Mo in a Box

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time" (con't)

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  This will continue from from where yesterday (Mo's Meeting) left off.]

When Mo awoke, she found herself lying on a plastic folding table inside a large metal cage.  The cage was made of copper: copper mesh tied to copper tubing with copper clips.  The mesh had openings roughly a centimeter square, but was woven of thick strands, the same stuff that was used for in-wall wiring.  Way too thick for her to break with just her hands.  The only place this changed was on the floor, which used even thicker mesh.  There was a door and frame made of copper tubing and mesh as well, but it was secured closed with a thick copper chain and (regular steel) lock.  The whole thing was bathroom sized.  In fact, aside from the table she was on, a covered bucket labeled 'HEAD' was the only other item inside.  Mo was still dressed, but her jacket had been removed.  She sat up, stood and looked around beyond the cage.

The cage was inside a much larger space.  Concrete columns marched away in all directions.  The ceiling was high, hidden behind the single bright light that shone above the cage.  Another table and a chair were positioned right outside the cage.  Mo did not need to access her network to know that she was inside one of the halls in the Convention Center, but she did anyway.  She did need to send her location to the authorities and start working on a way out of here.

Nothing happened.  Her HUD came up, her gestures were recognized, but there was no response when she accessed menus.  She could play the music that she had stored locally (not much), but nothing that was stored in her cloud (most of it).  That was when she thought to check the signal meter hovering in the upper right of her vision.  It showed an 'X'.  No signal.  Of course not.  All this copper was a Faraday cage[1], about the only way to shut off a person's PTN without flaying them.  Mo stopped trying to get anything to work, put her JoCo collection (in local memory) on repeat and settled down to wait.

Thirty-three minutes and twenty-five seconds later according to her visual clock, Gabriel entered.  The first Mo became aware of his approach was when she heard a door open and then footsteps echo through the hall.  Gabriel appeared out of the gloom and strode up to the table.  He threw her jacket over one end and placed a file folder in front of the chair before seating himself.  He opened the folder[2] and read through the pages.  Mo sat on the table and listened to "The Future Soon".

Gabriel looked up from the folder at Mo.  "I think that we got off on the wrong foot," he said.

Mo held up a finger, asking him to wait.  She turned off the music with a flick.  "Sorry.  What was that?"

Gabriel frowned.  "I said that I think that we got off on the wrong foot."

"Really?"  Mo pursed her lips.  "Was it the tasering that tipped you off or did you notice your complete lack of openness to someone who responded to your plea for help?  Let me add that locking me up in this signal deprivation chamber is not helping your case any."

Gabriel did not look ashamed.  If anything, he looked impatient.  "And yet, now you are in it.  And the only way out is to help us.  Fortunately, you've already done much of that while you were laying there."

"What?  You scanned me with some nefarious device?  Was there a good anal probing involved?  Is that what this is?  You're all weird aliens in human suits that got tired of probing red necks?  So what did your probes tell you?"

"We did not probe you.  We did scan you.  Take some blood.  Run a few tests.  And what we discovered is that you are infected."  Gabriel moved one of the sheets of paper out of the folder and on to the table.

"Infected?  With what?  I'm going to sue those bastards!  They told me that this last upgrade would stop anything."

"Please calm down.  The upgrade could do nothing.  It was the man at your restaurant yesterday.  It was his touch."

"How the hell can a touch infect a series of circuits?"

"That's what we're trying to find out.  That's why you're here, in a cage, so that it can not get out.  What we need to do is ask you a series of questions so that we can get a better idea of what and who we're dealing with."

Mo leaned back on her plastic table and crossed her arms.  She looked at the cage again and sighed.  "If I answer your questions, will you let me out?"

Gabriel looked away from her.  "No.  I'm sorry, but we won't be able to do that until you are cleared of this infection.  At the moment, we don't have a way of doing that.  We need to invent the cure.  And we won't be able to do that until we know more about it.  It really is in your best interests to help us."

"It would be easier to believe that if some sense of trust had been established before you TASERED ME."

"I understand.  That would have been preferable.  However, we are under a certain amount of pressure to figure this out.  We don't have the time to be nice.  Whatever this is can jump from biology to circuit and back.  It doesn't need the airwaves or a secure connection.  It can infiltrate your system through your body."

"Fine.  I'll answer your questions.  But you need to tell me first, who the heck are you people?"

