Sapphire Suit Chapter 6/15
TIGERS! and plot. What're the crystals doing when they're close together? We've got a few of them now.
Chapter 6: Ruby Suit
=====
I'll post the entire story here, chapter by chapter twice weekly, absolutely free!
If you prefer you can read all the books right now here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/146449
=====
Doctor Karl placed the Sapphire Suit at one end of the conference table in front of the military officers. He placed the Diamond Suit in the middle of the table in front of Doctor Ash and the new Ruby Suit at the other end of the long desk. “Mission was a success – we’ve changed the alignment of the third suit.” He sat at the end of the conference table.
“Well done… well done,” congratulated Doctor Ash. “Now we have to work out what you’ve changed it to!”
“Field trip to the zoo again?” asked Officer Wright. “Still wanna see Leon balanced on a ladder behind the elephants.”
“There’s no point,” said Doctor Chand. “Unless Doctor Karl has been keeping a secret elephant fetish from us, he’ll only be reactive with canines.”
“Oh, right,” agreed Doctor Karl. “None of us are likely able to trigger the Ruby Suit for any other species. So… what’s the plan?”
Doctor Chand spoke up. “We return all three suits to field duty. Corporations are lined up begging access to the Diamond Suit again and we can offer them the additional services of the Sapphire Suit. That’ll get the funds flowing in again which will keep Head Office happy.”
“What about the Ruby Suit?” asked Officer Wright.
“That one we retain a bit more control over. We select deployments to more animal-focussed events,” suggested Doctor Chand. “We try to weight the odds of another conjunction of an encounter with an oestrous animal with someone who has an… inclination toward those animals. It’s not quite as random as it sounds – people who are attracted to animals tend toward animal-centric careers. Tucker, for example, runs a horse trekking business.”
The other scientists nodded along. “I guess that’s our best…”
“Wait…” interrupted Officer Wright. “Do you hear that? Like, a quiet ringing…” He moved his head around, turning, listening for the tone. “Everyone, shush for a minute.” He bent toward the clear crystal, listening intently. “Yeah, here. There’s a slight tone coming from this one. Hold on…” he stood and moved closer to the sapphire crystal, listening. “Yeah, this one too. Different tone though.”
Doctor Karl leaned forward. “Oh! Yeah I hear it too. I need a frequency-meter. Hold on…” he fumbled for his cellphone and held it near the ruby. “I have an app for that… Let’s see… 392 Hertz. Okay… diamond is 261.6 Hertz. And sapphire is… 329.6”
“Chord of C major,” declared Officer Wright. “Ah, I took music theory in school. Middle C on a piano is 261.626 Hertz, same as the diamond. The sapphire is E above Middle C and the ruby is G” he blushed and sat back down.
“No, Rob that’s really good!” Doctor Karl encouraged. “So, what, we have a musical chord?” He placed his hand on the diamond. Immediately the tones stopped until he removed his hand again. “All three crystals are interacting. Hold on…” He moved the sapphire closer to the centre of the table – nearer to the diamond. Everyone strained to hear but no tones could be heard. As soon as he placed the sapphire in its original position at the end of the table the low ringing resumed. “Distance dependant? What do we have – about a metre between each of the stones.”
“Try swapping the position of the diamond and sapphire,” suggested Doctor Ash. He lifted the diamond and passed it down the table then placed the sapphire where the diamond had been. No tones could be heard. “Okay, for completeness swap the ruby to the centre as well.” No sound could be heard with the ruby at the middle of the table. “And if we reverse the order – Ruby in front of the officers, diamond in the middle, and sapphire in front of Doctor Karl’s seat?” The faint harmonic chord resumed. “Fascinating! Absolutely fascinating!” He returned to his seat by the diamond.
“What does it mean?” asked Officer Wright.
“I have absolutely no idea,” admitted Doctor Ash. “But we’ve just demonstrated the gems are sharing a resonance.”
“Could they be ‘aware’ of their position relative to the others?” asked Doctor Chand.
“Possibly… possibly. It could be as simple as a mechanical property – some energetic resonance that is just happening to sit on particular troughs or peaks of a wave,” Doctor Ash speculated. “We need to set this up in the main laboratory and see if it’s just audio, or if we’ve missed something in the electromagnetic spectra.”
Subsequent days of testing provided a new discovery – when the crystals were producing the musical chord they also glowed faintly. Blue light was emitted from the sapphire and red from the ruby. Soft white light illuminated the diamond between. When the audible tones stopped the lights also faded away. Otherwise the crystals responded to probing and testing exactly as they had in the past. If the crystals were aligned in order of sapphire, diamond, then ruby with one metre of spacing a soft musical chord was heard and a faint glow could be seen if the laboratory was darkened. Any other ordering or spacing produced no tones or lighting effects.
“Just another weird unknown,” Doctor Ash declared in frustration.
“Whoever made the suits must know quite a bit about human physiology,” offered Doctor Karl. “The chord of C Major is very specific to humans, our aesthetic tastes. It matches our cultural definition of what particular audio frequencies are used to represent the ‘middle’ of our musical range. And the lights are in the human visible spectrum. They’re not emitting infra-red or ultraviolet which some other animals can see. Or any other electromagnetic frequencies as far as we can measure. So the little green men who own these artefacts know quite a bit about it.”
