The Escapement Mechanism, Part 8
The problem with figuring out how the device worked, was that there were no visible ports. She had taken it back to her computer, but was making no progress. It was as if the stone had been forged in a single piece, the blinking light somehow included along with a power source that Wemly had yet to deduce. It all seemed impossible. And if she hadn’t had just had the uncanny experiences herself, she would have said that it was. What could still have power after who knew how long in the locket? Something nuclear? Trudy had worked for the military, but something so powerful in such a small device didn’t seem likely.
Solar was not possible, with the device hidden away in a locket—maybe body heat? But neither option could generate enough energy to do anything effective. Even powering the constant blinking of the light was beyond what should have been possible.
Utsab was still focused on his computer, so Wemly set the stone on a silicone mat in front of her computer. She didn’t want to have to explain what she was doing, and he was far too curious for his own good, or at least Wemly’s. It would be a given Utsab would relay her activities to Warner, and then she would need to explain why her abstract hadn’t been completed but she had time to work on her own projects. And what exactly was it that she had, and where had she gotten it?
There was a curse from Utsab, but that only meant he was completely absorbed in his work. Wemly took a deep breath and turned the device over in her hands.
Bluetooth or wireless were advancements too recent to be in tech that was at minimum twenty years old, but Wemly scanned for connections anyway. She didn’t find any. The interface was with skin. That had been the only time the stone had responded. She palmed the stone and cast a nonchalant glance at Utsab. She made like she was stretching and scratching her neck.
Wemly felt the device meld into place immediately, the feeling now familiar. And intimate, like the embrace of a loved one. It was as if Trudy herself was wrapping her arms around Wemly’s neck and squeezing her in a gigantic hug.
She did another wireless scan, just in case the connection with her body had opened up a line of communication. It had not. Wemly decided she needed to attach monitors to herself and analyze the outputs on her computer. There would be no hiding this from Utsab, and she didn’t have a plausible cover story drafted. Even though she was tired, there was no real choice—she would need to come back when the lab was unoccupied. Utsab stayed until at least midnight, and the other grad students came in early. That left a few hours in the early morning, where curious janitorial staff would be her only concern.
It was technically her first coffee of the day that Wemly spilled over the shirt she had been in for the previous one. She didn’t mind, because it needed to come off anyway. Soon petroleum jelly-based adhesive disks were affixed to her chest and attached to her temples.
Wemly poked around at the readings. Heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, circulating O2, brain waves. Nothing unusual, at least from her perspective as a researcher in rodent memory. She ran the standard set of statistical tests. Wemly as mouse, but she as a rodent was not proffering any secrets. Something had happened with the mice, and she was determined to experience the unknown phenomena herself.
She ran correlations. The frequency of the light fading in and out on the device matched her breathing perfectly, but she already knew it would. What was surprising was a suspected repeating pattern in the brain waves. To her eyes the peaks and troughs followed their standard paths, morphing along with her thoughts but containing no useful information; and yet, there was a non-random correlation score assigned to them. An apparent repeating pattern that she could not identify.