Private Log- Malcom in the Middle, Part I
08 Jun 2022Lily Flemmon
Within five minutes of hanging up the phone, Malcom Barrett stands before the lift doors above the core lab, scratching his head. He looks and finds a small panel insert in the wall and presses it. "Hello? Lily, are you there?"In the lab, Lily hears Mal's voice on the intercom and briskly makes her way over to the access control console. "Hey Mal, let me get the lift for you- one sec."
As the lift doors open, Mal trots over to the lift, steps inside, and taps the down button as quickly as he can. As soon as they open he's out them again and trotting across the... Well across the very well equipped laboratory. Impressive actually. For a second he's just looking around at all of the equipment and bits of half finished tech, just agape at all of it... until his eyes fall on Lily, and purpose takes him again. "Where is she?"
"Well, currently unconscious and being operated on. The activation signal, and several other horrible things being done to her brain, were being controlled by a specific auxiliary processor in her ocular cybernetics, which was identified as a security breach by the lab's systems while she and I were in the lift. Long story short, that auxiliary processor got shut down entirely- well, set to a uselessly low clock speed- and Rory got all her memories back. She's getting the cybernetics replaced with stock Galnet ones as a temporary holdover. I..." Lily's voice trails off a bit as she realizes she's rambling, and she looks down at the floor shyly before saying the important part she was avoiding for some reason. "I wanted you to be there when she woke up."
Mal laces his fingers together on top of his head and puffs air out of his lips. There might be a slight blush in his cheeks, too, but it's hard to tell. "All of them? Jesus... Oh Jesus she has... A lot going on in there. Is she okay?"
"I think so. I mean, right now, she's unconscious, but before that... she really seemed to be handling it okay... once the device got shut down completely, at least. Between the device getting attacked by the counter-surveillance systems and the device getting shut down, it... tried to stop her, I think. Brought back incredibly painful memories that it would normally block... probably was... torture... I'd say I can't imagine, but I can, and I don't want to, and I just..." She looks up at Mal, her voice receding back into almost a squeak. "I- I can't help but imagine it..."
Malcom lets out a deep relieving sigh and finds a chair to plant his ass on, nearby at an unoccupied work station. He shrugs his shoulders and spreads wide his arms. "I don't know what to tell you Lily. Shes... She's been pretty fucked up. Pinned me to the wall a couple weeks ago just for trying to get her to slow down and take care of herself. This has been... This has been going on for way too long."
"I... I hope it's almost over now."
"Well... If I know Rory, and I think I do... If she finds out or gets a clue who did this, I don't think anyone could stop her smashing them into a fine powder." Mal hangs his head for a minute and then looks up and around the room. "Anyway, who do I have to thank for this? I don't... I don't think I can actually... Describe how grateful I am. But I'd like to try."
"Their name is Mirage... They're leading the operation at the moment, and it's a bit delicate, but you'll get your chance. Probably another hour or two left, but in the meantime..."
Lily looks around the lab, and notices the tech who helped get Rory onto a gurney wasn't tied up with the operation. "Hey Elise, you got a second?"
A woman using a holographic magnifier shuts off the holo-projector and looks over at Lily. "Yeah, need something?"
"You know how you made space for a new member to join the lab? Would it be difficult to set that space up for a team of two?"
"We already did, actually. Does he... not know already?" Elise's eyes dart between Lily and Mal.
Mal had noticed that an area of the lab looked far less equipped than the rest of the space, and it even had an empty table... and now his eyes are the size of bowling balls.
"Wait wait wait... You're not saying what I think you're saying, are you? I mean, Rory is probably going to prison for a pretty long time and... Huh... Well, I guess that gives me time to actually work on the samples."
"With her memories unlocked... I don't know, the charges might get dropped."
"Yeah, well... I'm not exactly ready to bank on that. She damn near cut that man's leg off! Why would —"
Barrett shuts his mouth and draws in his presence of mind. He thinks of some place by an ocean with a warm breeze. He thinks of... Her. He thinks of her. Dammit he's not supposed to keep thinking of her but he can't help it.
"Regardless, there's no need to worry about that right now. What is it you're saying? Really?"
"Rory was offered a spot in the Core Tech Lab. Or rather, she will be offered it. But it looks like there's space for both of you..."
