<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #10

“Have you tried rebooting?” asked Fede. He couldn’t imagine what this beast would use a computer for.

“I don’t want to lose my data” explained Marcus. His voice was deep, but not unusually so, and the slight lisp his lack of lips gave him was hardly noticeable. “I’m running a metabolic simulation over some new work I’d like your brother to do, and I think I may be suffering from insufficient RAM.”

Fede stared upwards at Marcus. Something in the back of his head reminded him that time was passing. “You what?” he asked, dumbly.

Marcus glanced at Cass, then back at Fede. “A metabolic simulation. Most of my mods involve increased mass, and the metabolism required to support it requires some pretty tricky calculations. If I put on too much weight I could overload my heart. It’s Swiss, but it’s still just a heart.”

Fede realized he was acting like an idiot. “Can I see your machine?” he asked.

“Sure” said Marcus. “Come on in. Park your bike on the sidewalk and we’ll secure it from inside.”

They walked into the house through the doorway, Marcus stepping sideways to get through the frame. Inside was a large living room lined with couches, a series of colorful throw rugs giving the place the feel of an Afghani restaurant. Marcus yelled upstairs to someone, and a man’s voice called back that the bike was taken care of. Marcus led them through the living room past a dining room whose walls were covered in posters of transhumanists and bodmodders of all stripes. One of the posters prominently placed at the head of the table was of Marcus, his arms held aloft in the middle of a huge metal cage. His head and upper body were coated in blood. The picture was foreshortened and Fede couldn’t make out what was lying on the mat behind him. “I still say I owe that one to you guys” Marcus said to Cass, seeing the poster catch Fede’s eye.

“Don’t be silly” replied Cass. “You trained hard for that and you deserved it. I’m just glad we got to take part.”

“Your brother designed the tetrahydroxide combines which allowed me to survive that fight” said Marcus to Fede. He led them into a cozy kitchen and gestured at the oversized bar stools which surrounded the raised table.

“Please excuse the furniture” he said. “Tea or coffee?”

Fede began to get the feeling that he should be asking about a rabbit hole. “What’s tetrahedroxide?” he asked.

“Tea please, Marcus” said Cass as she looked demurely at the wallpaper.

“Tetrahedroxide is an amine that can only be processed in combination with an over-oxygenated blood supply. My particular physiology allows me to metabolize a large amount of it quickly without having to worry about toxic shock.” He thumped his oversized chest and leaned his head conspiratorially towards Fede. “Oversized lungs. More of your brother’s work.”

He leaned back. “Cassandra here authored the theory and worked with your brother to create an implant that would allow me to ingest it in a fight without having to worry about my liver falling out. They designed it to respond to the anaerobic wastes accumulated when fatigue sets in. Most fighters’ mixers aren’t so clever by half, and end up wasted mid-way through the second round. Because of them I was able to stage a massive comeback in the third round and tear Tichowsky apart!”

Fede had no doubt. Marcus turned and began to pull tiny teacups from the cupboard and place them on a battered black wooden tray.

“Cassandra?” he whispered at Cass across the table.

“Say it again and I’ll pull your guts out your navel” she whispered back sweetly.

He was about to say more when Marcus placed the tray on the table. He followed it with milk and sugar in slightly chipped cups before going back to the stove. Instead he turned to Cass and asked, “Why’d you call me Feed?”

“That’s what Mil calls you” said Cass “and I think it’s cute.”

“That doesn’t make any sense” Fede said. “My name sounds more like ‘fed’ than ‘feed.’ It’s stupid.”

She shrugged, unconcerned.

“How is Mil?” asked Marcus as he returned to the table. He cradled a steaming teapot in one hand and carefully enfolded the top of the stool with the other as he squeezed into the remaining seat.

“Still asking when you’re going to come back and play” Cass said with a smile. Marcus laughed loudly, his chest creaking loudly.

“Not a chance, my dear. Mil is too far my superior for me to want such a lesson again any time soon.” Marcus raised his giant paws and pointed his palms at them both. “These were expensive, and I’ll thank him not to break them.”

“You fought Mil?” gaped Fede as Marcus poured him his tea with one thick digit carefully plastered over the teapot’s lid. Marcus smiled broadly.

“I wouldn’t call it a fight” he said. “I put a few holes in the wall and made a lot of noise, and he danced around and gave me two sprained wrists.” He chuckled again, leaning back in his chair, remembering.

“Funny thing was he kept telling me what he was going do before he did it. ’Marcus, you needs to be calming down now or I’m going to pop your other wrist. You won’t fight again for a long time, its a big shame’”

Marcus’s imitation of Mil was spot-on perfect, and both Fede and Cass were snortling tea and giggling as Marcus continued, his trunk-like arms swaying gently in imitation of the skinny little man’s fluid movements.

“’There, see, I told you that was a bad idea. Now how longs you will be healing? Marcus, you are making a scene. You’re embarrassing yourself Marcus.’”

Cass covered her mouth with one palm, her shoulders shaking with laughter as they imagined Mil casually breaking down the giant mod fighter. Marcus chuckled and sipped his tea. “Mil is a gentleman, don’t get me wrong, but he most certainly does not fight fair.”

Fede laughed again in disbelief at the thought of the no-holds barred mod fighter asking for a fair fight, but decided against asking any more about it. Marcus finished his tea, and eventually they got around to examining his computer. The interface was a six-foot square whiteboard with thick stubby pens Marcus could easily manipulate with his oversized hands. Fede found the problem almost immediately. A memory leak in one of the programs used in the simulations was accumulating in RAM and choking the system on memory swaps. Fede didn’t want to mess with the program’s code, so he ran a cleanup program, making a few performance tweaks to Marcus’s system and generally cleaning house a little. Marcus politely asked questions along the way so Fede showed him a few ways to keep memory fragmentation down as well as running him through how to clean up after his simulation programs so the leak wouldn’t get out of control.

“With a little luck that ought to solve your problem and keep things running more smoothly. I would get more RAM though, especially if you’re going to be running complex models like that on a regular basis.”

“Thank you, Feed. I appreciate the help” said Marcus politely. “I’d ask my brother to help, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.” He followed them to the entranceway and helped Cass with her coat. Outside the scooter was surrounded by a laser-painted red circle slowly pulsing clockwise around the perimeter of the bike. Looking up, Fede saw the black muzzle of something duct-taped to a bright yellow plastic Sony waldo. The thing had to have been designed for children, its joints encased in cheery pink plastic ducting.

“Cessus!” shouted Marcus into the doorway. The laser light blinked out. “I apologize for my roommate’s lack of manners. He’s deeply involved in something, I’m sure.” said Marcus. “You should be able to mount your bike now.”

They saddled up on the bike and waved goodbye to Marcus. This time Cass drove off slowly.

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