Lithium City Midnight: Prologue

"Isaac?"

    "Isaac?...  Typical."

    "Isaac!"

    Isaac Norton jerked awake, scattering the mound of printouts and images that had served as a makeshife pillow and spilling a few datachips to the floor.

    "Huh?" Isaac managed blearily as he shook his head to kickstart his brain into the task of locating and recovering the fallen items.  "What is it?"

    James "Jimbo" Thompson stood in the doorway, a grin on his young face.  "Sleeping again, eh old man?  You know one day it's gonna be the foreman who finds you, and he'll punch your ticket right outta here."

    Isaac collected the fallen chips from the floor and stacked them again on his cluttered desk.  Almost none of the desk itself was visible under the papers and photos and other printed information.  His terminal sat in a corner of the desk, it's screen in idle mode illuminating Isaac's face with a soft blue light.  On a sideboard, paper cups with black coffee grounds in the bottom sat crushed or still half-full, and the remains of a hot dog joined an opened bag of chips in rememberance of a lunch cut short.  There had been a lot of those recently, ever since that deep core probe. 

    "Musta dozed off."

    "Happens a lot lately, some of the guys are worried about you, Isaac."

    "I'm fine, just need to finish the analysis I've been doing of that probe."

    James quirked an eyebrow and pushed off the doorframe he'd been leaning against, stepping down metal stairs into the lab.  "The Hades Probe?  You're still working on that?  That was months ago."  The lab was on the lowest level of the building, and despite the laboring of the environmental control systems, there was a faint dankness to the underground room that the air scrubbers couldn't expunge.

    "I know, but some things just don't jive, and I can't figure out why."

    As James came over, Isaac shifted a drool-stained printout to another section of table, revealing underneath an electronic pad.  He glanced at the time.

    "Jesus, is that what time it is?  What are you doing here so late, Jim?"

    Jim shrugged and idly snatched one of the documents from the table.  "Left my M.A.A.P in my locker, had to come back and pick it up before I hit the bars and schmooze the ladies"  He accompanied his words with a swoop of his hips and a soft clap of his hand in an impromptu dance step, paired with a roguish grin.  He straighthened up again and set the paper he'd been holding back down on the desk more or less exactly where it had been before.  "I saw your light on, figured I'd pop in and ask if you wanted to come with."

    Isaac shook his head and brought his terminal out of idle mode, keying in his password and bringing up a display of soil sample results over the TerraCorp Logo that served as the backgrond.  "It'll have to be some other time, kid, I have a lot of work to do going through these zone readings."

    James tsked, shaking his head.  "You work entirely too hard, Dr. Norton.  It's not healthy.  You have to get out of this lab once in awhile, go out an socialize, meet some strange women."

    Isaac  couldn't help but chuckle a bit, the vibrations making his glasses slip down his nose.  Rather then replacing them, he pulled them off his face and set them atop a stack of papers, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers.  "Philandering is a young man's game, kid.  I'm too old for anything strange."  He spotted the rest of the hotdog and reached out to grab it.  It was cold now, but that didn't seem to phase him, he took a bite anyhow.  He chews a few moments then speaks through a mouthful of bread and mustard.  "Hell, I get cranky when they put the wrong relish on my hotdogs at the stadium."

    James shrugged, a look of mock dissapointment.  "Oh well, Doc.  I guess you're a lost cause."  He chuckles a bit, then a piece of paper catches his eye, a printout scribbled on with red and black ink.  He pauses and turns his head a bit to regard it at the angle it lays on the desk.  He frowns a bit.  "What's this?"  He asks, reaching out to grab the paper and bring it up to examine more closely.

    "Huh?"  Isaac asks, looking over and reading the scribbles in reverse where they showed through the paper thanks to the light in the ceiling.  "Oh, that?  Just something I stumbled across while I was looking over the ore reports." He shoves the last of the hot dog into his mouth and chews, sliding his chair closer to the sideboard where a tall plastic cup holds room temperature cola.  He uses it to wash down the last of the hotdog, setting the soda back down well away from the papers and his computer terminal.  "I was going to go further, but my lunch break ran out and I had to get back to work figureing out why these ore concetrations are so much lower then they should be."  He shrugs.  "Just a flight of fancy, call it hobby work.  Sad, huh?"

    James' frown deepened.  "This is all wrong..."

    Isaac chuckled, letting a little hurt tone play into his voice.  "Hey kid, I told you it was just a quick job."

    James shook his head.  "No no.  You're figures are dead on, it's the probe readings that are off.  Look at this."  He set the printout down, pointing to a certain portion of the page.

    Isaac reached out to grab his glasses and settle them back onto his face, pushing them into proper position with his index finger and looks down to the paper at the portion pointed at.  "Ok, I'm looking... what am I seeing?"

    James made a noise of dismay.  "Can you bring up last month's probe readings? The G Sector Dig?"

    Isaac adjusted his position and reached out to type commands in rapid succession.  He was facing carpal tunnel and even arthritis in the next 10 years, but for now his fingers were still nimble.  2 minutes of silence but for the frenzied typing yeilded another display, this one marked "G SECTOR CORE SAMPLES" and timestamped for a month previous.  "Here it is" he said, announcing his success despite James looking over his shoulder the hole time.  The two men sat in silence for a few moments, then Issac slowly shook his head.  "I don't see anything out of the ordinary."

    James' brow furrowed, deepening the look of concern on his young face.  He set the scribbled-on printout down in front of the keyboard for Isaac to look at, then leaned in to look closer at the mass of numbers and symbols.  A few seconds more and then...

    "There."  James said, reaching out to point at the screen.  "The samples from ring 7."  He glanced back down at the paper on the table.

    Isaac's eye followed James' finger, regarding the figures for a few moments. "Ok, I'm seeing chemical compositions, I'm seeing purity and concentration reports..."  He gave a slight shrug.  "I still don't understand what I'm looking..."  The sentence is cut short by sudden realization sparking in the synapses of his brain.  "Wait a sec..."  He snatches up paper and brings it up to examine it, then lowers it again to peer past it at the screen.  "...that's...not possible..." 

    Jim's face became a bit pale, and a bead of sweat began to collect on his forehead.  "Isaac..."  he says, though his tone makes it sound like a question, even a plea...

    "Issac?"

    "Jim... find the foreman."