Doctor Ash disagreed, “That’s not necessarily true. It could be a more mechanical response from the artefacts – they could be responding to what we like because we like it. In mating encounters the suits have amplified the wearer’s natural inclinations and responded to behaviour from the animals. That could be a feedback mechanism of the suit which is otherwise ‘dumb’. Your memory-foam pillow doesn’t know anything about you yet conforms exactly to your head. That’s a purely mechanical response.”
* * *
The diamond and sapphire suits were deployed to field work – military bosses were very happy to have two working units to use for emergency situations. Doctor Chand was permitted to deploy the Ruby Suit as she saw fit in the hope of creating additional suits.
Six months later Doctor Chand called the other scientists and the officers back to the Technical Institute for a meeting. On the conference room desk lay two faceted ruby spheroids.
The woman was unable to suppress her excitement as she said, “We’ve had another successful suit duplication. Would you believe it was with a tiger?”
“What, seriously?” exclaimed Doctor Karl. “How did you engineer that?”
“I loaned the Ruby Suit to the zoological park for a few months. I told them they have free use – they were welcome to use the suit in any circumstance they liked. Staff were using it for everything from helping unclog the outlet on the seal enclosure to shovelling out the elephants to avoid the smell. An impenetrable super-suit is very handy to keep around dangerous animals if you don’t mind being bald afterwards.”
“But… tigers?” prompted Doctor Karl.
“So the zoological park heavily utilizes student and volunteer workers. A university student used the Ruby Suit to do evening work in one of the ape enclosures. Not especially dangerous but it saved having to clear out the tree-top exhibit before working. Next morning Toffee, one of the tigresses, is acting possessive of a toy which turned out to be a red crystal sphere. When senior staff realized they had a second Ruby Suit on the premises they contacted us and here’s the result!” beamed Doctor Chand.
“The student – were they harmed?” asked the young officer. “Surely after they shagged Toffee they ended up naked in a cage with a tigress?”
“That’s… actually a terrifying prospect,” mused Doctor Chand. “You can ask him yourself. The student – a Mister Blake – is in Interview Room 3. He is extremely upset and very uncooperative. I was hoping you and Doctor Karl would go and talk to the lad. Convince him he’s not going to be arrested, the zoological park isn’t suing him, the tigress is perfectly fine, and that he’s actually performed a great service for science.”
“Sure. Rob, let’s head there immediately.” agreed Doctor Karl.
In the small interview room a young bald man sat alone at a desk. As soon as the scientist and officer walked in the youth burst into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I swear I’ve never messed around with the animals before. I’ll never do it again. I’m sorry…” he repeated between loud sobs.
Officer Wright put a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “Hey there… it’s okay. We’ve both been through the same thing with the suits. We understand exactly what you’ve gone through,” he reassured the crying youth. “My name’s Rob. This is my boyfriend, Leon. Would you believe we both shagged dogs while wearing the suit?”
“Whuh? Really?” the young man wiped his nose on his sleeve before Doctor Karl could pass a box of tissues to him. “Dogs?”
Doctor Karl nodded. “Yep. I was the first person to discover the suit makes people want to screw an animal. And would you believe the other scientists were very enthusiastic about it? More importantly you’ve actually helped the Diamond Suit project immensely.” He and Officer Wright sat in chairs opposite the distressed man. “Do I have to call you Mister Blake, or do you have a first name? Do you mind me asking your age?”
“Umm, James. James Blake. I turned 18 last month,” he said. “Wait… are you the guy who toured the zoo a couple of years ago. I heard from another staff member that some science guy almost got eaten by the wild dogs.”
“Yeah, that was me,” grinned Doctor Karl. “I was wearing the Diamond Suit and we were trying to see if the female wild dogs would be amenable to me having sex with them. They almost were – I think the suit and me weren’t quite compatible with them so everything was called off.”
“Holy shit! So, uh, I’m not going to jail?” he asked.
“Ha! Hell no! If anything you’ll get a medal. Not everyone shags a tigress and gets to tell the tale,” joked the young officer.
“Geeze. I didn’t mean to… it just sort of… happened.” The young man threatened to start crying again.
“Hey… hey… it really is fine,” Doctor Karl reassured the man. “We know the suit messes with your head – I wouldn’t have ever had sex with the dog if it weren’t for the suit. I didn’t get into trouble, and you aren’t either. When this interview is over you can walk out the door – we’ll even call you a taxi home. The zoo is happy to have you working back there again. Toffee is absolutely fine. No harm done.”
“Oh, she’s okay? I’m so glad she isn’t hurt or anything.” The young man’s expression softened when he talked about the tigress.
“You really care deeply about her, right?” said Doctor Karl and the young man nodded enthusiastically. “Can you walk us through exactly what happened two nights ago. Please, be as detailed as you can – trust me there’s nothing you can say that will shock or disgust us. Remember, we’ve been through a very similar experience with the suit and dogs so saying your penis was in tiger vagina isn’t going to be surprising or objectionable to us.”