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HYPATIA: Where’s Torrence?

ALEXANDER: He’s taking care of some official business You have irl has to be some kind of spider monkey I don’t knohat those are, but I knohat a spider is and I knohat a monkey is, and if you found so right now You said include everything: right now I a my impression that she is very flexible, and apparently unaffected by gravity I guess you need o back to the start and transcribe froe opens at 11:38, 07/21/75 Subject is Kady Grant, neurogra aboard the Hypatia to replace crew they lost to the Alexander Cah to the servers She enters with a group of fellow trainees and an instructor, and they rid, and the clanging of their footsteps interferes with the audio on the file--the sound da The noise drowns out individual conversations, but that doesn’taround the way students do, showing off for each other as they funnel down the long, narrow corridor, and she’s in the middle of it She’s short, so she’s solimpses to confirm she’s there

They reach the server door, and she slips to the back of the group as they shove through The subject digs in her ju too small to pick up on the cameras Just as she reaches the door itself, last in line and invisible to everybody else, she ju at the environmental sensors by the top of the doorframe There’s a dark mark there when her hand coh to pick up the specs

I would have laid down this week’s salary she couldn’t juet that kind of bounce froh the door the moment before it hums shut

Inside the server room, the data estures, which dah--they either don’t know the Alexander cut coinally housed servers only, with personnel up the hall The repurposing of the Hypatia froee carrier removed that luxury The servers have been relocated to line the walls, rows of desks crammed into the resultant space

The cables that would usually slither all over the floor have been looped up against the ceiling by fat h they still droop and coil doard like so enius handled the redesign found sohts, and jaainst the roof, which ht and deep shadow all over the roo the subject, take up places at the desks and log into their individual ports, getting to work on today’s assignment

At 11:41 the environmental controls in the server roo air quality, loud, high-pitched and fucking annoying beeping cutting over the chatter of the class and ruining what little audio I have

They all rise and grumble and turn for the door, and as they exit, the subject pulls her spider rabs at the nest of cables, tangled up there like a bowl of noodles She’s little, and they hold her weight The subject has picked a spot in the back of the room, and by the ti to the ceiling in the shadows and out of sight

The door huround She walks over to one of her fellow student’s stations, still logged in The enviro syste, and she looks up at the speakers like she wants to silence thelare, actually I’d behave

Subject inserts a mem-chit into the station’s port, pulls on the HUD headset and drags out the old-school keyboard It slides out froers dance She sends a batch info du drive--we know this froether of the drive records We still don’t knohataway the keyboard, subject pulls off the HUD and dumps it on the desk She then crawls in under the desk, so for aout

No co at ho a device called an interface leech Has to be attached physically, and allows access to a super–low frequency broadcast band the fleet coency coyback your own co

Also, soot a fleet-wide security vulnerability going on there

At 11:48 the enviro alarht by surprise, I’ her head on the desk in her hurry, cla the ive theso well Subject hurries over to the back of the room, stuffs the chit into her pocket and crouches in the shadows behind a bank of desks

At 11:49 the students and datatechs file back in, gru about the interruption She slips back into her place andinaudible Subject replies with a quick smile that’s on the opposite end of the spectru inaudible in return They don’t need this girl in neurogra, they need her in psych-ops, eyeball-to-eyeball with the guys who need to see things a little differently Just saying What she says must be an excuse, and it works He doesn’t bat a lash, and palms the door open for her himself She strolls back down the hallway ultra chill, stands there waiting until a datatech opens the door from the other side She slips past, and she’s out and free As the door hu a kiss back toward the server room