Tunnel Rat Chapter 362 (Patreon)

"Victory! Huzzah! The team supreme has conquered the evil and crafty Storage Disk #34!"

The cheering voice made Belinda smile. Rusty was always up for celebrating victories, whatever the game was. Sadly, they were coming very slowly as he helped her work through the treasure trove of data Milo had found in the hidden lab in the Manpower medical center. If someone made the claim that all biological research on the human species was contained in these discs, she might believe them. There were decades of data on experiments done by corporations and governments, stretching back to the early 1900's. This wasn't something done over a few years. Gathering this research together in one place was far beyond John's company.

Or was it her company now? That was something she had to straighten out with him. She turned 18 tomorrow, which changed their relationship dramatically. It felt surreal that a few hours could turn her from a child who had to hide from her only guardian, into an adult, with access to an obscene amount of money, some of which her stepdad had been allowed to borrow. John hadn't made payments, on interest, or principle, ever. He hadn't expected that he'd need to pay it back. Once a few things got sorted out, she could show that the loans were in default and seize Manpower from him. If she wanted to and, frankly, she didn't. That would be a huge mess she didn't want to go through, and John would fight and whine to everyone for years. She'd seen him do it before. And even if she didn't want his company, it made a great threat to hold over his head. That part she liked.

A loud voice cut through her musings and reminded her of her job. "Yoohoo! Belinda!? You're brooding again. I only bring it up because the more you sit and think, the longer this takes and frankly, you're cutting into my anime-watching time."

She shook herself and glared up at the middle screen where a red-haired anime boy was petting a striped cat, while surrounded by a hundred more. "Sorry, Rusty. Can you load numbers 35 to 37?" The storage discs had a massive amount of files in each, and many of them were encrypted. Rusty loved breaking the encryption. Milo had given him some pointers and shared some of his tools.

Getting to the command center hadn't been a problem. With Rusty guiding her and a protective escort from General Maximus, she had no problem navigating through the long corridors in her wheelchair. The first day she was good, finding her objective and getting right to work. After that, she left earlier and spent some time exploring. Milo had told her about the Engineering Section with its massive diesel engines that supplied supplemental power, but nothing could have prepared her for seeing it in person. The amount of resources and technology in this abandoned bunker was staggering. Rusty gave her a tour and told her how Milo had started the first diesel engine and brought the facility back online, causing the war with Icarus to heat up. With no need to keep several of the engines running for power, only the first was still on, idling at low speed but ready to roar to life and start the others in case of a power failure. Something that was highly unlikely now that Rusty was in control of the fusion power plant.

Rusty had the next three discs ready to go and they got started. Each of the foot-wide disks held a massive amount of research, involving all aspects of biology, medicine, or genetics that pertained to humans, along with some interesting studies on increasing the intelligence of animals. She had started going through the contents and then realized that it would take days for each of the disks. There were huge studies that covered decades with hundreds of thousands of patients. Even just looking at the conclusions of the studies took time.

She'd had a minor breakthrough when she came upon the first notes. Someone, she suspected her father, had added his own observations and opinions. She'd read Vigo's published papers, trying to learn about him, and she noted similarities in his writing. Going on that hunch, she had Rusty skim the next few disks and she only spent time on the places Vigo had bookmarked or left notes on. Most of these had to do with human genetics and intelligence testing. But it was still too slow. Yesterday, after finishing the sixteenth of the discs, she approached the idea of processing multiple discs at once.

"Rusty, I think we need to approach things differently, otherwise we're not going to get time this week to watch much anime together. How about this? Load discs 17 to 19, skim them for my father's notes, and I'll read through those parts. Assign one disc to each of the three screens. I'll assign controls to the screens and skip to the next section when I'm done. Keep putting up the information and let me see how fast I can go skim through them and mark sections that look important."

"Oh, good idea. Much quicker. Will you be moving from one screen to the next in sequential order?"

