Andrew Mackay - Infinity Claws

“I think you broke my arm.”

“That’s okay, you know how to replace a damaged limb, don’t you?,” Jaycee pushed Baldron in the chest with his huge fist. “Just remember what I said. No funny business.”

“Okay, okay,” Baldron squirmed. “I’d have to be out of my mind picking a fight with you.”

“That’s the second thing you’ve got right. Never forget it,” Jaycee stormed away from the armory. “I’ll show you the rest of the arsenal later. Let’s get you strapped up and see how good your aim is.”

Jaycee stormed out of the room, leaving a petrified Baldron quaking himself in his shoes. He looked down at his hand, thankful that Jaycee hadn’t seen him swipe a red dumb bomb from the cabinet.

He tucked it in his inner-suit pocket and walked after him.

“Jelly? Can you hear me?”

It was pitch dark. All the cat could hear was Wool’s voice.

A sound of whirring emitted from her claws. Something felt weird.

“Jelly, sweetie? Open your eyes.”

A thin sliver of light crept into her retinas, revealing a pair of blurred paws in front of her face.

“Meow.”

The claws were not a dull gray as she’d expected. Now, they were a special kind of silver. She pulled her claws in and back out.

An additional side-claw had been clamped to both paws. She moved the tendons back and forth on all four cuticles. A mechanical whirring occurred with each swift action.

Wool peered into view and smiled. “How are you feeling?”

Jelly rolled onto her side and caught sight of her inner-skin suit. The name J. Anderson was written on the side.

A specially-designed scratch post at the foot of her surgery bed.

“Meow,” Jelly tried to take off her new claws. She needed to use the set on her other paw to do it, but it was no use. After giving up, she made her way to the wiry scratch post and dug her shiny new claws right in, stretching them away from her paw.

It felt better.

But those dastardly metallic and sharp additions confused her.

“Opposable thumbs,” Wool said, rubbing her finger underneath them. She turned the other way to grab something from the surgery bench.

Jelly looked up and managed to make her “thumbs’ move, but didn’t have a clue what to do with them, or how to use them.

Wool produced a squishy rubber ball in her hand. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger. “See?”

“Meow,” Jelly tilted her head and observed Wool squeezing the ball in her hand.

“Catch,” Wool dropped the ball on the bed. Jelly went for it. Instead of catching it in her paw, she accidentally batted it away.

“No, no,” Wool caught it as it rolled off the edge of the bench. “Try again. Here…”

Wool rolled the ball gently toward Jelly. She pressed her stomach to the surface of the bed and eyed it with intent.

Waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Then, she launched forward and grabbed the ball with both paws, the thumb cuticles going largely to waste.

The pads on her paws kept the ball in place as Jelly sniffed around, ensuring it wouldn’t strike back.

“This is going to take some time to get used to, isn’t it?”

“Meow,” Jelly opened her mouth and sunk her fangs into the ball, playing with it.

Katz’s voice appeared in Wool’s ear. “Wool, are we ready, yet?”

“Yes,” she held her finger to her ear, “She’s awake and relatively sedentary.”

“Glad to hear it. Can we proceed?”

“I think so,” Wool held out her hand for the ball. Jelly played with it, reticent to let it go so soon. “Give me the ball, Jelly.”

The cat whined and covered it with her paw. She wasn’t done with it just yet.

“Jelly, don’t make me ask twice.”

“Wool?” Katz asked, “What are you doing? Are you talking to Anderson?”

“I’m waiting for her to stop playing the fool,” Wool shot Jelly a stern look and clicked her fingers. “Now, please.”

“Meow,” Jelly scanned the ball and decided to let it go. Quite by accident, she clutched the ball using her new thumbs and rolled it back to Wool.

“Good girl,” Wool pocketed it and held out her arms, beckoning Jelly into them. “Let’s go and do some work.”

Pure Genius is a super-computer. Invented by USARIC, it became a revolutionary communication device which changed the course of the future and, in some cases, even the past.

Shortly before his death, Pascal D’Souza worked with USARIC to develop a logical system of interpretation. The result was Pure Genius, a room that harnessed every emotion, physicality and attribute of the being in question.

First to use Pure Genius was D’souza himself. He and his team invented the Genius Drive that harnessed one of the twenty-first century’s greatest findings – The Speed of Thought – a speed several times faster than the commonly regarded Speed of Light .

The Speed of Thought ’s speed is approximately 788,501,118 miles per second.

Until October of 2110, humans believed that nothing could travel faster than light. Saturn Cry changed all this when it was decoded by D’Souza. Light, being a physical utility was limited because of its tangibility. The first clue that “things’ could travel faster than the speed of light was a concept developed by USARIC.

To understand this concept better, it is useful to conduct the following experiment:

1: Imagine a picture of a black cat. Do you see it?

2: The image you thought of took approximately 0.2478 seconds to appear, which is ten times faster than the speed of light.

3: The ability to transmit said image to another location is just as fast.

The intangible – electronic messages, for example – and hyper-connectivity with the Outernet were sent at a rate way faster than 186, 282 miles per hour; the approximate speed of light. The ability to transmit data through space and time became the exemplar for The Speed of Thought.

The discovery was the backbone of Pure Genius during its conception. It devised the concept of travel along ripples through the fabric of space and time. A wholly remarkable discovery, and one that would set a precedent for scientific discovery hence.

It was little surprise that USARIC, under the guidance of D’Souza, named this facility Pure Genius .

Not only did it change space exploration, it also improved commercial flights and communication in general. The International Moon Station was able to detect Saturn Cry because of it…

Wool carried Jelly into Pure Genius. A cylinder-shaped room with several fluorescent tiles lit up on the floor, cylindrical wall and ceiling.

Apart from an almost indecipherable low-emission hum, the place was immaculate and completely devoid of sound.

In truth, it was a little eerie.

Wool stood in the middle and looked around, trying to figure out where the door she had walked through was. The tiles seemed to blend into each other. It was quite typical for a person entering Pure Genius to become quickly disoriented.

The chilling effect of the light and pure silence disturbed Jelly. It was possibly the first time either she, or Wool, had been in such a place of sheer tranquility.