The Four Mirrors
Sequel to ‘Legacies’
By MMM/AJ
MAJOR EDIT TO THE STORY: Not too long ago I realized that I made a huge chronological error in the story but placing that Interlude with Jeremy in BEFORE the end of Book 1. This should really be happening in the timeline right now. So what I’ve done is cut it out of the last chunk of Book 1 and pasted it in here. I’ve turned it into its own chapter here in the beginning of this chunk. So you guys can feel free to skip over it since you’ve read it before. Sorry for the dumbass moment guys.
I’m introducing some new characters in this chunk by writing from their POV’s. But I’m not going to make them regular characters in the sense that they’ll be a part of the POV rotation for every single chunk, but they’re not going to be minor characters either. They won’t appear on any regular structure, and not very often. This chunk will feature them and only them.
Chapter IV – J1
A scruffy looking 20-ish year old human man wandered through the darkened streets of Viridian City. He was wearing a dark purple windbreaker and blue jeans, and had several piercings in his ears and nose. A single gold necklace chain hung around his neck, mostly hidden under his windbreaker. He had his hands clamped firmly in his pockets and was wearing a worried frown on his face.
“Where the hell is Rose?” he mumbled angrily. “I’m never going to make it to the meeting in time now. ‘Oh sure Jeremy, I’ll be on time! Just make sure to leave me that Nu hit so I can get lost on the way!’ Sometimes I really hate that asshole.”
Jeremy had been waiting in front of the old holoball court for half an hour. The rave had ended awhile ago and everyone had already left, so he was standing alone in the cold night air. Eventually he got so impatient that he decided to abandon the streets and walk back home by himself. The city was deathly quiet around him, and he quickly lost track of his location not realizing that he was heading deeper into the industrial district. He walked along the sidewalk trying to discern the street signs but failing in the dark.
There was no moon out that night, but the lights from the distant commercial district brightened the sky with a sickly warm glow. There were no stars visible, and a lack of wind all throughout the past few days had resulted in a smoky haze settling over the whole city. Most of the street lights in the industrial district were broken or malfunctioning from neglect, rendering the street where Jeremy walked a dark, murky corridor filled with unseen hazards. A patch of winter ice or some loose cables across the street could have caused him to fall at any time, but in the end it was a rather large obstacle that found its way into his path. He walked straight into a large steel door, which had swung partially open into the street. His head made a dull thudding clang on the metal, and he swore profusely.
“It’s too goddamn dark out here.” Jeremy said, pulling out his flashlight.
The beam of illumination his flashlight produced revealed that the door he had collided with was extremely aged and covered with rust. The doorway it had covered held a long, featureless concrete corridor that quickly descended into the dark depths of the building.
“Whoever left their freakin’ door open is about to get a piece of my mind!” He said, and charged angrily inside.
The place he found seemed abandoned, and it would have struck the average person as weird how the corridor descended continuously without any doors or branching pathways, but Jeremy was too frustrated from the huge lump on his head to notice. He was determined to have a shouting match with whoever had been stupid enough to leave the door open all night. When he reached the bottom, he found two wooden side doors and a large steel door which had been smashed off its hinges. He looked behind the wooden doors and found an empty, dark, dust covered office, and the other hid a large abandoned barracks room, complete with bunk beds and a kitchen. It too was abandoned, dark, and covered with dust. By the time he decided to investigate the room behind the smashed steel door, his anger had dissipated, and was replaced with curiosity and a bit of lust for explanation. This place felt spooky, like a lost Temple from some sort of adventure movie.
What lay behind the wrecked steel door was even more amazing. It looked like some sort of explosion had happened here. There was plastic and metal scrap all over the floor, which had been blackened by heat. Weirdest of all, there was a small region where it looked relatively untouched by whatever event had occurred. There were three computer towers isolated in this safe zone, one of which seemed to have been cut in half. Jeremy walked over to these computers and examined them.
