Chapter 22: Static Discharge (Part II)

“Not in the wall socket, near the wall socket. Please signify your understanding of the semantic difference.”

“Oh,” he said, in a slightly less hard tone. “That’s slightly better…”

“You need to hurry, the effect seems to be clearing up,” she said. Zach’s flashlight beam had been joined by two others as him and several other people began to walk the hallway, checking offices and calling into them looking for anyone lagging behind. Like her. The goggles displayed a nearby location that she could easily seek refuge and she darted for it.

After a little heavy breathing and several yelps of surprise, Roger piped up. His voice sounded further away. The phone must have been set on speakerphone. “Okay, I’m at a wall socket. What do I do?”

“Hangar or silverware?”

“Hangar.”

Elaine carefully caught the door and let it slide shut behind her and she tiptoed through the room within. The white and black tiles of the restroom and the pipes caused interference with the rendering software, making it difficult for her to tell exactly where she was heading in the dark, but all bathrooms had stalls and she found them easily enough.

“Good,” she said. “That’ll make this a lot easier. Bend it at a ninety-degree angle near one end and then wrap the rubber around, and grasp that. Keep it away from your body, especially if you have any zippers or metal buttons. Understand?”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do this at least once a month,” she said. “I just use much more sophisticated equipment to do it.” Not strictly untrue, but Roger didn’t need to know the specifics of the operation of using an galvanic dousing wire—hers just happened to be a carefully engineered, shielded peripheral for her phone that she used to capture gremlins and put them into leaded Mason jars. The crude dousing wire she had him manufacture on the fly would work for her purposes.

“What next?”

“Keep the wire far away from your body and point the non-bent end at the socket. Make sure that the ninety-degree bend is pointed upwards—it’s going to turn, so stay away from it. Slowly approach the socket with the unbent end.”

“Okay, here goes,” he said. “I am moving the unbent end towards the wall socket and nothing’s happening. Still noth—”

An outburst of line noise blended into a feedback squeal over the phone like a poorly bleeped explicative.

Bzzzaarrt-hssst! “—ucker!”

“Roger!” Elaine said into the phone. “Come back. What happened? Roger?” Even if he’d found a gremlin in the socket, even if it had a multiple-meter equilibrium size, it wouldn’t have harmed him. Gremlins rarely harmed people directly, their bodies couldn’t convey themselves through human skin without extreme discomfort and the dousing wire would prove to be a superior conductive source. Did he let it touch a zipper or a button?

Amateurs. Elaine almost cursed herself.

“—ine!” he shouted back. “I’m fine! Nothing…it didn’t hit me. I have goose bumps. The hangar is buzzing like a cell phone set to vibrate.

“Don’t touch it,” she said. “You just caught one of those things that I was in your room looking for earlier this week. And keep the ninety-degree bend pointed directly up. Otherwise it’ll jump back out again.”

“Okay…” he said. “So now what do I do?”

“Walk down the hall in the direction you saw the last gremlin come into your room from.”

“Will do,” he said, then his voice changed as if speaking to another source. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s going on either. No, sorry.” The person he spoke to sounded barely audible over the speakerphone but Elaine could make out a female low pitched female voice. “Sure,” he finished. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything.”

“Who is that?” Elaine asked.

“Neighbor,” Roger said. “I don’t know her name. She lives three doors down… Urk. The wire keeps trying to turn itself around.”

“Good. Hold still,” she said. “You must be getting near whatever spooked the gremlins. I think they’re running away from something and that something may be on your floor or a nearby floor. It’s why there’s been so much activity in your building. Where are you at?”

“I am in the upper thirties. The end of the hallway is still way down there.”

“Hold the wire as tight as you can and start walking towards the end of the hall,” she said. “It will begin to resist more and more as you get closer and when you pass it, the wire will instead try to jump along in the direction you’re moving. When that happens, tell me.”

“Okay,” he said. “Walking. Walking. Wow. Just happened.”

“Did you just pass someone’s dorm room?”

A pause, some crackle on the line. “No. No room.” Elaine could hear shuffling and more crinkling noises from his end. “Actually, it looks like a small access closet of some sort. The wire reacts to it like it doesn’t want me to point it at it.”

“Alright. Hold that thought, I’m going to be over shortly. You can—Roger?”

A disconnected icon appeared in the status reticule in the goggles. CALL LOST SIGNAL FADED. She went to start redialing him, but the sound of scratching at the bathroom door caused her to make pause.

Presently, the power came back on. With a gentle strumming buzz lights flickered back to life all around the bathroom. This gave Elaine her first glimpse of the walls of the stall she’d secreted herself in—some rather amusing, if vulgar, scratch-graffiti emerged, including some unflattering descriptions of the Dean of Engineering.

The doorknob rattled and the door swung open.

“I thought I heard voices.” Zach strode into the room, his boots thumping against the tiles. “Hadn’t we gotten everyone out of the building?”

She holstered her phone, stepped out of the stall, and crossed to the sink. As she went she watched Zach’s jaw drop in her peripheral vision. He just followed her with his gaze as she used the sink to wash her hands. It took him the entire exercise of cleansing and drying her hands before he found words.

“Elaine?”

“Yes, Zach?” she asked.

“What are you doing in the men’s restroom?”

“I needed to powder my tonsils,” she said and went directly out the door.