Chương 125: Chapter 124 – LouixCorp

"Um… Hello?" Asked Cole. Are you… LouixCorp?" The clockwork familiar looked around.

"What? No. I mean, these guys are, yeah. But I'm not. It's a long story." The lenses scanned Cole up and down. Cole pushed himself to his feet, still wary. He pulled Alexa up beside him as she dug out her LF analyzer and stared at it.

"Cole, he overwrote my ability."

"I don't think that's the only thing that's been overwritten," said Cole. Around the platform, several teams of automatons were moving around the platforms, securing access points alongside a handful of humans. That didn't make much sense. Coach and Therza had made these LouixCorp guys out to be some sort of cultist techno-Luddites. What were they doing working alongside the automatons? He looked down at Archie.

"You're… are you Elliot? Elliot Werner from Earth?" The clockwork familiar climbed up onto the platform.

"Yeah!" He looked Cole up and down.

"Hey, you guys are from Earth, too, right?" Cole looked at the armed and armored men moving around the platform.

"Yes." He lowered his voice.

"We're here to bring you home. But keep that between us. We should talk more in person."

"Oh. Uh… Hmm… okay. That's… Hmm…" The clockwork familiar shifted back and forth.

"Okay. I mean, I guess it'll be easier to show you. Just follow me." Archie moved past. Cole gave Alexa another look, then keyed his radio.

"Regroup on me. Looks like we're in the right place, Elliot is talking through Alexa's pet robot." The automatons moved aside for Cole and team, falling in behind them with weapons secured. Therza watched them with unease.

"I don't understand," she said.

"This doesn't make any sense," Someone definitely had some explaining to do. But having saved their asses from a hive of insectoid monsters, they'd also earned some latitude, as Cole saw it. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes open as Archie led them back through the tunnels that connected to an underground bunker through a blast door. They passed several more humans, each of them making a circle with their index fingers and thumbs with the rest of their digits extended that they put in front of their chest.

"Definitely getting that culty vibe," muttered Howie.

"But it's better than the order to open fire." He must have been close enough for Archie to pick up, because the clockwork familiar's head twisted backwards.

"Oh, don't worry about it. These guys are kinda weird about Earth people. They think we're like, angels or aliens or something. I mean, I guess we kinda are. Aliens, at least. Might be getting lost in translation, you know?" The bunker held more automatons, and people who all wore a uniform that looked like a one-piece jumpsuit with what Cole could only describe as a half-cloak that made them look somewhere between a warehouse worker and a monk.

Each one had a symbol embroidered on the cloak that roughly matched the hand gesture the soldiers had made. Up ahead, an older woman turned the corner at a run, face red from exertion as though she'd already been running. She came up to Cole's team and fell to her knees, raising her palms above her head.

"I came as soon as I heard, travelers. Louix welcomes you, exalted ones." Around them, several of the other workers took notice and each dropped to a knee, bowing their heads in reverence toward Cole and his team as they started to whisper. Cole looked around at the sea of reverence." You know, Howie," whispered Roxy, " I think this is somehow worse than being shot at."" Just play along," said Alexa. Cole moved forward, face red from the treatment.

Whoever these people thought they were dealing with, it sure as fuck wasn't him. He took the woman by the shoulders and gently brought her back to her feet.

"Thanks for the warm welcome," said Cole.

"What's your name?" The woman looked startled for a moment.

"Apologies. I'm Fransisca Louix, chief enumerator and granddaughter of Micke Louix, the founder of LouixCorp." The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement." She was third in charge of the company when Hextant went online," Therza whispered up.

"She's the one that reached out to me before." A bigwig, then. Cole offered his hand, and Fransisca looked at it for a moment before taking it and squeezing it.

"I hope we'll be good company," said Cole.

"But for now, we'd like to see Elliot Werner and make sure he's alright." Cole glanced at Archie, who very conspicuously found something very interesting to examine in the opposite direction. The woman looked at him for a moment, and then smiled, wide and bright in a way that didn't touch her eyes.

"Of course. Please, come with me." She led them deeper into the bunker, and then to a second set of blast doors flanked by armed guards of both humans and more automatons. Inside, a circular chamber maybe ninety meters across was arrayed around a group of what looked like old punch-card computers, with dozens of terminals, monochrome screens, and massive power cables, pipes, and ducting snaking every which way through the ceiling and floor. They all connected to a spherical metal chamber above the ensemble.