Jeremy opened the case on one of them, and saw that it was extremely old. The hard drive was extremely large when compared with modern ones, and the processor was only divided into 5 cores. It even had a cooling system that used an air fan! The thought struck him that this computer was an antique, and could be very valuable. He replaced the case and tried to pick it up, but it was firmly anchored to the floor with steel bolts. Jeremy didn’t have anything to pry or unscrew the bolts with, so he sighed and decided to leave it behind. He could come back later with a bunch of his friends after all, he could bring as many people from the cult as he needed. But, just in case, he decided to open it back up and take some of the components with him. He pocketed the hard drives, the processor, graphics card, and tried to get the fan, but it was screwed it to chassis so he left it. When he was satisfied, he put the case back and turned to leave.
When he emerged back onto the streets, Jeremy strained to push the door closed so nobody else would notice the strange building and steal the rest of the computer parts inside. He felt like a prospector staking a claim as he felt the door squeal and shut under his weight. The latch clicked and he jiggled the handle once to make sure it was locked and continued walking down the street.
A pair of headlights appeared from around the corner at the far end of the street and Jeremy waved to them. The hover car zoomed over to him and landed with a soft thud. The door open and a very obviously stoned girl gestured for Jeremy to get in.
“I knew it!” Jeremy said angrily as he climbed into the passenger seat. “You’re fried deeper than a Thanksgiving turkey!”
“I’m shorry I was late.” Rose slurred.
“You’re not safe to drive. Scoot back!” Jeremy demanded.
“It’s alright Jer, I’ve got evey things under control.” Rose protested.
“Scoot! Or I’ll make you scoot!” Jeremy threatened.
“Jeesh, don’t pull an Ares on me dude. I’ll move if you wanna wanna wanna drive, just don’t have me tortured.” Rose said, slumping backwards and landing in the backseat limply.
Jeremy took the control sticks and eased them up into the air and over the tops of the industrial buildings. Rose’s cheapo Flareon-X model hover car shuddered and dipped as he tried to keep it steady.
“How wash the rave? Did you smash it open?” Rose asked.
“You know I don’t touch Nu-stacy anymore Rose, I’ve been going it cold and straight for over 10 years now, ever since I went to DJ Tanis’ rave.”
“Alright, glad to hear you had a shmasher time.” Rose said, and lied down to sleep a bit.
Jeremy shook his head in exasperation and continued driving on in silence. Rose didn’t talk anymore, she was so fried that she dozed off completely a few moments later. Jeremy didn’t mind, she was always annoying when she was high anyway. Besides, his mind was still occupied trying to figure out what could be on that hard drive he had stolen. He drove with one hand and stuck the other into his pocket to feel it. The case was smooth plastic and he fidgeted and turned it over in his hand idly. He didn’t know why, but to him it felt like he had made the discovery of his life.
Chapter V – L1
Nanotechnology was an amazing thing; even though Lucas was in his early forties he still looked as if he were in his twenties. He was a human with short, almost buzzed hair around a centimeter long, wore a pair of thin glasses and a yellow sweater with the logo of a local sports team. He owed his youth to his friend Jeremy, who just happened to be the son of one of the leading pioneers into medical nanotech. There were lots of advantages to having a friend like Jeremy, especially the money. Humans were still as vain as ever, so inventing a way to stop outward signs of aging had proven to be an insanely lucrative branch of research for Jeremy’s family. They had earned enough money to move out of their old mid-sized house in the suburbs of New Saffron into their own private mansion up north. Jeremy himself had asked to stay behind and keep the house to himself however, and they had agreed. It was this house on the outskirts of New Saffron that Lucas was approaching now and he already saw some of his other friends arriving as well.
