Ark 16 Episode 35: Binary Future



Darkness spread through the room, every inch of the tiny room had no light in it what so ever save for the flashes occasionally of a mini arc welder that like lightning, illuminated the space brilliantly for a micro second. The cold room felt stuffy and a bit humid as if no window or door had even opened in a week or more, clothes sat strewn everywhere on stools and a single futon mattress half shoved against the metallic walls. Posters of different scientific theories hung precariously on poster putty on every surface available, the oldest being one about the Higgs Boson tacked up to the door looking faded and torn in a few places. A table sat in the back right corner of the room by floor to ceiling shelves filled with all sorts of tools, tech and strange materials. On the table sat a mechanism that would allow the user to shoot bursts of electricity at someone in small self-contained balls with the use of a micro containment field generator. (Though mind you this was all just theoretical processes.) Next to the shelves and the table, a large light board filled with several equations and schematics rested in it’s off state, ready to work again when the person sitting at the table needed it. The person sitting at the table looked up from their work and sighed, wiping sweat off their 16 year old brow and looked down at their handy work. They scoffed and shoved it all into a flaming waste bin that turned the materials to ash instantly. “All that work and the welding process goes wrong... I can’t work with this.” Coming from the person, the voice sounded distinctly female but gravely and a bit depressed all at the same time. They leaned back in their chair and stared up at their dark ceiling, pressing a button on a wrist band to make the ceiling suddenly become alit with thousands of tiny stars, a one to one scale ratio of the observable universe she can scroll through and travel anywhere. Right now she had it focused on the Andromeda system on a particularly rad nebula that glowed a deep rust and green color. “Back to the drawing board...JAK, boot up.” JAK, her computer system all hand coded by herself by the age of 13, lit up on the light board and a man in his twenties smiled at her in a rounded pixel type style. “Can I help you Tatsuki?” He answered. “Yeah, what day is it?” “______” ((<- Insert date here)) His voice was smooth as silk, dark with a hint of danger but sweet and neutral. Tatsuki swore loudly and smacked her face against her palm. School started a week ago and no one came to find her and tell her.

“Fucking typical; not even told that school already started. Great. I’ll have an hour of make-up work to do... That’s an hour I don’t have to spend.” She slammed her head back onto the shelf a few times and got up off her stool. The 16 year old looked like your typical 16 year old, (going through a rebellious phase that is) shorter, pale skin, tattoos of dragons and birds on her legs chest and arms, snake bite hoops in her lower lips, dark eyes and glasses. She kept her really messy black hair simply tied up behind her for practicality. The only thing she wore at the moment for clothing was a welding mask and a pair of black undies and a tank top. Tatsuki never liked wearing normal clothes in her room unless she had to, laziness trumped that practicality, and sides she had more important things to do with her life then worry about whether or not she had pants on or not. “JAK, have a copy of everything I missed send to me please? Also, send them one of those forged messages from Kaa-sama letting the authourities know I’ve been sick.” “Done, and.....Done.” It took a total of 10 seconds between tasks to get things taken care of and Tatsuki had a stack of about 20 papers on her light board for her to finish before she actually went to school. It never mattered to her if she really went or not, it just looks good to colleges that she’s actually gone to school at least a few times out of the year instead of missing them all.



                Ten minutes later, Tatsuki had showered and put on a pair of sweatpants and a bra before she wandered downstairs to get food. It was 4 in the morning but she didn’t care as she started fixing breakfast for herself, a bowl of rice, three eggs and heap of toast. She poured a giant glass of orange juice into a frosted glass and sat at the table with a mini PADD reworking on her design for her gloves. “The soldering is too large and will absorb the particles needed to maintain the field strength... Welding makes it worse. I don’t have any other way of connecting the pieces together without destabilizing the field.” Tatsuki took a large swig of her orange juice before continuing to work. “Interlocking pieces wouldn’t make it moveable enough to move with me when I use it. Magnetic pieces would also disrupt the field and make it too unstable; it would blow up in my face if I did that...” A sigh escaped her lips and she stuffed her face full of rice, drawing out new ideas as fast as they came to her. Her hand flew across her tablet PADD and each new design she drew out she scrapped almost as quickly as she drew them. Soon after she finished her bowl of rice, she scowled and groaned in frustration, she couldn’t find anything that would fit what she needed in the slightest. “JAK, pull up my previous schematic and cross reference it with other technology of the type please. Look everywhere you can get your little bits into, go as far as you can before you run into security codes. Save those places, I might have to find a way into them later…” “On it, so far I’ve found 536,24 pages with technology similar to yours, 1,245 pages with technology 80% similar to yours and 437 pages with technology 90% similar to yours. 12 pages have security blocks, and four are coded government pages.”

