Must Read: Glitches - Season 1 - Episode 13

7 years ago

Must Read: Glitches - Season 1 - Episode 13

Inside the rehabilitation room, the newly formed
coalition set to work. Determination reeked from
the countenance of the new initiates and from
their demeanor, one could tell they had this
notion they were working for a noble cause.

Finding a cure to mankind’s ultimate bane.

The rehabilitation room was pretty much large.

It had several state of the art tech equipments. The subject was wired from head down to his toes,
wires connected to large machines used for the
reading of values from internal organs. One of
such wires was connected to a large screen, it
was the wire from the brain. Few years ago,
scientists created a machine with potential to
read dreams while asleep. Researchers in the US
say it is so powerful it can extract images from
people’s brains and display them on a screen.

This machine was particularly used in criminal
investigation; it could collect images of criminals
from minds of witness. The pioneers of the
gigantic breakthrough were neuroscientists at the
University of California, Berkeley. One of such
machines was seated in the rehabilitation room.
‘
’If I were to connect these wires to your brain, I’d
get visual outputs of your thoughts. Like a real
time Hollywood movie.’’ Newton explained to the
interested ears of Kingsley. ‘’So tell me, what am I
most likely to see? I bet it’ll be a Unclad girl.’’

Newton’s sense of humor was dry, but Kingsley
appreciated the fact that he had some, unlike
Falcon who didn’t have any.

‘’Nah… you’d be watching your own burial
ceremony.’’ Kingsley watched Newton’s eye turn
gloomy. ‘’Gotcha!’’

Newton gave a faint smile. What kind of psycho
jokes with death?

‘’The problem here though is that, we’ve been
trying to get images of what goes on in a Loman
brain during transmogrification but all we get is
scrambled data.’’

‘’Then decrypt it.’’ Kingsley adviced.

‘’That’s the problem. I’ve tried to but I couldn’t.’’

‘’Fortunately for you, I have the master
decryption program.’’

Some few metres away from Newton and Kingsley
were Falcon, Stella and Aaron. Falcon held a test
tube up to his eye level, he shook it slowly, and
then heated it using a COD test tube heater.

The solution turned a light shade of gray.

‘’HPMPA is a potent antiviral against most DNA
virus.’’ Falcon explained. ‘’But it seems useless
against the Loman virus.’’

‘’I was looking at it from another angle.’’

Stella
chipped in. ‘’you said the shape of the opsin-
cofactor L complex is what triggers impulses to
the brain?’’
‘’Yes I said so.’’

‘’What if, we are able to synthesize a compound
that binds to the active site of this opsin protein
thereby inhibiting the binding of Cofactor L?’’
‘’Brilliant but that doesn’t kill the Loman virus.’’

Falcon countered.

‘’yes, but it prevents the victim from turning into
a monster and it buys us ample time to find a
lasting solution.’’ Aaron reminded him.

It was getting to transformation time for the
Subject. He had been strapped to the chair with
Lead. Segun had asked Falcon earlier that day,
‘’why is your Subject harmless when it’s
supposed to be a killing machine.’’

‘’you never asked how the enlightened ones and
families managed to survive in a town overrun by
Lomans.’’ Falcon replied him. ‘’the simple answer
is Lead. It was the Dominant mineral in the
Temple of Loki, it is believed to have suppressing
powers for the Loman.’’

‘’You mean like how meteor rocks suppresses
Clark Kent’s powers?’’
‘’Something like that… yeah’’ Falcon replied.

‘’Look around you, this cave is carved with
galena, the natural source of Lead.

Even though that made Stella feel a little bit safe
inside the cave, she was still getting the jitters
about watching the Subject transform again.

‘’Are you ready?’’ Falcon asked no one in
particular, then, he killed the lights.

The only source of illumination was the faint light from the screen.

They waited in silence, everybody with his
thoughts. Few minutes later, it started.

The subject started shaking violently but was held in
place by the Lead constraints. Any other thing
would have been destroyed by the Loman but the
Lead did a good job to suppress its strength. He
closed his eyes very tight while shaking violently.

Then slowly, his new appendages started to
protrude, his features started to change.

The large screen started recording Data but as
Newton rightly said, it was all scrambled text, a
mix of alpha-numeric and complex characters.

The subject’s breathe became heavy which
scared the hell out of everyone. His struggling
began to reduce as he completed his
transformation. Then he opened his eyes, they
were blood shot. At that moment the data from
its brain changed and it started recording a
repeated sequence of similar characters.

The sequence filled the screen but it never stopped
recording.

‘’I want t o know what this exact characters are,
that must be the basic reason for their turning.’’

Falcon ordered.

Kingsley quickly brought out his ipad, he sent a
decryption program to the central computer of
the rehabilitation room. He went over to the
computer and tapped some buttons.

‘’this should take about 5minutes since the
cipher-text is a single string.’’

They all waited with crossed fingers as the
decryption program ran, their eyes were glued to
the large screen. For the complete 5minutes
nobody blinked. The program started slowing
down, signaling that the decryption was almost
complete, then with a red light, the decrypted
text hit the screen.

‘’KILL…KILL…KILL…KILL…KILL’’

Last night was crazy for Jeremy. After disrupting
events at the bar, he had run to the express road
where he caused countless accidents.

He also killed some s*x workers at the junction. By the time the night was getting over, he had already done a great job of maiming and killing people.

He retreated to his gutter where he had a nice
sleep. A splash of water on his face was what
woke him up. He shook his head to clear the
water, and cleaned his face with his palm.

He heard guns cracking, he raised his head to see
countless policemen surrounding him, armed to
the tooth.

‘’you are under arrest. You have the right to
remain silent, anything you do or say would be
used against you in the court of law.’’