Three of his other friends were there: Ayla, Alan and Shara. He had originally met Ayla, as well as Jeremy and Rose in a class at the Pokemon University over 18 years ago. He had taken a class on the history of Ares’ regime as taught by Ashley Ketchum and they were classmates of his. He never really noticed them much until one day he overheard them asking Ashley after class if there were any extracurricular activities on campus about Tanis or the rest of his species. He had shyly approached them afterwards and spent a little time talking with them about the Liberators Tanis and Shakara, and once they discovered he had a point of view similar to their own they let him in on their own little secret. They ran their own little private club that they called ‘The Cult of Mewtwo’. It wasn’t a religious organization as the name implied, but they all shared one extremist thought in common that most humans didn’t: They thought the world would have been better off if Tanis and Shakara had been in complete control of the world and not just acted as guardians.
Lucas had been a member of the cult ever since. It proved to be a friendly and accepting environment, even as membership fluctuated. The cult had 2 distinct strata that Lucas had discovered when he joined it, there was a group of ranking regulars who were always there attending and a small group of come-and-go members who tended to be sporadic and didn’t invest too much time or effort into the group. Over time the come-and-go members eventually phased out, and Lucas quickly became one of the leading regulars. By now there were no come-and-go members left, and the only people left were these regulars including Jeremy, Rose, Ayla, Alan, Shara and himself. They were a tightly knit group even now into their middle ages and still held meetings on a weekly basis, so in a way their levels of dedication could be said to live up to at least part of the definition of cultism.
Lucas waved to the three of them as they stepped out of their hover cars. He pulled out the key to Jeremy’s house and pushed it into the lock as Ayla and the others came up behind them. Jeremy had trusted them all enough to give all the cult regulars keys to his house as well as offering them a room there if trouble ever arose in their lives.
“Hey Lucas! I’ve brought popcorn for tonight’s meeting!” Ayla said cheerfully as she came up beside Lucas.
Ayla stood 5’6” and had hazel eyes and brown shoulder-length hair that she had dyed purple. She wore a plain green T-shirt, cargo pants, and a smile that could warm even the iciest heart. She had a whole box full of bags of un-popped popcorn.
“Sounds good, did you bring the drinks Alan?” Lucas called as the lock popped open.
“Yeah, I brought root beer for us!” Alan said, he and Shara catching up to them with grocery bags in hand.
Alan was the tallest of the group standing at 6’3” and had sandy brown hair a few inches long and greenish hazel eyes. He almost always wore the same shirt with a picture of Tanis the Liberator on it and liked to go two or three days between shaving, which led to stubble. Shara was his younger sister and stood a foot shorter than him and had brownish blonde hair trailing halfway down her back. She loved to wear tie-dye shirts and tonight was no exception.
The inside of Jeremy’s house was always messy to some degree, thankfully he kept it under control most of the time though. This week he had apparently gone downhill a bit, as the floors had various degrees of clutter strewed across them. There was no sign of Jeremy himself yet, so Lucas and the others assumed he was downstairs in the basement getting ready for the meeting. Ayla broke away and headed into his kitchen to begin popping the popcorn for the group while the rest of them clomped down the stairs to the meeting room in the basement. The meeting room itself was the only finished part of the basement with a rug and furniture, everywhere else the floor was solid concrete and exposed wiring and plumbing. There weren’t any walls separating the meeting room from the rest of the basement so it felt empty, dank and airy down there whenever they held a meeting. Lucas looked around and saw no sign of Jeremy down here yet either, the rest of the basement was crowded with various kinds of computer equipment, boxes of keepsakes leftover by Jeremy’s parents, and other assorted junk arranged in disorganized piles.
“I wonder where Jeremy is. Do you think he’s out on an errand?” Shara asked no-one in particular.
“He’s the founder of the group, he knows when we’re due to arrive and he wouldn’t just forget. It’d have to be something pretty major to keep him away.” Alan remarked.
The group didn’t give up on Jeremy though; they found their seats in the meeting room and began to chitchat idly while waiting. The sound of the popcorn cheerfully bursting was only slightly muffled by the floor above them as they chattered and signature buttery smell came soon after. Alan refused to let anyone open the bottles of soda until Ayla came down the stairs with bowls full of the popcorn, wanting to save it so they didn’t run out.
