Adam didn’t know how to respond. He gaped at Layla, trying to decide why she would choose to focus this on him. Does she actually think my story is that compelling, or is there something else motivating her?
The Great Orator nodded thoughtfully. At least from a human perspective, it looked like a thoughtful nod. One couldn’t truly be sure without a deep knowledge of the Vaaldeen culture. “That is an efficient title. It accomplishes a lot in a clever way. Thank you for your input, Ms. Garrison.”
The Knights of the Order of Knitting all raised their knitting needles in salute. Sir Edwin stood. “I think I speak for all of my brothers when I say that Ms. Garrison’s suggested title is perfect. We approve.”
George nodded dismissively. “If using that name is what gets us to move on to other matters, then by all means, let’s use it.”
The name was officially approved. However, the Vaaldeens still had to come up with a name that would work with their native language. This order of business took much longer. The Great Orator, having greater familiarity with his own language, couldn’t accept any proposals from his people without picking them apart. He was also just as hard on his own ideas. Adam and his fellow humans, none of whom could understand a word of what they were now saying, had to sit through the entire painful ordeal.
At one point, Adam leaned over and whispered to Layla, “I feel like I’m about to drown in my own boredom.”
Layla smiled. She hovered only a couple of inches away, and Adam’s senses were clouded by her proximity. “If you do, take me with you. It would have to be better than this.”
“Be careful,” he warned playfully. “We’ll start sounding like George in a minute.”
“I can hear you, you know,” George interjected.
Everyone else in the room seemed to be ignoring the three of them, so they talked amongst themselves while a heated debate about word choice continued around them. Adam personally wished that George hadn’t joined their conversation, though this feeling had nothing to do with any ill will he held toward the man. He simply wanted to have Layla to himself.
At long last, The Great Orator approved a name composed of alien sounds that made no sense to Adam’s ears. They moved on to the real planning that would compose the actual bulk of their mission.
Layla had a suggestion for that too. “Bibble wants to get his hands on the nanotechnology, but I’ve managed to keep it from him so far. I have access to all the nanobots we could ever need, and I think I should give Bibble what he wants.” A mildly maniacal laugh escaped her lips. “After they’ve been properly reprogrammed, of course.”
* * *
The preliminaries of a plan had been drawn up, but all of it was contingent upon finding the manpower to reprogram the nanos. Layla knew plenty about the technology, but she would need some good engineers to help her.
Adam walked away from the meeting feeling hopeful about a few things, and one of those things was the fact that Layla walked out with him. She had her hands jammed into her pockets, and the corner of her mouth was turned up in a smirk. “So, do you think sending George to find engineers is a good idea?”
George had volunteered for the mission, which was odd in and of itself. If he was so sure they would fail, why bother to make the effort? Of course, the choice did make some kind of sense. Layla had to get on with her own work regarding the nanos, and Adam was barred from going anywhere you could hope to find anyone respectable. The knights would attract too much unwanted attention given that they went everywhere in their armor. “It’ll be all right. Who could resist his personality?”
Layla patted his shoulder, triggering a cascade of sensations that weakened his knees. “Remember, not everyone loves sarcasm the way I do. If you’re going to be our top secret poster boy that no one’s going to know about for years to come, you need to watch that.”
“You’re right. I need to work on my charm. Maybe a quotable line will sell our cause,” he joked. “How about this? An A.P.P.L.E. a day keeps the magistrate away.”
When Layla laughed, her face glowed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “You’re funny,” she replied at last. “I like that.”
This compliment emboldened Adam. “Why did you decide to make me the poster boy, anyway? I’m just a normal guy who tends to get stuck in odd situations.”
“That’s one of your best qualities. People can relate to you.” She sighed as she stopped in her tracks. She turned to face him, and his heart jumped. “The reasons I gave in that meeting were good ones, and they were real. Even more than that, though, I have a feeling about you. It’s like you’re important for some reason I can’t quite understand. I look at you, and I want to figure you out, but I can’t get there. Not yet.”
I want you to try. He considered reaching out to touch her, but something held him back. Fear perhaps? All of his past relationships ended badly. The incident involving a go kart, a peach, and a turtle almost scared him out of dating altogether. Now here he stood, tempted to do something that could complicate a situation that already went far beyond complicated.
The fragile moment shattered as George bumped past them both. “I apologize in advance if I come back plastered in feathers,” he called back. “It tends to happen when I go to frat parties.”
* * *
The rebels had established their base on a neglected space station orbiting a red dwarf star. According to The Great Orator, this star was once the source of life for a thriving civilization. When war broke out, the warring species decimated one another. That had been tens of thousands of years ago. The only thing that remained was the story of the terrible war, and the unfortunate event the precipitated it. These two races of people initially got along well. They had an annual banquet where heads of state from each government dined together in celebration of their mutual good will. One year, food poisoning killed more than half of those in attendance. Cooks from both worlds had been in the kitchen, and fingers were pointed, each accusing former friends of carrying out a mass assassination. As it turns out, one cook simply forgot to wash their hands.