He scratches his neck while he looks over the lab. Wetware growing in vats and in tanks everywhere. Some seemingly animal based, most looking plant based, some clearly mechanical looking but also clearly alive bits and bobs scattered on work stations...
"This looks... Heh... So I see some PCRs and a few aeroponic and hydroponic control tanks... I see artificial cyanoglobin and hemolytic tanks... If I didn't know any better I'd say you were tinkering with making replacement parts better than the originals."
Lily looks to Elise, the more qualified person in the room to explain. By far.
"It's technically all plant-based, but in this lab we have people designing entire organisms from scratch, so it kinda doesn't matter. If you want a real mind-bender, you can take a look at the five-nucleotide-amino-formula system. But it's not for the faint of heart. But if you want to start, I can show you the basics of the genome-based growth simulator."
"Five?! I've heard of some people doing 4 and trying to play with that, but Five?!"
This part Lily actually has some understanding of, since it's the base technology supporting CTAC's internal defenses. "Yeah, five... the original assembly proteins were made using a molecular assembler, and by the time you get to five, the variety of amino acids lets proteins use a much wider range of elements, and that makes the assembly protein actually possible to design. Beyond that though, I'm still foggy on how it works."
"How many base pairs are you working with? Are we talking about Sol biocompatible stuff or is there some other native protocell you're using to install the custom ribosomes in?"
"Five base pairs per amino acid, but generally speaking, it comes out to about 2-3 times as many base pairs as a similar organism."
"But there's one building block that... well, we have to keep very quiet."
Once Lily said "one building block" Mal knew he was in for it... Taking in the implications and leaning back with hands on his knees, he presses his brow firmly together. "Lily... are you using 'Goid shit in this lab? Because that... That puts you in a much higher league than I thought you were playing in."
"No, we aren't. I don't remember the details of why-"
Elise interrupts, shooting a playfully disappointed look at Lily. "It's because that's ammonia based, so in order to actually be alive it has to be at a temperature where ammonia is liquid."
"Right, yeah. Heat it up to be comfortable to work with and you'll end up boiling it away and de-naturing all the proteins. Look, I'm already sold. The fact that you're doing Five-per-MRNA/Amino is reason enough. Besides, we could use the lab space. The ones on the ships are good but we can't get the finer details you can get here."
"As for codons, we use CGAT, with a FTRUCGAP-based error correction strand. And we're basically working with Thargoid stuff in terms of capability... Biomechanical movement and power transmission, metallic and ceramic growth... that suit Lily used to streamline a mutiny on a carrier was based on that."
"Yeah, we ran into some stuff like that in a Neutron system on the trip. It's good for high radiation environments. Makes for a very sturdy cell mostly immune to cancer. Ha. Damn, you girls don't play around, do you?"
"Not here we don't. And we're not all girls, believe it or not... James is off, probably sleeping. Or drinking. Mirage is... well, she's always whatever gender she feels like at the time. Today she's pretty femme. Yesterday, though, he came down here fully masculine and with a button down shirt on which absolutely none of the buttons were fastened. Talk about a lean build."
"I... I honestly don't know what to say. You honestly think this lab needs two Raxxla-hunting dorks like us? No shade, I'm really quite flattered. But wow... Wow this feels like it's above my pay grade."
Awkward silence starts to build, but is broken by Elise. "From what I heard, Lily found a prime candidate for our impossible-to-fill spot for someone who knows security and infil/exfil and combat, but still a passionate biologist of some kind with a fundamental respect for the beauty of life."
Lily gets her brain to make words again. "Yeah, Rory's here, and you're here with her, because this lab needs someone other than me to be able to trace technology leaks... some of this biotech can be used to make synthetic pathogens that self-reproduce, so like, planetary ecosystem gone in one day kind of bioweapons. And we can't have that happening. But also because both of you are, fundamentally, biologists. You have a place here in the lab, too."
"Oh, Rory is the real security expert. The two of us have been making names for ourselves as exobotanists, but it's so far been mostly about collecting the data... I'd... I'd be glad to help with novel sequences as we get them. Our own research is heavily focused on trying to establish panspermia beyond a reasonable doubt. And then further to see if that leads us to answers about where life first arose in the Galaxy...it's lofty, but I think the effort has merit. And it doesn't seem anyone else is taking the question on..."
