Dispose of Biowaste Properly!
Halt the Spread of DX Now!
“What’s DX?” Eddie said.
“I think,” Malcolm said, “it’s the name for this mysterious disease.”
At the far end of the changing room were two doors. The right-hand door was pneumatic, operated by a rubber foot-panel set in the floor. But that door was locked, so they went through the left door, which opened freely.
They found themselves in a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels along the right wall. The glass was scratched and dirty, but they peered through it into the room beyond, which was unlike anything Thorne had ever seen.
The space was vast, the size of a football field. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the room at two levels, one very high, the other at waist level. At various stations around the room, clusters of large machinery, with intricate tubing and swing arms, stood beside the belts.
Thorne shone his light on the conveyor belts. “An assembly line,” he said.
“But it looks untouched, like it’s still ready to go,” Malcolm said. “There are a couple of plants growing through the floor over there, but, overall, remarkably clean.”
“Too clean,” Eddie said.
Thorne shrugged. “If it’s a clean-room environment, then it’s probably air-sealed,” he said. “I guess it just stayed the way it was years ago.”
Eddie shook his head. “For years? Doc, I don’t think so.”
“Then what do you think explains it?”
Malcolm frowned, peering through the glass. How was it possible for a room this size to remain clean after so many years? It didn’t make any –
“Hey!” Eddie said.
Malcolm saw it, too. It was in the far corner of the room, a small blue box halfway up the wall, cables running into it. It was obviously some kind of electrical junction box. Mounted on the box was a tiny red light.
It was glowing.
“This place has power!”
Thorne moved close to the glass, looking through with them. “That’ s impossible. It must be some kind of stored charge, or a battery….”
“After five years? No battery can last that long,” Eddie said. “I’m telling you, Doc, this place has power!”
Arby stared at the monitor as white lettering slowly printed across the screen:
ARE YOU FIRST-TIME USER OF THE NETWORK?
He typed:
YES.
There was another pause.
He waited.
More letters slowly appeared:
YOUR FULL NAME?
He typed in his name.
DO YOU WANT A PASSWORD ISSUED TO YOU?
You’re kidding, he thought. This was going to be a snap. It was almost disappointing. He really thought Dr. Thorne would have been more clever. He typed:
YES.
After a moment:
YOUR NEW PASSWORD IS VIG/&*849/. PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT.
Sure thing, Arby thought. You bet I will. There was no paper on the desk in front of him; he patted his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and wrote it down.
PLEASE RE-ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW.
He typed in the series of characters and numbers.
There was another pause, and then more printing appeared across the screen. The speed of the printing was oddly slow, and halting at times. After all this time, maybe the system wasn’t working very –
THANK YOU. PASSWORD CONFIRMED.
The screen flashed, and suddenly turned dark blue. There was an electronic chime.
And then Arby’s jaw dropped open as he stared at the screen, which read:
INTERNATIONAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES
SITE B
LOCAL NODE NETWORK SERVICES
It didn’t make any sense. How could there be a Site B network? InGen had closed Site B years ago. Arby had already read the documents. And InGen was out of business, long since bankrupt. What network? he thought. And how had he managed to get on it? The trailer wasn’t connected to anything. There were no cables or anything. So it must be a radio network, already on the island. Somehow he’d managed to log onto it. But how could it exist? A radio network needed power, and there was no power here.
Arby waited.
Nothing happened. The words just sat there on the screen. He waited for a menu to come up, but one never did. Arby began to think that perhaps the system was defunct. Or hung up. Maybe it just let you log on, and then nothing happened after that.