Read Online Eejit: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man by Andrew Hindle - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew Hindle
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Glomulus,” Janya said coolly, “I’m just the closest we have. At least until we can get Westchester to stop–”
“WHERE THE HELL AM I AND WHY IS IT SO DARK AND QUIET WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HEAVY LOADER DID IT SHUT DOWN?”
“–resetting to ‘blind dock worker’ every time his abstract thought levels reach some apparent maximum tolerance level,” she concluded, as Wingus and Dingus stepped in and performed the quick series of simple calming and reacquainting exercises they’d been trained to give Westchester when he had one of these rare but extremely disruptive episodes. He did recover his personality quite fast, even if it did mean his train of thought was completely derailed and he had to start almost from scratch with the entire endeavour. “And until we can get Whitehall to stop doing … well, that thing ,” she added.
Cratch nodded, and looked at Whitehall instinctively. Whitehall looked – as far as even a top-shelf eejit was capable – mildly embarrassed while his brother grumbled and muttered curses in between Wingus and Dingus. Embarrassed but not, it was important to note, as though he was in any danger of doing that thing .
Westchester and Whitehall were configured with as close to classic research scientist templates as possible, biochemist and physicist respectively. They were relatively stable and quite handy in certain highly-specialised ways, and even more importantly seemed to complement each other. Between the two of them, they formed a sort of gestalt ‘generic scientist’ of surprisingly high calibre.
And they seemed to calm each other, Whitehall raising Westchester’s reset threshold and Westchester punching Whitehall very hard in the face to render him unconscious at need.
Janya had told everyone she had hopes of using them to retrocalibrate other eejits towards greater levels of usefulness, and even attempt to patch up Westchester and Whitehall’s own irregular but catastrophic glitches.
There had been a number of experiments, ranging from hilarious to nightmare-inducing.
“I can’t really deduce anything from the foot,” Doctor Cratch confessed, “I mean, we’d already figured out that it got chopped off by the inner door and smooshed out through the outer one. How it then got turned around and splattered back onto our hull is anyone’s guess,” he raised a braceleted hand as Janya opened her mouth. “I know,” he said, “it was frozen solid so it didn’t splatter so much as tonk .”
“I wasn’t going to correct that point,” Adeneo said distractedly. “But if there are any traces on the sample – some cells or particles from whatever it either collided with or was caught by … just some sort of trace that sets it aside from the larger control sample–”
“You mean the body.”
“Yes,” Janya said, her voice level and unfriendly, although not really any more or less so than usual, “I mean the body.”
“I’m guessing a collision or a slingshot would have allowed us to register whatever it was our adventurous foot here had collided with or slingshotted around,” Cratch mused.
“Indeed,” Whitehall said, while Westchester continued to look thunderously confused and, well, blind, “it seems at a cursory visual examination that there was no collision. A sufficiently glancing collision to send the sample back into our path, at sufficient acceleration to intercept us as we in turn accelerated away, and yet for the accelerator to not accompany the object – ah, the foot – on the same trajectory … this would require the impactor, the accelerator, to be extremely high-impact. The sample would have been shattered, or burned, or otherwise damaged.”
“So what are we looking for here, exactly? Something mechanical or organic that could intercept, catch, fling back … ?”
“We don’t know what we’re looking for,” Janya said. “That is what these tests are intended to establish, in as low-impact a way as possible. There has already
“WHERE THE HELL AM I AND WHY IS IT SO DARK AND QUIET WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HEAVY LOADER DID IT SHUT DOWN?”
“–resetting to ‘blind dock worker’ every time his abstract thought levels reach some apparent maximum tolerance level,” she concluded, as Wingus and Dingus stepped in and performed the quick series of simple calming and reacquainting exercises they’d been trained to give Westchester when he had one of these rare but extremely disruptive episodes. He did recover his personality quite fast, even if it did mean his train of thought was completely derailed and he had to start almost from scratch with the entire endeavour. “And until we can get Whitehall to stop doing … well, that thing ,” she added.
Cratch nodded, and looked at Whitehall instinctively. Whitehall looked – as far as even a top-shelf eejit was capable – mildly embarrassed while his brother grumbled and muttered curses in between Wingus and Dingus. Embarrassed but not, it was important to note, as though he was in any danger of doing that thing .
Westchester and Whitehall were configured with as close to classic research scientist templates as possible, biochemist and physicist respectively. They were relatively stable and quite handy in certain highly-specialised ways, and even more importantly seemed to complement each other. Between the two of them, they formed a sort of gestalt ‘generic scientist’ of surprisingly high calibre.
And they seemed to calm each other, Whitehall raising Westchester’s reset threshold and Westchester punching Whitehall very hard in the face to render him unconscious at need.
Janya had told everyone she had hopes of using them to retrocalibrate other eejits towards greater levels of usefulness, and even attempt to patch up Westchester and Whitehall’s own irregular but catastrophic glitches.
There had been a number of experiments, ranging from hilarious to nightmare-inducing.
“I can’t really deduce anything from the foot,” Doctor Cratch confessed, “I mean, we’d already figured out that it got chopped off by the inner door and smooshed out through the outer one. How it then got turned around and splattered back onto our hull is anyone’s guess,” he raised a braceleted hand as Janya opened her mouth. “I know,” he said, “it was frozen solid so it didn’t splatter so much as tonk .”
“I wasn’t going to correct that point,” Adeneo said distractedly. “But if there are any traces on the sample – some cells or particles from whatever it either collided with or was caught by … just some sort of trace that sets it aside from the larger control sample–”
“You mean the body.”
“Yes,” Janya said, her voice level and unfriendly, although not really any more or less so than usual, “I mean the body.”
“I’m guessing a collision or a slingshot would have allowed us to register whatever it was our adventurous foot here had collided with or slingshotted around,” Cratch mused.
“Indeed,” Whitehall said, while Westchester continued to look thunderously confused and, well, blind, “it seems at a cursory visual examination that there was no collision. A sufficiently glancing collision to send the sample back into our path, at sufficient acceleration to intercept us as we in turn accelerated away, and yet for the accelerator to not accompany the object – ah, the foot – on the same trajectory … this would require the impactor, the accelerator, to be extremely high-impact. The sample would have been shattered, or burned, or otherwise damaged.”
“So what are we looking for here, exactly? Something mechanical or organic that could intercept, catch, fling back … ?”
“We don’t know what we’re looking for,” Janya said. “That is what these tests are intended to establish, in as low-impact a way as possible. There has already
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