26 Gathering of Minds

"Phase two working out just fine; moving onto the phase three-now."

Amidst the underground section of a certain facility, an ancient laboratory built around hundreds or even thousands years ago, there was a discussion going on between its inhabitants, under the veils of shadow pervading the place.

"Well, everything seems to be in order just as we planned. Thank goodness the guy-some old, cheeky fella named Rothgarr-actually turned out to be a lot of help. Dunno whether he's 'intentionally' helping us or doing it without knowing, but still it's working out just fine for us. Right, my fellow scientists?" A confident voice rang out among the dark chamber.

"Probably, Doctor Becker. We have a good plan, yes, here and now, and it is going smoothly enough so far, but there's absolutely no 100% in any area of science; maybe 99 percent, or 99.9 percent, or even..."

"Yes, we DO know it already, Doctor Eisen, so there's practically no need for you to go beyond 99.99 per-cent. We all get your point."

"Nevertheless, it seems like I'm telling this to all of you-almost every time-whenever we're up to review our progress. Seriously, it happens 'almost' all the time, I say. Doctor Chambers, now that you mentioned you get to understand what I'm tryin' to say here, would you then kindly share us with your findings, regarding what I had asked of you days ago?" Senior Researcher Eisen demanded.

Even though there were several voices being heard, all at the same time, none of their owners still seemed to reveal his or herself out in the open. They kept dwelling among the shadows, remaining as the invisible residents of the dreary space without any living presence to fill itself up with liveliness. Yet there was a certain shape located at the room's center, however-recognizable despite engulfed in the dark, while humongous in its volume, filling up nearly one third of the entire space. It was some sort of ancient machinery, an enormous piece of forgotten techs. Out of its circle-shaped muzzles something was oozing down onto the floor, half-liquid and half-solid, almost like lumps of someone's flesh. As the clotted liquid flowed down upon the machine's body, it formed, joining with other streams coming out of different holes, some sort of bloodied membrane on its metallic host.

Other than those, every time the voice rang out within the shadowy place, a part of it, on top of the tall, huge machinery, flickered for a moment and died out, revealing itself briefly amidst the dark. This time, as a voice was again to be heard, a greenish light appeared on it, being one of a few sources of light within the place.

"Ah yes, about what you'd signed me up for early this week..." A woman's voice came out of nowhere. "Here, my fellow scientists, is what I've come up with so far, as I was assessing every possible threats on our project. In large, there are two sources of uncertainties-regarding the whole project-which can possibly develop into something quite troublesome. One of them being a faction that is so-called the Holy Empire of 3-Divines, apparently. They've been really a pain in our butt for a long while, as we all know it, and for this time it's no different, I'm afraid."

"The leaders of the province, on which we let loose another creature pretty recently, are still trying to cover up the whole incident from the eyes of their superiors; yeah, they're apparently worried sick about getting their heads roll, once the central politics find out how they messed up the things. To us, they're surely proving to be quite useful, though."

"What concerns me-and all of us here-is that just how long they'll be able to keep up with it, before the whole Empire knows everything. With what we have right now, mustering every resource we have, we can still easily fend off Rothgarr's state troops. But if the Empire brings up its whole army, then the hell will break loose, for sure."

"Before we jump into the conclusion," Dr. Chambers said, wishing to move onto her second agenda. "we'd like to talk about our new guy, Aelthred of Geats. Our past experiment with the pal named Wuntwail, as you all might know, did not go so well, for the sake of truth. We had somehow managed to bring up to the third phase of the procedure, but his conditions, mental and physical, could not bear it any further, failing to meet our expectations. That was a shame, really."

"And you expect this, Aelthred fella should do just fine, might I ask?" Interrupted Doctor Eisen.

"Yes, yes. I'm pretty sure about that. Not '99.9' percent certain, though. Still, so long as we've been observing him, his physical capacities, as well as the mental ones, are certainly meeting our own criteria-or even exceeding them, meaning that we've got nothing to lose, at least, to hereby make him our newest test subject."

"But, but, Dr. Chambers," interrupted her another colleague, Doctor Fischer, nervously. "Aside the fact that our newest, possible candidate suits pretty well for our ongoing research, have you ever thought about what threat, if any, he might pose to us, should we really take him as our target specimen?"

"That's what I was just about to tell you guys, Dr. Fischer." Irritated, Dr. Chambers answered. "It's not always possible for us to take control of everything around us, well including our newest candidate. Why, I'm not even denying that it's also possible for Aelthred to come up with certain kinds of countermeasures against us. However, however, my fellow scientists, if we are to see what good he's gonna bring to our research progress, the risk is 'affordable'. The guy's our rare opportunity; these days we don't get to see much of the folks who'd be our suitable candidates for our experiment, right? Even if he somehow works against us, just how much bad he would ever do to us, going against the most brilliant minds of the era? Besides, see how happy is our talented surgeon, Doctor Steinman. The newest guy makes him happy, makes you happy, makes the whole human beings happy, and helps us to get our job done!" She said in enthusiasm.

Shortly, a mumbling voice was heard-probably Dr. Steinman's. A purplish light flickered as the mumbling went on along with statics, and it even seemed like as if the source of a voice, a person or some sort of machinery, was somehow feeling joyful about the news brought in by Dr. Chambers. Then, the noise subsided; so did the flickering light.

"So," Calming herself, the doctor was now drawing up her conclusion. "guys, here's what we should be focusing on: we have to speed up the whole progress, stepping on the pedal, before the entire nation finds out who we are, and what we're up to. And for that, First I suggest we show ourselves a little bit to open public-"

"And recklessly putting ourselves in danger by doing so?" Dr. Eisen said.

"Actually, I'm kinda having a bad, itchy feeling about your plan..." Dr. Fischer added up.

"No, no, guys. Just hear me out, alright?" Then, Dr. Chambers continued. "What I'm saying here, is that we present ourselves just a bit to lure 'our possible candidate'. We're practically sending him an invitation, luring him, wishing the guy to take some interest in us-for just a little bit, though, so that it might not harm us greatly. And, of course, we're doing this in a subtle, indirect way so that we do not fully expose ourselves to outside. Why, we Do have an agent of our own, outside this facility, to do that work for us! All we gotta to do, is whispering into its ears. We stir it up a bit, and the whole thing is halfway done already; I assure you."

"Aw, that means we're starting up another party out there, honey?" Dr. Becker cheered.

"Ex-actly, Dr. Becker!" She answered. "Then, then. By doing so we're not only just leaving some breadcrumbs along the trail, but we'll be actually testing out 'his mettle', assessing whether he'd really be our future candidate. And that was my second point of the whole idea. In short, we release it among the folks there again, draw him-our target-closer to us, make him take a notice of us a little, and our progress would speed up significantly! While we're at it, we too can double-check whether the Aelthred fella is really suitable for our plan. Well, what about it, guys?"

The whole machinery began to hum altogether, as if each part of it was pondering heavily upon the plan. All the lights-five of them in total-were now flashing at the same time, brightening up the room a bit more than usual. The engines were buzzing, their circuits going hot. At last, another voice was heard aloud, its yellowish light standing out among its bright peers.

"Alright, I'm making a call to our buddy outside. Hope it would remain under our control, even after we release it on its own." Said Doctor Eisen.