It was that puzzle solving instinct that had gotten ahold of Merritt Sivertsen that had compelled him to take away a piece of trash from the dumpster outside NSA headquarters. What the hell is a "Chronivac"? The name didn't quite make sense. Chron-i-vac. Time . . . clean? What?!
Sivertsen kept glancing at the slickly packaged box inside his cardboard box as he drove the 10 miles to his apartment. He marched into the building from the parking area carrying the box and slammed his apartment door shut behind him. He pulled out the Chronivac 4.0 box from the cardboard box and tossed the latter to the side.
He turned the box on its side and read something about it being a product of Trans-Dem Labs.
Wait a minute.
Hadn't there been some story . . where had he heard it? In the cafeteria! That's where it had been. "But , how could a paaaaaatriot not take this more seriously?"
That's where he'd heard it. There had been two guys in the cafeteria loudly guffawing and derisively mimicking someone asking how could a patriot not take this more seriously. They'd imitated someone pleading with them putting particular derision into the word "patriot".
"Because the damn thing doesn't work!" one had shouted in conclusion.
"If ya promise everything ya better not deliver nothing!" the other had added and they both convulsed with laughter.
"Trans-dermal labs, sounds like a place where they make nicotine patches or something," one had snickered.
Trans-Dem. Trans-Dermal. Could this have been what they were laughing about?
He opened the box. Holy shit. It did promise just about everything.
No. This couldn't be.
This was the stuff of fantasies, magic spells and alchemy. This couldn't be. Why make such outrageous claims? But pretty soon that very fact came to seem as a point weighing toward its authenticity in Sivertsen's mind. Who would make such claims if they didn't have some ability to back them up?
Still, come on! "Change a subject's species, size or gender . . . change a subject into an inanimate object . . . make these changes occur slowly or instantly. Make them permanent or elapse after set periods of time."
"What . . what doesn't this thing claim it can do?!" he finally wondered aloud.
The damn thing has a 437 page manual that went with it. Sivertsen plunged into it, reading more than half way through before idling glancing up and seeing that the sun was setting and the clock on the cable tv hookup said it was after 6.
Holy shit, where had the time gone?
He resolved to go out for dinner even if he had to be seated alone in a restaurant. He wasn't going to be one of those guys who went hermit when they were fired. He went to the small locally owned restaurant two miles down the road where he usually went. He sat at the counter and ordered what he usually ordered when he went there.
And, just as he was starting to dig into his meal, an old man, dressed like a farmer and with a head of white hair got up to leave and left a big tip for the waitress. He squeezed past Sivertsen as some other customers were entering and draped an arm over Sivertsen's shoulder as he did so.
A minute later, Sivertsen shifted on his bar stool and heard something crinkle in his shirt pocket. What the . . ?
He pulled it out. It was a note on a small square of paper.
It said "SOMETIMES, YOU CAN'T DO THINGS FOR THE NSA IF YOU'RE STILL IN THE NSA"
Sivertsen's head whipped around toward the door. That old man . . . was he the same guy who'd spoken kindly to him in the cafeteria that one time? His thoughts seesawed back and forth between being certain that he was and doubting that very same possibility.
He pondered this all the rest of the meal. He made sure to leave a big tip and then pondered it some more on the way home.
Back inside his apartment his thoughts turned to the Chronivac 4.0 again. Was this some kind of wonder device that had been brought to the NSA only to be summarily discarded?
Sivertson had a mini-laptop that he had recently bought but never used. He got that off a shelf and loaded the first seven discs, one after another in the disc drive of the mini-laptop. But there were supposed to be eight.
He pulled the manual and emitter pads and usb hookup cables out of the box. It was only when he turned the box upside down that he noticed something. The box had black, shiny paper lining all sides of the inside. But the lining on the inside top of the box had come loose over part of it and there, somehow wedged in was the circular outline of the 8th disc.
Sivertsen loaded it and the program came to life with a deep hum and the name "CHRONIVAC 4.0" filling the screen. He began a full subject mapping as he'd read in the manual. He hooked up the emitter via a single usb connection to his mini-laptop.
He paused before clicking the box labeled "BEGIN FULL SUBJECT MAPPING". He clicked the box. The emitter prongs glowed slightly. He felt a slight electric wave. It was hard to describe. He didn't get a shock but somehow he knew that some sort of electromagnetic wave had passed through him.
And a second later, the screen showed a line drawing of him, naked sitting there on the bar stool at the living room side of the granite kitchen island counter top. The image slowly rotated.
Off to one side a seemingly endless supply of data more than a dozen pages worth, scrolled down the side of the screen. It had every conceivable piece of information about him, from things he knew like saying that he was six foot one and weighed 164 pounds to things he didn't know like the length of his tibia and his fibula to things that he wasn't sure what the hell they meant. One line just said "G-B-S" in white letters and then had a number next to it in red, 90.
At any rate, it was amazing how much this chronivac thing had apparently been able to figure out about him from that one pulse of electricity or whatever it was. He was starting to believe that the thing was real. But the test wasn't could it assess an object. Could it actually change an object, a person, like the thing claimed it could?
He took a deep breath.