“Any sign of Jeremy or Rose up there?” Lucas asked as Ayla peeked over the teetering bowls of popcorn.
“Haven’t seen them, he’s nowhere in the house. Come and take these before I drop them!” Ayla urged.
Lucas stood and helped Ayla pass around the popcorn. She smiled wryly and said “Well, seeing as how our great leaders aren’t here, why don’t we just dig in?”
Alan hesitated to open the soda a bit but caved in when he saw everyone taking handfuls of the popcorn and eating eagerly. He passed around cups and took a big gulp out of the two liter bottle to finish it off after everyone had a glass.
“This isn't like them to be late. Okay, it would be like Rose to be late from time to time, but not Jeremy.” Lucas said, sitting back down.
“Yeah, kind of worrisome. Thanks for the popcorn Ayla; I hadn't had dinner yet tonight.” Alan said in between eager mouthfuls.
“Didn't Jeremy say he was going to a rave last night? Do you think he was pulling an all-nighter?” Shara inquired.
“Even so, if he was cancelling the meeting, I think he'd contact us somehow to tell us. Besides, most of us have had many low- or no-sleep nights and been okay.” Lucas retorted quickly.
Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of the front door of the house unlocking and opening, which was easy to hear since the stairs to the basement were right to the right of the front door. All of the cult members turned their heads to look in unison, almost like a school of fish. Slowly but surely they saw Jeremy’s form clomping down the stairs. They immediately saw that he was helping to support rose by keeping an arm around her shoulder and taking some of her weight. Once he emerges from the stairs everyone could see that he had big ugly purple rings under his eyes that spoke of a severe lack of sleep. Rose appeared half comatose and shuffled drunkenly along with him.
“Hey guys...sorry for being late...” Jeremy grumbled as he dragged Rose into the room.
“It's okay...geez, did you get any sleep at all?” Lucas asked, getting up and offering to help get Rose into her sleep.
“Technically the rave ended at 4AM, but this stoner here was supposed to pick me up afterwards. She forgot about me for about an hour and I tried walking home.” Jeremy said groggily.
“Would you t-t-t-talk quieter please?” Rose moaned, a terrible crunched squint flowing over her face.
Jeremy and Lucas managed to get Rose into her seat safely and everyone managed to catch a glimpse of the big purple rings that Rose was sporting under her eyes as well. It almost looked the two of them were trying to make some sort of fashion statement with purple makeup.
“I've not seen anyone get eye bags that large from just a rave. You didn't get jumped on the way home, didja?” Ayla asked sympathetically while handing Rose a bottle of stomach medication.
“Well nothing bad happened to me, but I did have a bit of an adventure. Let me tell you guys about it.” Jeremy said as he climbed into his seat behind the podium in front of the group. “I was trying to walk home since SHE wasn't showing up…”
Jeremy pointed at Rose as he began, but she ignored him. “I ended up wandering into the industrial sector because of how freaking dark it was. The assholes who run that sector of the city don't maintain their street lights properly so it was as dark as the empty space inside of a Psi-slayer member’s skull. Because of it I ran face-first into a goddamned steel door that a different moron had left open!”
Lucas and Ayla visibly winced. “That had to hurt!”
“Damn right it did, I still have the lump on my forehead!” Jeremy said and pointed to the bruise that had risen there.
“Poor door. Wander inside to apologize to it?” Ayla said with a little suppressed snigger.
“I had some words to say about the owner of the building, that's for sure! But it turned out to be an abandoned subterranean complex of some sort. It was filled with dust and cobwebs and was creepy as hell.” Jeremy said, taking Ayla’s joke in stride.
“Well, there had to be something in there if you're telling us about it.” Lucas said.
“Yeah, it looked like some sort of creepy hideout! Weirdest of all, it looked like someone had raided it already and blown the shit out of it with some kind of bomb! There was a steel door that looked like it had been bashed off its hinges by a Machamp, and the room behind it had burn marks and debris like an explosion had happened there a long time ago.” Jeremy recalled eagerly.