"That's a little hard to answer."

"Try.  You answer that and I'll answer yours."

"Understood."  Gabriel stood and started pacing[3].  "We are part of the government.  The tricky part is explaining which part.  Really, we're a joint task force with people from the NSA, the military's various cyber espionage teams, the CDC and the FBI.  We were formed up when this thing first came to light, about three months ago.  A single guy in Long Beach stepped off a container ship and started sending out all of these weird data packets.  People who would end up on this team found out about it only when that crewman checked into a hospital with a case of the clap.  The standard blood tests showed this weird virus... excuse me, a bacteria, that was more than a bacteria.  That's when we got put together."

"What happened to him?"

"That's something we would very much like to know.  He left the hospital before he could be stopped and has since disappeared.  You are the only other person we have run into with similar symptoms."

"I suppose that you all have some pithy acronym for your team?"

"Not yet."  Gabriel smiled at Mo.  A tolerant smile.  "But suppose you work on that tonight after we're done with the questions.  You can tell me what you come up with in the morning.  Now can we get on with the questions?"  Mo smiled back, pained, and nodded.

"Great."  Gabriel sat back down and pulled another sheet of paper out of the folder.  "Had you ever before seen the man who touched you yesterday in the Quiet Place?"

"Not that I recall."

"Not that you recall?  That's a little ambiguous."

"The thing is, that place is set up to keep people from seeing each other or interacting in meat space.  Maybe he'd been in before.  Maybe I'd even waited on him before.  I don't remember it."

"Fair enough.  Did you feel anything odd about his touch?"

"What? Like a pin prick or something?"

"Sure, or anything that was unusual.  Did he have sweaty fingers?  Was his grip unusually strong?  Weak?  Did you notice anything about his fingernails?"

"Nope and nope and nope and nope.  He was just strong enough to keep me from walking away without a struggle.  Nothing else stood out."

"How about yourself?  Have you been feeling odd since that incident?"

"No odder than usual."

"How about your system?  Has that been behaving normally?"

"My PTN?  Seemed to be until you guys locked me in here.  The intrusion detection code seemed a little too aggressive, but I put that down to the new install.  It usually takes a few days for me to get all the settings re-tuned."

"Have you noticed anything else at all amiss over the past day?"

"Aside from weird dust fetishists PMing me and getting tasered and locked in a copper cage?"

"Yes.  Aside from all of that."

"Nope.  Got sneezed on on the bus this morning.  It is still the same day that you tasered me, right?"

"Yes.  Same day.  We know about the sneeze.  Your jacket has been cleaned and there was nothing infectious in the, um, residue."

Mo sighed.  "Well, I guess that's some sort of silver lining.  What else do you want to know?"

Gabriel put his papers back into the folder and closed it.  "That's all for now.  We'll have some food sent around in a bit.  Nothing fancy, probably just a sandwich, some chips and a soda.  And, no, we don't take orders."

"And someone is going to empty this bucket at some point?  Do I get to take a bath or brush my teeth?"

"The bucket will get emptied.  The rest will get taken care of tomorrow."

"Fine.  One last question.  Why didn't you lot just bust into my apartment and abduct me if you're under such a time crunch?"

Gabriel smiled.  "It was proposed.  But ultimately, we don't have the manpower for a true black ops abduction.  Not without leaving some unfortunate traces.  We've got you now, though, so it all worked out."

"For you."

"Yes.  For us.  And maybe for the rest of humanity."  Gabriel picked up his folder and started walking away.  "Have a good night in here.  I have a feeling that you won't be alone for long."  He did not wait for Mo to respond.  He walked out of the light and was gone.

[1] Mo really should have put that together much earlier.  These have been used in SO many stories as plot devices and are now a standard installation in all municipal, county, state and federal lock ups.   To her credit, she has never been incarcerated.  Until now.  #putalampshadeonit #doublelampshadefuntime

[2] It is true, even in Mo's day, that a file folder is the surest way to know that one is dealing with a bureaucracy.  Why pulped and pressed plant fiber when a virtual document would be so much easier and convenient?  Because that is how the system works.  It works now.  It will work in the future.  That is all you need to know.  They also make much better stage props if one needs to intimidate someone.

[3] This guy, Gabriel, could be more of a cardboard cut out military ops guy, but it is hard to see how.