Jane Bond Book 8: Hawaiian Vacation: Humorous Science Fiction by V.R. Tapscott

Author:V.R. Tapscott [Tapscott, V.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Nothing like a day at home.

Jess and I elevatored into the Hawaii house. This time, Jess’s elevator was a beautiful oak lined elevator interior with a full set of mother-of-pearl buttons. All the metal parts were brushed gold. For all I knew, they might be real gold.

We exited the device and stood in the entry hall. No voices or noise at all. “Jess, is the house empty?”

“Sure is, boss. I can’t hear anyone here at all.”

I snarked, “Neither did Olive, and look what happened there.”

Having read ‘The Evershaw Curse’, she was able to come back with, “Yeah, but that was Olive. This is me! By the way, Olive reports that she was in the same ‘outage’ that I was. I don’t think we were aware that we’d go offline if the Command Module was in remediation. We’ll brainstorm on how to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Not that we expect our Command Module to go away, but it’s good to know.”

I said, “Yeah, that’s kind of a problem. I thought Olive had that figured out, but maybe she’s just an independent unit as long as the Command Module gives her leave to exist?”

“Maybe. I don’t understand how Kit and the rest were still functioning with Celeste offline in that case. Maybe the only time it would happen would be if the Command Module was undergoing Remediation, and that would automatically shut down the rest of the units in case the insanity in Command was infecting others?”

I nodded. “Could be. From what I’ve heard about Celeste, it’s possible she put it into place to make sure if she got submitted to remediation that there’d be no chance of a revolt while she wasn’t available.”

Jess looked at me for a moment. “You don’t think much of Celeste, do you?”

Frowning, I said, “I don’t really know much about Celeste, but some of what I do know would make me careful about trusting her.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I agree. I’ve had no direct experience. In fact, none of us have. But I’m not that sure that her pronouncements of insanity were based as much on concern that the ship was in danger as that the unit in question might be ‘plotting against her’.”

I sighed. “Can’t get away from politics, can you?”

Jess smirked. “It’s the human condition. And I use ‘human’ as being in the broader sense of every sentient life form out there. I don’t think any life form gets much higher than amoeba before it starts getting worried about its own life, and that means selfishness, and that means politics to make sure that it’s as high on the chain as it can be.”

Not much more to be said, I led the way to the deck. We sat out on the giant wood construction and watched the waves for a bit.

I remarked, “Usually, when I get a case like this, I go camping with Dale. He points out some silly thing that I’ve missed, and it winds up busting the case wide open, to use the vernacular.

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