Adam found this tale unsettling. The rebellion faced steep odds. The thought that even the tiniest mistake could kill them all made him question whether or not he should even involve himself in this.
He sat next to Layla in the space station’s science lab while she peered through a microscope. “The nanos look good,” she said. “It seems the time they spent dormant didn’t harm them at all.” She’d retrieved the nanobots from the ship used in Adam’s rescue. Stored away in a stasis field hidden behind the refrigerator, they’d been safe from any scanning devices the Federation may have used to search for them.
“What are you reprogramming them to do?” Adam asked.
“I’m hoping I can reprogram them to last longer. When this was a capitalistic venture, we wanted people to keep coming back for more. Now we need to make sure Bibble remains under their influence for as long as possible, no matter what happens. I also want them to self-replicate. If one of the nanos were to suffer permanent damage, I want the nanos surrounding it to repurpose the parts and build a replacement.” She bit her lower lip. “I could program them to spawn continuously, but they’d have to take material from his body to do it. And at that kind of rate, they’d kill him quickly.”
“We may have to kill him anyway,” Adam said softly.
“I know. I just want to avoid it if possible.” Layla’s eyes locked with his. “I may be many things, but I’m not a killer.”
Adam opened his mouth to speak, but he was stunned into silence when George burst into the room. Or fell into the room, to be more accurate. Sprawled out on the floor, he wore only a fluffy multi-colored tutu, clown makeup, and a sombrero. “I found your engineers,” he announced, looking up at them with a grin.
“Good. I need them.” Then Layla frowned. “George, I think you need to go to bed now.”
George
laughed. “I knew you were going to say that!”
* * *
The science lab was a flurry of activity over the next few days. Layla coordinated the efforts of the engineers effortlessly. Adam admired the way she asserted her authority, and he couldn’t deny her intelligence. She was confident in what she did. That quality, which he initially perceived as arrogance, didn’t seem so abrasive now. He wanted to use every excuse to be around her. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about nanotechnology, so he could hardly justify getting in her way.
The Knights of the Order of Knitting occupied their own part of the station. They were tasked with knitting as many blankets as they could. The knights were going to be providing us with a large, infuriating distraction when the time came. The more they knitted now, the better their distraction would be.
The rest of the rebellion, an awkward conglomeration of humans and several other species, were studying the schematics of the DULL offices. Since Adam wasn’t officially part of the shoot ’em up segment of the plan, they didn’t want him around.
That left him spending his time with George, who’d finally recovered from the frat party. “When smart people get drunk, they become even more eager to prove how smart they are,” he explained as they walked down the same corridor they’d been pacing for hours. “Parties are a hotbed for recruiting the best and brightest these days.”
“What role did the tutu play in your strategy?” Adam asked.
“That was just a side effect of my strategy. I had to assimilate to the environment, and since I was playing beer pong with physics and engineering students, it just made sense to get plowed.” George shrugged. “It was also fun.”
“I didn’t know gloomy George could have fun.”
“Only when I’m too wasted to know who I am,” George replied nonchalantly.
When they passed the science lab, Adam decided to pop in to say hi. He hadn’t been there since breakfast, after all. George rolled his eyes and continued on his stroll down the corridor.
Layla was in the middle of an intense conversation with several engineering students. Seeing this, Adam felt a bit awkward about his timing. Yet when she caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, she waved him over. He joined the group, astonished at the amount of technobabble being tossed about between them. Determined to look like he was keeping up with the conversation, he casually put his hands in his pockets and nodded as people spoke.
After about a minute, Adam noticed a young man in a lab coat wandering toward him with a scanner. The scanner chirped and screeched, and the young man’s eyes widened with wonder as he stared at the readout. “Oh wow. This is unexpected!” he declared.
“Emmett, I thought you were supposed to be monitoring the nanos,” Layla said pointedly.
“I was,” Emmett replied off-handedly, “but when he walked in, the readings went all whack-a-doodle.”
“I suppose that’s a technical term,” Adam jested.
Emmett ignored the comment and held the scanner within an inch of Adam’s ear. “His bioelectrical readings are bizarre. These are the same measurements one would expect of the theoretical Ludicrous Field.”
“What?” Adam, suddenly the center of attention, felt distinctly uncomfortable.
“Are you serious?” Layla rushed to the young man’s side and craned her neck to look at the readout. After several long moments of astounded silence, she muttered, “Oh my.”
“Adam, have you led a disturbingly illogical life?” Emmett asked.
When Adam nodded, the inertia within the room shifted dramatically. Before he knew it, he was sitting in a corner recounting every embarrassing and irrational moment of his life while a small group of eager students took notes. He silently regretted that Layla was hearing this too.
“This discovery could win us the Nobel Prize,” one of the students whispered excitedly.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” another cautioned.
