forward absentmindedly, nearly crashing into the wheelchair on the other side.
“Watch it, Carangy, old man! I don’t need my neck broken as well as my back.”
“I’m sorry, James; I cannot get it into my head that you can’t dodge as well as you used to. Very sorry, indeed!”
Carangy edged round the wheelchair, heading for his office and the bacteria cultures undoubtedly beginning to decompose there. The man in the wheelchair rolled after him, chatting amiably.
“Don’t worry, old fellow. You know I never moved with any particular alacrity when I could walk, anyway.”
He chuckled.
“I don’t suppose not being able to walk will do much, except perhaps give me another way to excuse my own laziness. ‘Dear Phillip, my back is giving me trouble, won’t you roll me down to the break room?’ and ‘Dear old Carangy, I’m awfully sorry, but I feel particularly tired this morning; dragging myself into the wheelchair was SUCH trouble. I really do think I’ll skip the lab-work today if you don’t mind.’”
He finished with a shout of laughter, spinning the wheelchair round a corner. Carangy couldn’t help but grin at his co-worker’s irrepressible good humor. Losing his own legs would probably ruin his personality. Mobility was an important asset, far too important for a scientific experimenter to lose.
“I suppose I’d have to oblige you. You do the majority of the research here, James. How you find half the papers and notes you bring in is beyond me.”
Brickner laughed.
“Magic fingers, my friend, magic fingers. Let me near a keyboard or a reference book and they go right to work.”
Carangy eyed the young man as he picked up his cultures and walked them gingerly to the medical freezer.
“Really. Fingers that seem to find just the right data to cut our time in half, eh?”
Brickner grinned.
“Well, old fellow, if I told you everything about my methods, you wouldn’t need me anymore, now would you?”
Carangy sobered.
“Oh, you’d still be quite indispensable to me, my friend, but the upper management... that is a different question.”
“True enough. While we’re on the subject, did you hear about Pyramid 46? They were shut down, no warning at all. Weren’t merged, either, just shut down, and the facility was sealed. Permanently, from what I’ve heard.”
The old scientist closed the freezer door, doing his best to keep the malfunctioning spring from slamming it. It had set them back a week once, rocking the freezer hard enough to knock a batch of thawed cultures out of their petri dishes. He’d been meaning to send a requisition form to the maintenance department about a replacement.
“Yes, I heard. Louis was telling me about it, but...”
“Louis? Louis who?”
A brief frown flickered over Carangy’s face; it was unusual for the younger to interrupt him.
“Louis Vicardo, from Pyramid 46. Didn’t you know him?
Brickner didn’t answer, but waited for his colleague to continue. After a brief pause, Carangy continued.
“At any rate, he was telling me about the shutdown yesterday. Very upset, he was, said they were exceedingly close. Wouldn’t say what they were close to, no details allowed, apparently. Of course, he was quite voluble about being shut down without warning, but we didn’t get to speak about that part much. His line went down, I suppose. I really must try to ring him up again sometime soon.”
With that, he returned to his note-book, missing the brief expression of concern that drifted over Brickner’s naturally cheery face.
“You suppose?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Carangy continued to finish his notes as he replied.
“Well, yes. There was a sort of crackling pop over the wires and then it went dead. I guessed it was an electrical storm or something of the kind. Of course, Vicardo might have dropped the phone in a vat of saline solution again.”
He chuckled, but did not notice the lack of an answering laugh from the young man. It was a perfectly logical assumption, given Vicardo’s lack of dexterity and usually Brickner would have been poking fun at the poor fellow. Now, the young man was deep in thought, watching absently as the elder scientist entered his notes.
Carangy finished his entries for the day, having scribbled them down with a pen as old as he was. A few minutes later, the entire complex began going dark, locked down tighter than a bio-hazard containment complex.
The security microphone at the front doors caught the hum of two engines, each going a different direction. The only other sounds were the quiet buzz of insects and the soft hum of the generator, keeping Carangy’s medical freezer running.