"Well, of course. I'll move left to right and then back, you can follow behind filling in the next block of data when I click."

"Sure, we can do it that way."

Something about how he said that made her curious. "Rusty, what other way could someone do this?"

"Oh, Milo would do four screens at once, simultaneously. But I figured out pretty quickly that he was smarter than standard humans. And he got much quicker after all of Jeremy's training sequences to split his overmind and do several things at once. He was a natural."

Belinda's brain hurt just thinking about Jeremy's tutorials. Milo had mentioned them and Rusty had described them as 'Brain Exercises'. Big Butch had all the kids try them, with mixed results. She handled the first one ok, but everyone else except Min had given up with headaches. Min stubbornly kept at the lesson until she finished. Rusty had declared they had all performed above average and awarded Min and Belinda gold stars. Belinda was on the third lesson now, slowly making progress.

"Let's see if I can handle two simultaneously and work up from there." Rusty reconfigured the screens and they got started. It was difficult, but she was able to read both screens simultaneously, and slowly it was like she was two people. Rusty called a halt to the experiment two hours later.

"That's enough for today. You need rest. Your stress levels are elevated, and you need food and fluids. I suggest we go watch Howl's Moving Castle, eat dinner, and move on to the desert. You need calories. With your physical therapy and the stress from what we did here, you need to watch your diet."

"You sound like Mama, now."

"I do? That's good, right? I think Milo would be in very bad shape without her. All right, time to run home! Your escort is ready to go. And tomorrow morning, why don't we add an hour of Jeremy's tutorials to your schedule, right before physical therapy?"

She sighed, anticipating a burning brain and burning muscles together. But Rusty was right. "Ok, we'll try it. If it can increase my speed, it will be worth it."

Max and the Roombas raced her through the long hallways. She was quicker on the straight stretches, but they cornered better. Dinner and relaxation went by fast, as did sleep, and then she was being woken by Rusty who was reminding her about her morning therapy workout. She grumbled, but regaining the use of her legs was a huge incentive to keep working. She could walk fine now wearing the full suit Milo had made for her, but was wobbly without it. Wobbly steps were a vast improvement over being confined to a wheelchair with only the full use of one arm.

The next day was grueling, starting with the mind-bending exercises that left her mentally exhausted, and then the physical working that was building strength in her legs and back. After a shower, she raced through the hallways and got to work on finding the secrets in the old files. She found it easier to read the screens simultaneously. The lessons were loosening up her mind and she could concentrate on multiple things at once. After that, they worked on three of the discs simultaneously.

She walked into the dining room, still thinking about the research with Rusty, and forgetting what day it was. Mama hadn't. The room was decorated with foil and decorations cut from discarded boxes. A large plate of pancakes with 18 candles was at one end of the table. Everyone was there, including Max and his crew. Rusty was on the screen, and a sleepy Milo was dozing in a chair. Butch woke him as she walked in.

Belinda couldn't help but contrast earlier birthdays. Half the time, John forgot and was out of town. The next year he'd overcompensate with a scary clown and a pony she couldn't ride. Birthday pancakes with people who cared about her was a huge upgrade. Milo ate two stacks of pancakes, handed her a card, and went back to work. The card turned out to be a holo-projector that created a floating SC6 Starship in the air, and she could move it around the room by moving the card. Everyone wanted a turn to play with it and she passed it over to the smaller children. She asked Butch what was up with Milo, "Isn't he getting sleep? He looks tired."

"Oh, he was. He's been sleeping while he gamed, but an alarm went off and he had to deal with a power outage in the habitat. He said it was a bad one and he needed to fix it before he went back into Genesis."

She imagined no power, and people trapped in the dark corridors with the air getting worse and worse, and shuddered. "How can he fix it from down here?"

Butch rolled his eyes and grinned, "He tried to explain, something about stocks and tax credits, and taking over a few electrical distribution companies that were doing an inefficient job."