Elise's face lights up. "Hot damn, panspermia? I always thought that was a sweet line of inquiry- heh. Sweet as in it's fascinating and cool, but also... it's comforting too, I guess. Kind of a 'we're made from the same stuff as stars' idea."
Lily looks back and forth between them, eventually settling om Mal. "Panspermia? What's that? I can guess, but my brain is going... let's just say non-scientific places."
"Okay... So the hypothesis says all life in the galaxy is started from pre-existing probiotic organic chemistry in the hard vacuum. Amino acids, nucleotides, even stable lipid vesicles have all been found in icy meteorites, asteroids, and comets." Malcom spies a coffee pot in the corner and instantly is on it, pouring himself a cup. "I guess Rory read some texts on evolution from old Earth and got a little... Inspired. She thinks it's possible that a single catastrophic event somewhere in the galaxy scattered the stuff of organic life across all known space" He takes a sip and cringes a little because it's clearly old- but, eh, that's life. "And after seeing all the similar plants and microbes we're scanning? She might have a point. But to do that, we have to establish if all these things are related first."
L: "Oh, that makes sense... A lot of sense... and, yeah, it is a kinda comforting concept."
"But it has some potentially terrifying implications..." Barrett says gravely, swirling his coffee around his cup. "It would mean... However distantly... Thargoids, Guardians, and Humans are all related to one another. And if the Thargoids have historical continuity spanning our whole civilization... They might already know."
"I mean... Yeah, but why is that terrifying?"
Malcom's lips pull tight as he looks at Lily over his mug, pulling it up for another sip. "How many peoples you think don't want the public to know that sort of thing?"
L: "Tyrants? Tyrants definitely wouldn't. Any oppressive regime wouldn't. And Salvation would probably be peeved, although they'd barely lose any popularity. Hudson, on the other hand... he'd be furious."
He scoffs and rolls his eyes. "There's a million petty Tyrants in the Bubble and more than half of them want nothing more than to wipe Thargoids off the pages of history. You know who has all the data we'd ever need to prove this? Vista Genomics. And you know who in the scientific community is absolutely allergic to sharing or publishing their findings?" He takes another conspicuous, slurping sip, his eyes never leaving hers.
Elise laughs a bit. “Fuckin’ tell me about it. Vista’s got pointless motives, which is why I’m here at CTAC.”
Lily is still a bit confused. “So you’re saying that undeniable proof of panspermia would lead people to revolt against tyrants? And that’s somehow terrifying? If you want to cause change, you mainly only have to worry about Commanders.”
Mal chuckles. "Oh, I'm not terrified of that. It's a little scary to have humans made even less special yet again, but I'll manage. But when someone is rich and powerful, losing even a little bit of that? Keeps them up at night."
“I still don’t see how that’s terrifying.”
Malcom shakes his head. "I don't... I don't do well with conflict, okay?" His hand holding the coffee cup tremors slightly, but he grabs it with his other hand, calming it. "... I feel like I got swept up in a hurricane of potentially world changing and paradigm shifting craziness, and... The idea of taking on the whole scientific establishment on top of who knows how many intelligence agencies and governments and whatever the fuck else Rory is into..." He sets the coffee down and lets a whole body shudder ripple through him. "It's a lot. It's a lot for me. I just wanted to fly spaceships, maybe race them someday. I even got pretty high in remote CQC because it's not real, it's just fun flying. Go see all the stars and give some of them names and shit. Now I'm... deep in the shit."
And finally, clarity for Lily. And worry. "So, now that you've said that... Conflict will happen. It's just... one of those things that happens. And now that you can't avoid it... Well, why do you think I brought you here? What do you think the real reason is that you're here in this lab, and that I've made sure that there's space for two new members of this lab and not just one?"
Elise softly puts a hand on her mouth and starts to tear up as she realizes what Mal is really feeling in this moment, because she looks at him and sees herself, fourteen months ago.
Malcom gets just a little misty, and wipes a tear from one eye with the back of his index finger. "Are you telling me you built a refuge for us — and for me, when she goes off on some hair brained murderousness?"
