20 Worry (1/2)
”So this is . . . the laboratory,” Ephraim says as the fog-like frost clears up. The whole laboratory was freezing up, and again as Ephraim thought, it was definitely arctic-cold.
”This feels nostalgic for some reason,” says Anna. ”But I don't know the reason why I feel nostalgia . . . does that make sense?”
”Sort of,” Ephraim answers as he saunters inside the laboratory. ”It's really cold right here . . .”
As Ephraim walks inside the laboratory, he catches a whiff of formalin. From his spectacles, he sees the entirety of the premise. There are laboratory apparatuses, few he could name (test tube racks, Erlenmeyer flasks, beaker, syringes, and some microscope); residing in the lab were objects and equipment he was barely familiar with. They were similar to the Sci-fi movies he sees on Television. It was like a scene from a movie.
Anna walks athwart the room, eyeing everything with sheer fascination.
”This is amazing,” says Anna. ”They feel familiar, but they're really new to me now.”
”New to you now?”
”Yep, they're not on my data anymore, thanks to my botched system,” Anna mutters. ”But I store the data of these things, credits to Google,”
”So . . . you search things up? Internally? Or something?”
Anna nods. ”I'm saving up their data, like their uses and description. But of course, I don't want to waste memory with some trivial things such as these broken pipettes here,” she says. ”Anyway—think of it as something like keeping some files. You don't necessarily throw what you don't need for now . . . you archive them in a zip file so they won't consume space. I save them and archive 'em.”
Ephraim saunters towards Anna and stands beside her. He eyes the Petri dishes. Some were empty, and some were broken. There are also some which contained green ooze.
Thick, green ooze.
”What's this?” Ephraim asks as he stares closely to the slime-like entity residing in the petri dish. ”Can you examine that for me, Anna?”
Anna nods and stares closely at the green substance. Her eyes gleamed with radiant, cyan light as she examines the odd component closely. Her eyes fixated to the ooze as she gathered data.
”. . . oh,” she says. ”What an odd thing. It's a composition of . . . hexavalent chromium, cyanide, trichloroethylene, and some other metals . . .”
”Hmm . . .” Ephraim stares at the ooze. ”Is it toxic?”
”Can be,” Anna answers. She then strolls to another corner of the room, staring at the entire space with curiosity. There were glass-made cabinets plastered against the wall and other bizarre laboratory equipment. She also notices some thermal cycler and PCR machines (if her information serves right).
Ephraim leaves the green ooze on the petri dish. ”How weird. How come it didn't vaporize?”
”Access to higher information?” Ephraim asks.
”Classified information.” She says. ”I'm a fragment. I don't have the means to hack through some system. I can only rely on Mr. Google,”
”That reminds me . . .” Ephraim starts. ”How did you gain access to information, social media, et cetera? Does the laboratory have a net?”
”Well, it's quite easy.” Says Anna. ”Frequency,”
”Frequency?” Ephraim repeats, and then his eyes lit up as he soon understood. ”I see,”
”Right, right, quite fast on the uptake, huh?” Anna grins. ”So yes, I snatch some frequency to get in touch with the world outside.”
”Are there waves or signals underground?”
”An archetypal 900-megahertz radio will propel signals down a tunnel very efficiently, but these high-frequency transmissions will not travel through the earth.” She says. ”However, that's why the 'house' existed. So we can get radio waves and microwaves. It's complicated to explain in simple means, but there's that,”
Ephraim nods. ”I completely understand. In short, there's a device above the lab, located in the 'house,' that is able to synthesize these waves.”
”Correct,” Anna says. ”And with that, I was able to snatch up Wifi. It's pretty convenient. Anyhow, I stuck up only the critical information and important data in my memory. Other than that I'm pretty much full of memes, and of course, now I got the chip for security! Which means a lot, by the way.”
”Hmm . . . then, since you have the critical information at hand . . .” Ephraim fixes his gaze towards Anna. Their eyes met as he flashes a smile.
”. . . then maybe, you have the answers to ANDROMEDA?” He says. ”To the facility. To the research. To everything else?”
Silence.
Ephraim and Anna eyed each other intently for a moment.
Until a snort followed.
”Pft,” Anna stifled her laughter. ”Aren't you listening to anything I just said earlier? I'm not 'me' yet. I'm simply a fragment of the real 'me'. I'm not able to answer your queries, let alone know what such top-secret research would be.”
Ephraim was still smiling.
”. . . you don't believe me?” Anna asks.
”I find it odd. I'm not sure about how all of these technologies that seemed like they existed in 2050,” says Ephraim. ”But you are a Hologram created by engineer and scientists whom, I think, has the utmost access to what happened here in this lab. You said you stored critical information.”
”I did,” Anna answers as her eyes followed Ephraim who ambled to the corners of the room, scrutinizing the spaces and objects he was fascinated with.
”What are your critical information?” He asks. ”Are they the research, the lab, or something?”
”. . .”
”Anna?”
”. . . I can't . . . tell,” she answers.
”Why?” Ephraim asks as he turns towards her with bemusement laced all over his face.
Silence.
Ephraim then smiles.
”Okay,” he says after a brief moment of silence. ”I won't ask anything about it.”
”R-really?” Anna asks.