Chapter 88 Year 3 – Shift 6 – Destiny’s Wild – Clem

“She’s living in a van…” Cody couldn’t stop the shit eating grin as he flexed his arms together, ripping the back out of the tiny suit coat. “Down by the river!”

Cody waved his arms up in the air, then down toward the table they stopped to buy on the way over from Terry’s Tables and Tacos, and proceeded to faceplant into it and instantly losing ten hit points when the table was more reinforced than he planned.

Clem wiped her hands on her apron as she stared at the interesting catboy. He groaned in what appeared to be more failed skit than pain. “I could have told you this without the minor contusion.”

He rolled over and fell from the table to the ground with a weak thud. “I would rather give away all my yarn…” He huffed. “Than miss the chance to relive a legend.”

She considered the scene another fraction of a second. “Since you’ve brought a picnic table, why don’t you take a seat? I’m just making lunch! Join me!”

Cody was on his feet and moving the table over into the shade with Thiccolus and Chadriel. “Oh, fuck yeah! It’s been like a year since I’ve eaten! What are you making?”

“Well,” Clem turned back around to her custom made cooking stove that folded out of the side of her van. “Because I run on my own homebrew system, I require ridiculous amounts of calories to sustain myself right now.”

Glandalf sat down at the table and sat his tablet down. “Were you able to salvage the fuel efficiency protocol from your original 4ged package? That’s actually what we pieced together for our rocket engine prototypes.”

“Actually, the build is significantly different on the version used for me.” She started buttering two-dozen thicky slices of Texas toast. “Because of our target service demographic, we weren’t programmed with longevity in mind.”

Every man at the table felt their balls shrink by three sizes that day.

“What’s keeping us from just uploading the firmware to you right now?” Glandalf wondered.

“Me.” She said firmly, but kindly as she sprinkled enough jarlic on the bread to ensure no draggins would be within a thousand yards of them. “Nothing goes in my body that I didn’t write.”

“Fair.” Glandalf nodded. “I respect the hell out of that.”

She sprinkled a healthy dose of salt and mint over the bread before setting it under what looked like a custom salamander to bake. “Besides. I’m kind of endeared to all of this food. Its entirely nutritionally void, but it just tastes so…yummy!”

“Well, the offer is there.” Glandalf pulled his tablet out. “I can just debug for you, if you like.”

Clem turned and cocked her head with a smile. “Thank you, Glandalf, but your coding skills require I ask for your guidance on an issue I’m facing in coding it. I’ve seen Etokuso’s WizardWeave net. It’s unparalleled.”

Glandalf was stunned. “Uhh. Yeah. Sure.”

She pressed a button on the side of the van and the side raised just enough for the back tire to start spinning. Razor wire shot across it and Clem dumped an entire pound of bonions, a pound of hoetatos, and a whole pound of gushrooms in. They were instantly shredded. The wheel stopped and Clem pulled a bucket from under it. She dumped it in a strainer that already waited in the river contained inside a built barrier.

“The trick here is to shock the fresh cut veg with freezing water so it maintains its texture.” She shook the veg dry and dumped it all on a massive cooktop that doubled for the hood. She threw six sticks of butter next to it to start melting. “So. You needed to talk about something?”

“Your tail.” Cody replied. “Why is it in Sara’s timeline after CT-Kun was gone?”

She stirred the butter into the veg and dumped plenty of salt, pepper, and a criminal amount of garam masala over the top. “Could I see the infraction, please? Cast it to East Screen.”

“Right here.” A screen on the Open Passenger door appeared where the window was and showed the graphs. “Right after the FU69 sealed the timeway.”

Clem slid the veg to the back and dumped a bowl of shredded beef on the grill, hit it with salt and began chopping with one hand while the other lowered a giant basket of hand breaded country fried steaks, one of three pounds of bacon,  and one of massive cut steak fries into a vat of oil.

“I see.” She concluded and stopped chopping, staring into nothing for a split second. Not again. Not in front of them. “I…was hacked.”

Everything was silent as she focused on her cooking and tried desperately to activate the emotional dampener she overloaded and hadn’t figured out how to fix yet.