L: "Well... yes. Not just you, and I'm not really the one who built it. When it comes down to it, CTAC isn't fundamentally about agriculture, or biology, or anything that's obvious on the surface... This place is a sanctuary. And I just happen to have a diplomatic role, but before I was even a Commander... This place was a refuge for me like it is for you and Rory now. The garden that your apartment with Rory overlooks, Wiikwandiwin... that's where it all started for me. The day I escaped from Silas, and had no idea where I was going other than 'away,' and... I actually fainted in that garden."
Malcom holds his lips tight together and looks around, raking a hand down his face before crossing the lab and wrapping up Lily in a big warm hug. "I'm so sorry for what you been through... And I am so grateful for what you're doing for us. I can't tell you how... God damn, Lily, this has been such a roller coaster of a week. Now Rory's still in surgery and you're here and we have this beautiful place and she she just stab— I need this. I need a place where things can slow down... Thank you."
Lily... doesn't expect the hug. She leans into it, holding Mal tight, and even shaking a little as she starts to sob, trying as she can to keep her breathing even. And Mal just keeps holding her tight, slowly starting to see how much this has meant to her, too. He starts shushing her softly, not to dismiss but to comfort and encourage. "Hey... Hey it's okay. You go ahead. I can't... I can't thank you enough."
And with that, Lily... loses it. She's sobbing. Shaking. But... she's also clearly processing a bit of that old trauma, because she's holding on tight to Mal, and with his embrace, slowly... her breathing gets steadier.
"Ok... Okay sweetie, I got you... Woo! You got a lot cramped up in there, eh?" He chuckles a little and her rubs her back while her breathing evens out. "There we go..."
"Tell you what, why don't we go get some fresh air, huh? See if Rory's just about ready. That sound good?"
Lily tries to reply out loud, but she can only manage a nod.
Elise, however, is still verbal. "Hey, are you two gonna be... okay? Mal, I can finish setting things up for you and Rory and let you know when Mirage is almost done with her operation. I- Right, you two go back up topside and get some air. You'll be fine, this... This is a safe place."
"Thanks... Elise, right? I'll take her up to the hangar. We have some canisters we can unload. Just, you know, a box or two to bring down." He turns back to Lily pulling back, hands on her shoulders, looking into her watery eyes with his own still kinda misty eyes and smiling. "You got enough strength to push a hand-truck, yeah?"
Lily manages a few words. “Hangar? No, no, just… Just to the garden.”
"Suit yourself. Serves me right trying to get work out of you, no?" He laughs and pats her on the shoulder. "Okay, to the garden. We grab a bite and take a walk. You don't gotta eat, but I am starving!"
Lily winces a bit at Mal raising his voice. “eek- Gently… please.”
"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm just a loud person. I'll try to keep it down for you. Just in my family? You didn't speak up, you didn't get heard. C'mon, let's go take in some green."
Lily wipes the tears from her eyes a bit and nods, sniffling slightly.
"Okay... You ready to go? After all that emotion, I could use some fresh air."
"L-let's go."
Malcom puts his arm gently around Lily's shoulders and walks with her to the lift. "I promise, once we get to that garden, You're going to have a lot more space for all this. You probably know already but... Yeah. Oy, Elise, can I get a card so we can get back in?"
Elise turns back to the two of them. "I'll let you back in when you get back if Lily isn't up for the security stuff. Take care, okay?"
"I always do," he says confidently, and presses the call button for the lift. It opens immediately, since it's programmed to stay down on the lab level unless called up.
Elise smiles softly at Mal. "I can tell."
He gently ushers Lily inside and presses the button for the surface. "Are we verbal again yet?" he asks, smiling. "It's okay if we're not, but... I want to see if we can get you out of that dark place."
L: "A little. Words are still hard..." She hugs Mal tightly and gets a deep breath in to calm herself more, followed by a soft giggle. "And- I'm a linguist."
"Bo... boba. Boboboba." She's not using words, but she's communicating with inflections, and it's clear she's gathering herself.
Pulling away from the hug, she gathers her composure a bit more (but not a lot) with another deep breath, more stately this time.
"There we go! See? Coming together already. Let me ask you something: what's your very favorite part of the gardens? I haven't been except to walk past."
"Right now... it'd have to be... Wiikwandiwin moss patch."
"A moss patch? That sounds lovely..." Malcom puts one arm around Lily's shoulders, rubbing it through her sleeve as the lift dings and the doors open onto the path to the garden.
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Thanks to Rory Bael for being a wonderful co-author, and a wonderful friend.