“Yes, we'll worry about it later. This is still the very early stages as far as that door is concerned,” said Mr. Haber. He stood up, “At any rate, we need to now get towards what I'm sure is going to be the part of the meeting you kids came here to see.”
Aria sat up a little straighter at that statement. It looked like they were finally going to get to know what their mother had been quite so mysterious about earlier.
Mr. Summers stood up, walking over towards a dark corner of the room and returning with some kind of rectangular device. It was unlike any device Aria had seen before. It was a lot thicker than most devices she's seen and it looked quite bulky. It didn't even seem to have a visible screen. It looked more like a box than anything else.
“What are we going to
see?” she asked, "and uhh...how is that thing going to show us anything, is that some kind of component you guys stole from somewhere?"
"Umm, well the first question, I think I'll let Alex answer. He's the one who orchestrated that entire operation from the very beginning," said Mr, Haber, cracking a smile," As for this device, this is actually a computer, from the 21st century. A rather popular design back then. They call it a laptop I believe...because you're meant to be able to keep it on your lap.."
"They were certainly quite creative back then," added Ms. Johnson.
Aria couldn't help but laugh at that even as she tried to wrap her head around the fact that these guys had somehow figured out how to use two hundred year old technology to do whatever it is they'd managed to do.
"It is aptly named," said Mr. Summers as he sat down with the device. He lifted the top of the device and it opened out with a small creak. He began to tap at what appeared to be quite a lot of buttons on the inside half of the device. On the other half of the inside, there was a small screen which showed that the device was starting up. "Now, I will not go into details about how we got this footage. It was shot from the Octopedal Airborne Surveillance Drone sitting right over there, which was built as the result of an eight month long process undertaken last year. Your mother can tell you the details sometime later."
Aria turned to the weird looking spider thing sitting innocently on a stool. That was the only thing he could possibly be referring to.
"We call it the Arachnodroid," said Ms. Johnson, "don't get too intimidated by Alex's pet name for it. Its actually a very simple device, everything made of scavenged parts from an Operation we called "Trash Dive". LIke Alex said, I'm sure you can grill your mother on that topic. Right Alice?"
Mrs. Kane nodded at that.
"So what are we about to see here?" asked Harry.
"That becomes pretty clear a few seconds into the footage, just give it a minute to load. This is 2020's tech. Unbearably slow but it's all we got," said Mr. Haber.
A few seconds later, it appeared to finally be working as Mr. Summers pressed a button and turned the device around so that Harry and Aria could see the screen. The clip looked be quite low resolution.
"Is that 4080?" asked Aria, "seem very low res."
"That...is actually 720, if you can believe that," said Mr. Haber.
"What? Wow, I didn't even know you go that low," said Harry, looking shocked. He was leaning on top of the table now, having partially stood up to get a closer look at the screen.
"You have no idea," said Mr. Haber, "I've seen settings on that device which have resolutions as low as 144. 720 is actually the maximum."
"No.."
"I appreciate a history lesson as much as the next man, but I believe we're pressed for time," said Mr. Summers, cutting Harry off mid sentence.
At that everyone went quiet. Mr. Summers pressed another couple of buttons and the footage restarted. All Aria could see at first was the inky blackness of a clear night sky. Then the view began to shift. It was very clear that the device had no gyroscope at all with the amount of shaking going on. It was impossible to tell what it was looking at until the device finally stabilised. She could now make out a large structure below the camera.
It was instantly
recognizable. They'd spent a good couple of hours staring at it earlier this morning: The Inner Wall. The drone appeared to be around 10 feet inside the wall and a good way above it. And then the camera started to approach the wall, descending slowly, as if was going in for a landing.
She had no idea how on Earth this hadn't been caught by the security cameras mounted on and around the wall, but she decided to file that question away for later. There was a sudden shake of the camera and the device stopped. It had actually landed. Except that was supposed to be impossible. The laser defence system on the wall should've fried the flimsy piled of metal into a puddle of melted goo but nothing happened.
And then...it moved...crawling its way forward as the camera shook uncontrollable again. The impossible was happening right in front of her eyes. Through the shaking of the camera, she could just about barely make out a view that no human was supposed to be able to see.
Points: 34
Reviews: 178
Donate