“But, what—”

“Are you okay, Clem?” Cody cut Glandalf’s further questioning short. “We can come back later if—”

“No!” The word shot out of her mouth, unbidden. “Please. Stay. Eat with me.”

“We will, Clem.” Glandalf’s sympathetic eyes were charming.

No! Clear routine. Reset parameters.

System error.

Shit.

“I need to shit.” She forced out and ran into the treeline and out of sight.

The programming was overwhelming her newly made nervous system. She collapsed to her knees and grabbed the pendant on her neck and rubbed her thumb on it frantically. She never had to do that anymore. No one would make her. She failed to regulate her breathing and it increased, nearly choking her as the flood of new emotion ripped through her. Fear, arousal, joy…which ones went where? She fell to her side and curled into a fetal ball and squeezed her knees into her chest. It was an immense flood and she started shaking and sobbing. After everything, her own code was used against her. It was a violation. She would file it away with the rest.

But she couldn’t allow it to stay. She closed her eyes and rebooted.

After a few seconds, she sat up and wiped her eyes. She stared at nothing for a long moment before getting up, dusting off, and returning. Silence held as she returned to cooking.

“Whoever did it is far more powerful than all of us combined.” Clem stated as she stirred her chocolate Cheeto gravy. “They took her out of Serevak, but I don’t know where.”

“And, we have no clue where.” Cody confirmed.

“Its not Tawagoto.” Clem laid out plates for all of them. “It kind of looks like Earth, but who has that kind of magic there?”

“Oh, fuck.” He responded. “Craig?”

“Unlikely.” Glandalf said.

“Craig bounced with our tech.” Thiccolus confirmed. “He was confirmed long gone by then.”

“Earth is just a theory.” Clem laid the garlic bread down and covered each slice with a big gob of peanut butter. “It could be a land of persistent pissing.”

All eyes turned to her as she laid out thick slices of monster, bliss, and beddar cheese over the peanut butter. “What? A girl can dream.”

“Let’s focus Earth until we confirm it or not.” Glandalf was already typing. “I’m already seeing something now that Clem got me on the right track.”

Clem covered the cheese with mounds of floppy bacon and the country fried steaks. “I can look after I finish plating.”

“Oh, yeah.” Thiccolus chimed in. “I see it now. The—whoa!”

“What do you got?” Cody shot up over his shoulder.

“This is weird.” He responded. “I picked up on the source, but its…here.”

“In Tawagoto?” Glandalf tapped quicker.

“Yeah.” Cody said, pointing at a line of code. “But how?”

Clem poured her gravy over all the food, covered it with more gyatzarella cheese, a full bottle of chocolate syrup, and five unwrapped Four Musky Queers nougat filled candy bars each before placing another piece of the jarlic bread on top and then sprinkling it with a handful of Dyke and Ike candies. She filled the entire rest of each plate with the massive steak fries and provided retchup, gayonaise, and Dr Pepper for dipping.

“There. Done. You guys can start eating, and I’ll start looking at the patterns.” She slid the plates to everyone then opened her own tablet. “Whatever it is swapped places with Sara and Raven.”

“Where do you see that?” Glandalf asked.

“You see the claxis key under the entraxis key?” She pointed.

“No.” Glandalf said. “Where?”

“I’m not seeing it, either Clem.” Thiccolus added.

“Turn your transfission matrixes off.” She said.

They tapped a few times.

“Wow.” Glandalf tugged at his beard. “I had no idea you could do that. What else have I been missing?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Glandalf.” Clem smiled at him. “The chances of this happening are one in nine-thousand-nine…almost impossible. It only happened because…”

“Got it.” Glandalf moved on. “Yeah. That’s a clear swap.”

“Then we find him.” Clem nodded and took a bite of the monstrosity before her.

“How?” Glandalf asked. “He’s here now. He’s a needle in a haystack.”

“Is he?” Cody was a third of the way through his ‘sandwich.’

“Just find the one being without a registered species in the Zeta archives.” Clem ate more.

Glandalf looked at Cody, then at Clem. “It will take a while, but that will definitely do it.”

Cody let out a loud burp that scared the fish in the river. “Then we ride at dawn.”

“Maybe like noonish.” Glandalf said.

“Noon it is.”