“Freaky!” Shara commented, an intrigued expression on her face.
Jeremy nodded as he continued, “On top of that, there was a little section of the room that hadn't been damaged, almost as if it had been shielded from the explosion. There were computers in there, and really freaking old ones too!”
“I like this place already... Did the computers have any power? They make for fun toys if you can salvage them properly.” Ayla remarked insightfully.
Jeremy took off his book bag and laid it on the podium. He rustled through its contents as he spoke, “The place was pretty wrecked and I'm pretty sure there was no power, but I did open up one of the computers and ransack it for parts. Take a look at these!”
Jeremy produced three hard drives, a processor chip and a graphics card, all of which were dusty and very ancient looking. The cult members stood up and gathered around him to look.
“Find anything decent?” Lucas asked from the back of the group, trying to see over Alan’s shoulders.
“Most of the components were integrated into the mobo, so I could only get these.” Jeremy said, sounding slightly disappointed.
“Hopefully one of those hard drives can tell us something about what was going on in there.” Lucas said excitedly.
A look of shock crossed Alan’s face. “Holy shit, these are ancient! Look, IDE sockets! Those were used over 100 years ago!”
“Well...there goes our plan to read the data off of them.” Jeremy said disappointedly.
“Not entirely. There's a museum near here that has computers from that age.” Ayla interjected quickly as Alan was about to open his mouth.
“I was just about to suggest that!” Alan said, sounding a little huffy. “You know I used to work there and I know everyone. I can get them to let us use one of their socket converters to transfer the data off of these drives and onto modern digital pads. It won’t take very long.”
“Brilliant! We still have an hour before the place closes, shall we go?” Jeremy asked eagerly.
There was general agreement and a touch of electric excitement amongst the group. Sometimes their meetings were short like this, and many times when news was sparse they never even got onto the subject of the Mewtwo species. But they had been close friends for so long that they didn’t mind spending whole meetings doing unrelated things together. It had been a long time since Tanis and Shakara’s deaths had been announced publicly after all, and the world hadn’t seen or heard much of their species since.
Chapter VI – AY I
Ayla was an impulsive and oftentimes goofy person. She couldn’t help but stare at Jeremy’s Mohawk, it was difficult for her not to reach out and poke it as she followed him back up the driveway towards his house. They had just got back to his house after their little trip to the museum and Jeremy had a spring of excitement in his step. Alan had a big grin on his face as he carried the digital pad with all of the transferred data on it. It had taken a minute for someone he had known to finally get over to them, but after that everything had gone smoothly. All of their spirits were high as they re-entered Jeremy’s house, excited to see what secrets the hard drives had held.
They tossed their coats off quickly and stampeded down the stairs like a herd of wild Tauros, and Alan accidentally knocked over a half-full glass of root beer leftover from the meeting as they crossed the meeting room. Jeremy turned on the huge medical holo computer that he stored in an unfinished are of the basement and eagerly ordered it to wirelessly sync with the pad. They immediately see that all of the data on the disks had been saved with .tri and .DNA filename extensions.
“Wasn't the .DNA file format originally created for storing genetic codes on computers?” Shara asked as they watched the files all transfer over.
“Yeah, it still is in fact. Its one of those enduring formats that proved very versatile. Good thing I have Genetech software from my dad's company to open it with.” Jeremy replied thoughtfully.
Once the files finished transferring, Jeremy picked one of the .DNA files out of the “Genetic Database” folder and opened it. The colorful Genetech Inc. logo blinked across the holo screen as the program booted up and interpreted the file.
“Goddamn, turn down the brightness on that thing will you!” Rose growled, shielding her still sensitive eyes.
“Just bring sunglasses with you the next time you decide to do drugs, I think it's pretty. Does anyone here actually know how to read a .DNA sequence?” Ayla asked.
“Don't worry, this is the latest version of the software and they just introduced a new feature that renders a rough estimate image of what kind of creature the DNA codes for. It may take a few minutes though, since the data file is a little old and might have some holes in it.” Jeremy said confidently.