The sphere was giving off waves of what looked like freezing mist, even as the air around it shimmered with heat haze. It reminded Cole a bit of the trace lab at Oak Ridge—or rather, what he'd imagined it would look like. Therza gasped and grabbed Cole's arm.

"Cole. That's a Hextant processor core!" Cole's looked back.

"Like what's powering Hextant?"

"Yes, one that interfaces directly with the underlying principles of the HBL! Only it's just one instead of thousands. I don't know how they got one."

"We built it. My life's work," said Fransisca, gazing up at the sphere. She raised her hands.

"And it's what will save us from the soullessness of Hextant. Behold, the one you call Elliot Werner, savior of Hexighast." Cole cocked his head at the sphere, uncomprehending. Then his blood began to boil.

"You mean to tell me there's a seventeen-year-old child in that cage up there?" Fransisca looked at him.

"Cage? It's no cage. It's a Hodges-Bridger interface node. One that bridged the infinite divide between worlds and delivered a savior's soul from beyond space and time. And now he has brought divine warriors to aid him."

"Yeah, that's great and all, but I want to see Elliot. If he's not in there, then where is he?" Demanded Cole. A black grille on the workstation crackled with an electric chirp, and the same voice as Archie, albeit much rougher, spilled out.

"This is why it was better to show you," said Elliot.

"I'm in here, but I'm not, like in here, you know?" Cole looked to Howie for help, but his mage's jaw was slack as he stared up at the machine. He stepped forward.

"Holy shit," he said.

"What's going on?" Demanded Cole. Howie met his eyes.

"Cole, Elliot is the computer. Like, he's the operating system. Or his soul is a program or something. His consciousness is running on the hex core, but his body isn't here here. I don't think it ever was."

"That's right," said Fransisca, stepping forward.

"Until you breached the veil and reached out to us, we didn't believe it was possible to transmit matter between worlds—only to transcribe the neural constellation imprint. Truly, your world must contain marvels to perform such wonders." Howie leaned forward, looking at the screens.

"Wild… So, are you like, in there? Are you the program? The operating system? Or are you just, like, floating in memory?"

"Oh my god, finally, someone who speaks my language," said Elliot.

"Thank god someone does," said Roxy.

"I'm so fucking lost."

"Same," said Besson. Cole nodded, too. He looked at Fransisca." I guess the closest would be a program," said Elliot." I'm running on the computer, but I'm also running the computer itself and I'm everywhere within range of the HB transducer. This planet's got an energy field, and I can control it—locally, and underground. Topside, the big computer's control is too strong. But I'm using the same source code. It's just a matter of amplitude." Howie nodded along.

"So what happens if we take you out of that computer? Like, transfer you to a mobile device?" Subtle. Cole caught Howie's eye and nodded. Despite his esoteric interest in the subject matter, Howie was still keeping his mind on the mission of getting Elliot home." Oh, I've done that lots of times," said Elliot." Gotta back up your data, right? Especially when you are the data. This stuff may look super fancy, but it's all decades out of date by our tech.

Magnetic disk drives are state of the art here, and the Hodges-Bridger Layer is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I'm actually only a couple of hundred gigabytes. The compression algorithm is pretty complex since the Hextant core language actually has six bit states instead of two cause it makes use of the Hodges-Bridger layer.

But I'm pretty sure I'm smaller than Call of Duty." Cole bit his lip and thought.

"Wait, so even if we pull you out of there, you're still in there?" he asked.

"What about your soul? How do we get it back in your body?" A bank of lights on the interface blinked, and laughter came out of the grille." You guys are too caught up on this soul thing. I'm already running as a limited version locally on the bot you guys brought with you. That's just as much me as 'me'. The architecture is a bit funky, even by this world's standards. But we're making it work." Archie Elliot lifted his hand and waved." Like I said," the familiar muttered sheepishly, " Easier to just show you."

Alexa stared at Archie." I wasn't president of the robotics team for nothing," said Hex-core Elliot. Howie turned his backpack to Cole.

"Hey Cole, get the Pelican, would you?" Cole unstrapped the small case and handed it to Howie. Howie opened it up and booted up the toughbook laptop inside. He looked back up at the lens and held up a handful of alligator clips.

"Think you could interface with a universal serial bus?"" Easy,"said Elliot. A cover slid up on the workstation, revealing an array of pins." Fransisca, help me walk him through it, yeah?"