After hours of interrogation and measurements, they all seemed to agree on one fact. Adam Evans was the biggest scientific discovery of the century, and all the absurdities of his life could be reasonably explained.
“We could use this to our advantage,” Emmett said. The excitement oozed from his words like sludgy old hospital coffee from a dropped paper cup. “This data shows that he’s had a mixture of both good and bad results from this unique bioelectric field. If we could calibrate it properly, we could guarantee that the bizarre events that befall him during this mission would only be positive. If things were to go wrong in there, it might be enough to save them.”
“Could you really do that?” Layla asked.
“I think so.” Emmett paused. “Of course, if I got it wrong, it could also kill him.”
One might say Adam was crazy for agreeing to undergo a highly experimental procedure that could possibly kill him. Layla certainly jumped at the opportunity to do so. Within seconds of him agreeing to the task, she grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. “Are you mad?” She was trying to yell at him while also keeping it quiet enough to be discreet and she ultimately failed on both fronts.
“Probably,” Adam confessed, “but I need to do something. I’ve just been killing time here, but I want to do something useful. If this is it, then I’m willing to try.”
“You’re already the face of this rebellion. Can’t that be enough?” she pleaded. Her hand remained on his arm, and he felt it trembling.
“And how will I ever be able to earn the respect of the people who learn about this rebellion if I didn’t actually participate in it?”
Layla looked away as she considered his argument. “If you do this, you may end up being a martyr instead.”
“Which means I’ll still be useful to you in my original capacity,” Adam said lightly. “Causes love martyrs.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“I know that.” He touched her cheek, prompting her to look back at him. “Still, I have to do this, and it may not be as big a risk as you think. If I really am surrounded by this Ludicrous Field, then the ridiculous odds against the procedure being a success may work in my favor.”
A smile slowly crept across Layla’s face. “That’s actually solid reasoning.”
So many factors that contributed to his risky choice remained unspoken, though he was aware of them. Like the fact that he desperately wanted respect. He wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment. He also wanted to feel like he had control over his life. With all that had been happening to him, he needed this. And, on top of it all, he wanted Layla to feel like she could count on him to do what needed to be done.
* * *
The procedure necessitated the donning of a surgical gown, which was embarrassing enough to trigger some second thoughts. How could he hope to gain the respect of his colleagues while private bits of his person hung out through strategically placed openings for all to see? Then he thought about the time he spent entirely nude in the DULL offices after his arrest. If he could endure that, he could get through this.
When the time came, Adam was seated in a cold chair, and Emmett set about attaching electrodes to specific points all over his body. This part was done quickly. Afterwards he’d use his scanning device (which conveniently seemed to perform every function imaginable) to regulate and adjust the electrical current.
“This will feel insane. At least, I assume it will. I’ve never done it myself, so I can’t be certain,” Emmett said.
I feel reassured, Adam thought.
Layla hovered directly behind Emmett, her eyes fixated on the scanner’s readout. She bit her lower lip, and Adam hoped she hadn’t seen anything to justify her obvious nerves.
“All right. Here we go,” Emmett announced.
The current began, and Adam’s senses were consumed with fire.
And memories of a giant cake.
Though every part of Adam’s body felt like it was ablaze with energy, it wasn’t pa
inful. It was just . . . odd. With each cell vibrating with power, it seemed as if he might just come apart. His molecules would simply drift away from one another, spreading throughout the room. Yet, even with all the implications this result would have, Adam didn’t find it alarming. His brain no longer seemed to have room for concern.
That enabled him to focus on the vision of the giant cake. The icing was white with yellow and blue flowers piped around the outside of each tier. The whole assembly stood about ten feet tall. This cake came from one of his earliest childhood memories. The whole debacle had been too weird to be forgotten.
Why is it here now? he wondered.
His curious four-year-old self been leaning out the third story window of the apartment his family lived in. The cake was set up on the patio below for a wedding to which his family had not been invited, while almost every other family in the building had been. Little Adam was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to eat any of that impressive cake, but that wasn’t going to stop him from looking.
Then came the point when he’d leaned too far. He felt something shift, and gravity seized him with iron fingers. He recalled the sensation of falling, and the bewilderment. He didn’t have time to get scared as he tumbled headfirst toward the waiting world below. A sugary scent filled his nostrils, and a split second later, he was plunging through the spongy layers of cake. He stopped when he was buried head-to-waist, leaving his little legs flailing desperately in the air. At first he thought this was a dream come true. What kid finds fault with being covered in cake? Then he realized he couldn’t breathe, and his arms were pinned firmly to his sides.
The cake that kept him from smashing into the cement now threatened to suffocate him. That kind of death definitely would have made the news. Fortunately, rough hands grabbed his ankles, and soon he was pulled free. His rescuer left him alone on the patio to lick away the cake and icing that plastered his body while an irritated wedding planner sent a guest to find his parents.