Chapter 28: To Turn a Phrase (Part I)

“You’re in my way, Zach,” Elaine said and moved to push past him; he proved to be an unmovable object. She stepped back and fashioned her face into the crushing expression she’d seen her mother use on Zane and Blaine to get them to sit down and shut up. “The stuff with the dean has been resolved; he gave me my lab back. Now let me into my dorm.”

“I warned you not to poke around,” he said. “No, little Elaine doesn’t listen. So now it comes down to this.” With a jingle he withdrew a pair of handcuffs from his belt and grabbed her wrist. “You’re going to have to come with me.”

“Zach!” Elaine tugged at his grip, fighting to withdraw.

Something—in the form of a green blur—disengaged Zach’s hand and staggered him back a step. Elaine felt herself turned rapidly, a motion that twisted her ankle painfully but put her out of the reach of the handcuffs. Andrew and Roger both shouted. Frog had managed to step between them, one arm raised, hand beneath Zach’s chin, forcing his head up; then she hit him in a manner that reminded Elaine of a wrestler’s body slam. “Wroomf!” His square face contorted in surprise and with a jerking motion his muscles went slack. As he crumpled in front of her, Elaine felt as if the entire scene had been rendered in slow motion in a theater and almost felt a twinge of disappointment when he hit the ground like a heavy sack of potatoes but the screen did not shake from the impact.

“Uh,” Howie said. “What just happened?”

Recovering her senses, Elaine looked down at the resulting aftermath. “Frog knocked Zach unconscious.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Frog said.

“And you just got your chance.” Roger gently prodded Zach’s fallen body with his foot. “Do you know this guy? And where did you learn that?”

“Judo. Surprise hit to the solar plexus can knock a mofo out. Too bad, I really wanted to practice a throw on him. Instead I get this.” She knelt down next to him and lifted the handcuffs, stuffing one end in her own pocket. She rolled him over onto his back. After checking that he was breathing properly—and indeed his chest rose in fell in a regular rhythm—she began to pull his pockets inside out. “Zach is an asshole,” she went on, addressing Roger’s first question, “but he usually means well. He’s Elaine’s elder fraternal unit’s high school friend. He’s an overaggressive bully and I put up with it because it’s what he does. But…if I’m right… He had to go down right now. Ah ha, look what I found.” She held a shiny object out for Elaine to take—one of the giant, pie-plate sized VOTE EARLY buttons.

“He’s infected,” Roger said.

“Uh huh.” Frog beamed at her handiwork, pulled the handcuffs out of her pocket and shook them at the unconscious jock. “Booya! Take that.”

“This must be recent,” Elaine said. “He didn’t behave as if under indoctrination the last time we interacted. Also, this seems to suggest that the nam-shub has suddenly changed goals. Up until this point it has been spreading, but if Zach’s reaction is any indicator it has become hostile. Perhaps it’s more complex than I first hypothesized. It’s gone from passive preparation to active reaction.” She turned the button over in her hand a few times, leaned in close to Zach, and sniffed a few times. Licorice strongly emanated from his fallen form. “We should get inside quickly.”

“Way ahead of you,” Frog said, swinging the dormitory door open. She stuffed the keys back in her pocket. “Mind if I handcuff him to something? I don’t think we can have him running around when he regains consciousness. It’s not a concussion, so I am not worried about him. Still, I hope the big jerk has a headache when he comes to.”

Unconscious, Zach’s almost two-hundred-and-sixty pounds of weight required Roger, Andrew, Frog, and Howie working together to lug his dead weight into the front hall. All involved quickly decided that he would have to be handcuffed to something in the TV room because nobody thought that they could manage to drag him much further. Fortunately, a number of large, exposed pipes around the kitchen area would serve that purpose. Frog picked one lower down as to prevent an overextension of his arm.

“We can uncuff him when we get all this sorted out,” she said.

The halls were empty all the way to Elaine’s room. The vacancy echoed an eerie reminder of Manzinita dormitory, Roger suggested that it maybe it meant the meme infection had spread a great deal further than anyone originally suspected. Elaine concurred quietly lost in thought about what the concert could be a vehicle for and why the nam-shub couldn’t just impress its will through the buttons and the scent.

“I guess that what happened with Zach suggests that the other infected won’t be ignoring us for much longer,” Frog said.

“Or,” Elaine said, “it means that the nam-shub learns from the subjects it indoctrinates. Perhaps there’s an overriding goal that we’re unaware of; or maybe it just triggered Zach’s already nascent problem with my investigation. That combined with the possible threat to itself through my collected data about Emily Early and Tom Barret, and the nam-shub turned him hostile. That’s self-preservation. It suggests something extremely dangerous and makes me very concerned about what it intends to do with the concert tonight.”

“She means that she thinks it might have become self-aware,” Frog said. “The Skynet of nam-shubs.”

“Frakking true,” Elaine said as she struggled with the lock to her door. “What’s wrong with this thing? I thought I oiled this just last week.”

Frog placed a calming hand on hers and nodded towards the region around the lock, and the jamb of the door itself. Visible scratches and scrapes radiated from there as if a tool had been used to pry at the metal. “Someone tried to break into your room.”

“What if they’re still in there,” Roger said.

Howie nodded with him. “Dude’s got a point. Though, after seeing what you did to the cop at the door…”

“Oh, they’re not still in there,” Frog said with a knowing smirk. She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at the door. “The last time someone actually managed to break into Elaine’s room, we found them hiding in the boy’s restroom, afraid to come out.”

“What?” Roger glanced between Elaine and Frog—both of whom wore the same wicked expression. “What happened to him?”

“Let’s just say that I also have active and sometimes hostile defenses,” Elaine said as she swung the door open.

“Elaine!” The AI’s avatar emerged from a shadowy corner of the room, already in motion towards the door before she had completed resolution of her holographic figure. Hadaly’s azure, shimmering form coalesced as she slid past the doorway. An expression of pertinent determination etched her features. “You’ve been out of contact. Have I got a lot of very important discoveries to reveal to you…and who all is this?”

“Dude,” Howie let the word slide out of his mouth like a gentle exhalation. “Have you ever got the coolest outfit I have ever seen, babe.”