“I hope it works, hard drives don’t age too gracefully and 100 isn’t exactly young.” Alan said with a cautious tone.
For several more moments the logo spun on the screen as the program processed the genetic codes. A couple of times the logo slowed to a crawl as the task used up almost all of the computer’s processing capabilities, and once it even froze completely for a few seconds. They all had a sneaking suspicion that if the data wasn’t corrupt that it was going to show them something illicit and scandalous, but none of them expected what the screen was about to show them. They expected maybe an illegally modified human genome of some sort, so when the screen finally displayed a picture of Mewtwo they were all dumbstruck with a shock so intense that it defied verbal description. The 3D rendering of Mewtwo had some obvious flaws: there were a few holes in his body and his right arm was entirely scrambled from data corruption, but he was still easy for the cultists to recognize. Alan, who had been wiping spilled root beer off of his shoes, dropped the rag towel he was using. Ayla’s heart-rate skyrocketed. Lucas gripped a chair so hard his knuckles turned white. Jeremy and Shara stood deathly still as if paralyzed. Rose’s expression of agony and pain from coming down from her high even lit up with shock. They remained silent for a few moments before one of them finally managed to summon up the energy to say something.
“It...It can't be...but it is. M-my God...” Lucas stammered.
Alan added to Lucas’ sentiment with a long drawn out “Holy Shit…”
“Jeremy, where did you say you got this?” Ayla asked, not taking her eyes off of the screen as she slowly stood.
“An abandoned hideout…Good lord, the place must have belonged to Team Rocket!
Alan tried to form some more words to reply but only stuttered incoherently.
“This HAS to be fate. There's no other way you would have wandered in to that specific room, with only THAT piece of computer equipment in salvageable condition. You were meant to find this.” Lucas said with a tone of amazement.
“This…this is a miracle! What should we do with it?” Shara burst with the question that everyone had begun thinking but couldn’t ask.
“We need to keep it secret. The Rockets may be out of commission but there are still plenty of wrong hands it could fall into out there!” Ayla said urgently.
Jeremy’s shocked expression nearly instantly changed to a kind of glee as a thought struck him. “Wait a minute...wait...you guys know my dad has been working on designing nanite reprogramming right? He just recently perfected a system by which a genetic sequence is given to a set of nanites, and the nanites are programmed to modify their host to match that DNA. What if I got a batch of these nanites, put this code into them, and injected them into one of us?”
“Hold on a second! Having this data is one thing, but doing THAT with it? I love Mewtwo as much as anyone else in here, but...I doubt the real Mewtwos would take too kindly to this!” Lucas protested.
“That's true, how would we know how Tanis' family would react to that?” Shara added grimly.
“We'd know by showing up on their doorstep and introducing ourselves, or sending them a letter of explanation. They cloned their own kids, so it wouldn't be too weird that we came to be through unnatural means as well. Besides, copying is the sincerest form of flattery.” Ayla noted.
“I know that they cloned their own offspring, but that was out of necessity. Honestly...I'm not sure that any of us, even as devoted as they are, would be seen as "worthy" in their eyes. The last thing I want to have happen is for us to potentially do this, and then end up with all of us getting slaughtered by the four brothers!”
“If we are ‘unworthy’ or untrained, we'll suffer the agony of our own psionic backlash. Besides, if we do go through with this, our arms will get all scrambled and stumpy.” Ayla said, gesturing to the flaws in the data on the screen.
“She is right, this data is far too degraded to use in such a precise operation. We'd need a flawless code to pull it off.” Jeremy said dejectedly.
“Two things: First, I'm torn. This could turn out very good, or very bad. We could do so much more to help Mewtwos as a whole if we were of their species, and had their abilities, knowing what we know now. But... this could also end very badly. Remember the New Saffron epidemic? Wasn't it rumored that one of them was responsible? Now imagine him finding out about us doing this and making a virus that targets only us! Second...I think this code can be fixed. It's why the GeneTech software exists, right?” Lucas said analytically.