Tatsuki tapped her chin and started drawing on her PADD again idly. “Find references on something that looks like what I’ve just drawn; add that to the search as another set of parameters and search again.” JAK did as told and only a handful of pages popped this time, well 100 but it was a good start. She perused them all by name and the first paragraph of information and threw out at least half in about ten minutes. Four of the pages she found had everything she needed but didn’t go into enough depth without security codes for government scientists. She scrubbed her hand through her still damp hair and sighed. “This is going to take forever… JAK pull up my homework and read me the questions, record my answers on the sheets and send them once they’re done please.” “Understood.” The compilations of 1’s and 0’s smiled on her screen and started reading off her homework.



                A few hours passed before Tatsuki finished eating; her homework and more fiddling with her design distracted her from her food. She tossed her dishes in the stainless steel sink and grabbed her PADD before walking out of the kitchen area past her older sister Satsu who carried a rather loud and fussy baby. “Tell that little pink bundle of organs to pipe down would ya? It’s too loud in here.” The baby wailed even louder and Satsu rocked it and bounced a bit on her knees. “Shhhhh, its ok little Chiyoko, Tatsuki-chan didn’t mean it. Right nee-chan?” Satsu raised her brows expecting her younger sister to apologize to the little one in her arms. “Tch, I meant it. Babies are too noisy.” Tatsuki waved her hand in dismissal and walked off toward the front door. “I’m going out not that you matter. Talk to JAK if you need me. Ja Ne.” Satsu frowned and scowled at her sister before shaking her head, walking into the kitchen.

                Tatsuki put a black denim jacket over her usual black and grey stripped hoodie and slid her boots on her feet, zipping them over her dark red jeans, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail again and walked out the front door, her PADD firmly kept in her hands. As she walked to the nearest tech store, she constantly scribbled ideas on the surface, always checking the websites JAK found for her. If she could get the things to make an inverse particle generator and maybe a few proton micro-magnets that would be great. “If only… Except they’re not even made yet.” She walked a ways through the outskirts of the shops block in district two and into a small worn out shop. The door tinkled as she walked in and immediately a tall lanky man in his mid-thirties smiled from behind a counter. “Tatsuki-san, welcome back!” “Hey Beans. I need more parts; my welding ruined my field generator so I need to rebuild it.”

“Isn’t it a bit too early for you to be out? Its   7 AM.” “I’ve been up since four…” “Didn’t sleep did you?” Tatsuki opened her mouth and shut it again quickly, he knew her all too well some times. “Thought so, it’ll only take me a second to get your parts.” Beans, the lanky man from behind the counter, walked up to a shelf and rummaged around the parts for what she needed. He looked almost like a lanky college kid with chestnut red-brown hair cropped short to his head, pale skin and deep brown eyes. He wore black slacks and a jacket much like hers but a bit more fancy and definitely not made of denim. Tatsuki admired the man and built JAK much like him, charming. A few minutes later he had all the parts she needed wrapped up in a bag for her. “Is that all ya need?” “Yeah that should be it. Oh and do you know any way I can create this field generator without any of the extra metal from welding or magnets causing the field to un-align?” Beans looked at her schematic and shook his head. “Not really, I’d have to look at the design more and really work on it. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks Beans.” Tatsuki pressed a few buttons on her PADD, paid Beans for the parts, and bowed before leaving. Beans waved as she left and went back to work.