#11 : Something about this place doesn’t feel right

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The Voice said"Something about this place doesn’t feel right.”

"What’s the matter?” Shelby asked."What do you mean doesn’t feel right. Haven’t you been here a gazillion years? In fact weren’t you here before the damn thing was built?”

"Not at all” the voice said."I’m only a few days old. The SoulStone was here all that time but it isn’t cognizant of what transpires around it while in shut down mode no more so than a video camera or a book would be. It’s fundamentally just a computational database. I’m the user interface.”

"Oh.” Shelby said in a small quite voice."I guess you didn’t get to that part yet. I have no idea what some of those words mean. What doesn't ’feel right to you?”

"I don’t know, I smell a trap. You’ve been fighting Charlie for too long. Charlie’s a sneaky bastard. You’re caution and paranoia has rubbed off on me. I’m primed for traps.” the voice replied."Your sensory suite is sadly lacking. If there are any traps it’d not be able to detect them. The template from which I was constructed had inputs for more than just your five senses. I feel that I should be sensing something but I can’t.”

"That doesn’t make any sense.” Shelby said"If you’ll pardon the pun.”

"No it doesn’t, but it’s the best explanation that I have.” the voice said "I urge caution. In fact I suggest plan B.”

"Plan B?” Shelby asked.

"Figure of speech. Hold out your hand we need more mites.” the voice requested.

Shelby did that. The same sequence of actions as before transpired until he held a handful of mites in his cupped hands.

"Well ain’t that something?” he said as the mites flew away.

"Now we wait.” the voice said.

"How do those things work anyway?” Shelby asked.

"They work just fine” the voice said.

"Smart ass.” Shelby replied."What’s the principle?”

"They are constructed one atom at a time by the nanites in your bloodstream. Call them blood-nanites I suppose. The zombie-mites are micro-electro-mechanisms controlled by something similar to radio but of a much finer granularity. I guess it might be called Quantum Entanglement Transmission. QET? Yeah. That’s got a ring to it. Was that what you meant?” The voice said"I assume you weren’t referring to the actual mechanics of the mite?”

"No I wasn’t. Maybe I’ll want to know the nutz and boltz of mitez later. Like Radio you say? My unit has several radio men. The radio set was bigger than my dear departed Ruck. I’ve heard of TV...I think. Didn’t have one at home. I Lived on a ranch miles from anywhere.” Shelby replied.

"QET is a little more advanced than Radio or TV, and it’s tiny. Vewy Vewy tiny. You’ll recall we were discussing molecular electronics earlier? Micro-Electro-Mechanics uses Molecular Electronics for command and control applications.” the voice said."Here...check it out.”

A small screen, about the size of a paperback book, appeared in front of Shelby’s eyes. It displayed the Point of View of...something.

"Looks like what an insect would see while it’s crawling down a tunnel” Shelby said.

"Exactly right. The zombie-mite found something. It conscripted it and tapped into it’s sensory/control network. Exactly like that mite did that showed you the roof earlier. This is the same thing except purpose built. It has much greater bandwidth. It’s on a search pattern. I’m mapping everything it and all the other’s discover into a databank.” the voice said.

"What kinda ‘something” did it conscript there?” Shelby asked.

"A Scorpion.” the voice replied."Multiply this instance by hundreds of z-mites, they’ve conscripted a lot of insects, each in different areas of the temple and all going in different directions....” The voice trailed off.

"I got ya. I understand.” Shelby agreed.

"Pretty soon we’ll have an ultra high resolution map.” The voice said."It should show quiet a lot of detail. If there’s something here that is dangerous to us we’ll know about it.”

"That’s what we want, then isn’t it? As much detail as possible? Be sure to mark all the punji traps.” Shelby yawned."I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”

Shelby went to sleep.

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The Next Episode will be
#12: Anything New?
The Last Episode was
#10 : Done…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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@everittdmickey
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