“The code here on his arm is completely scrambled, I'd have to rewrite it from scratch and that could take months, maybe even years if I did it myself! And these holes in the image here are holes in the code itself. It's not just scrambled; entire pieces of his genome got corrupted and vanished out of the file. I couldn't rewrite them without expansive years of studying of their species! I'm just not knowledgeable enough to fill in these gaps!” Jeremy growled.
“Well we can't just walk up to them and ask for a sample of their genetic code. Has it been recorded in the Library of Pokemon Genetics yet?” Ayla asked, looking for any possible solution.
“I've seen an entry on him in there, but it only had some superficial scan data that Professor Oak had recorded when he first discovered Mewtwo. Not a full genetic scan, unfortunately.” Alan replied woefully.
“But is there anyone we know that might be able to help? More importantly, is there anyone trustworthy? It means nothing if we end up letting this fall into the wrong hands.” Lucas reminded them.
“If we knew of any other abandoned Team Rocket Hideouts we might find more drives like this, but none of us do.” Shara added.
Rose, who hadn’t really been participating in the argument, suddenly grinned slightly as if she had gotten an idea. Nobody really noticed except Lucas, who personally preferred not to interact with Rose whenever she was coming down from a high. Rose quickly squelched her expression, as if to hide her idea from the rest of them. The group quickly ran out of collective ideas and gave up on ever finding a use for the code.
“Well, even if we can't use the data for anything, it's still an amazing find for us. One that we need to keep secret between ourselves.” Jeremy said wisely.
“Where will we keep it hidden? We can't leave this laying around.” Ayla said with a tinge of worry.
“We can keep it here in my house, it's not like my family is around digging around anymore. I have a lockbox in the basement I can put it in. Any objections to that?” Jeremy proposed.
“Only one -- at least one other copy of this data needs to be kept somewhere. I've seen too many hard drive failures in the past. We can't chance losing this.” Lucas said.
“Agreed. I can keep a copy under triple encryption in my computer at home.” Alan offered.
“Don't put it on your actual computer, what if Tanis' family has active scans for that sort of thing? It should be kept on a disk and on-person at all times. Easier to defend that way.” Ayla objected.
“That's what the triple encryption is for. Even if one of them decided to scan this very computer, the encryption would take so long to break it wouldn't be worth their time.” Lucas clarified.
“Tanis was a very dedicated scientist and there’s no doubt he’d teach everything he knew to his sons, so encryptions would mean nothing to them. Besides, considering the histories and hobbies of Alan and his friends, a more thorough scan might be prompted. It just isn't safe to leave something like this lying around on a computer. Jeremy has already proven that hard drives are no good at keeping secrets!” Ayla continued.
“Touché. They may have ways around human technology that we haven't even conceived. I vote yes to the new plan so long as there is more than one copy being kept.” Lucas said, gracefully caving in to Ayla’s point.
“Everyone else in favor?” Jeremy asked, raising his arm to call for a vote.
“Aye!” came the call from the entire group.
“Alright, we've got a solid pass there, I'll keep the drive locked up and Alan will keep a copy on his pad.” Jeremy said, de-syncing the pad from his computer.
“It's getting late guys, and I'm going hiking tomorrow morning early. Do you think we can call it a night?” Rose asked with a yawn.
“I guess, it's almost 10 now and I don't have anything else to bring up. Anyone got anything else?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah; if we do eve get that code patched up, how would we test it? And may I have my popcorn bowls back now?” Ayla asked wryly.
The cult members had completely forgotten the popcorn after their heated argument. They quickly gathered up Ayla’s bowls and passed them over to her.
“Well I think we'd have to come to an agreement over proper use of it before doing anything, but it will be a long time before I can even fix the scrambled arm, let alone figure out the holes. I'll get to work on it sure, but it'll be a few months. Until then, I say meeting adjourned.”
