Utterly Mad

A few hours later, Felicia was giving the rundown on the situation as best she could over the din of the screamers below doing what they did best. It was very simple. The facility was damaged, and the damage was such that the primary systems regulating damage detection were offline. When the security system had been tripped, the secondary kicked in. The simple AI assumed that the facility was under attack and wouldn't let anyone get close until the damage was fixed.

"It's all back asswards." Felicia explained, "How the egg heads who designed this place expected to get people in here to fix it when it went wrong is a damn mystery."

"I suppose you could just walk through if you had the right clearance." George suggested. Felicia nodded, that was possible but if their we're people who had the clearance, they weren't here now. Catnip was beginning to get a headache from all the shrieking rising up from below and asked to be excused.

"Yeah, I think we could all do with a breather. We've got two workers watching that mess with those fancy noise canceling headphones on, we should be fine to see about a break. Not like anyone is gonna stop us, eh?" Felicia yelled over the noise.

---

A little later, the specialists were standing in the large concrete flat that made up the "yard" of the howling tower complex. Large and ugly concrete planters stood arranged symmetrically along the main walkway. The flowers had long ago given way to weeds or run to riot, tendrils spilling over the sides of their confines and dying in the high dry air of the Pricetown heat. Or in this time of year, the cold. Being cold was better than splitting your skull on the sounds coming from the building behind them, but it was still not pleasant. L shivered, as did Catnip. Misling coats did little to deflect the chill, and Catnip's own somewhat thicker pelt had yet to grow back fully.

To fill the time and distract themselves, they fell to talking, and it seemed everyone went to the things they loved the most. Felicia discussed her husband, a man who had "survived marriage to 'lecia and the Cataclysm at the same time." George talked about, or rather lectured about, building techniques of the Roman era. Catnip listened with rapt attention and since it seemed she was the only one who really cared, it was to her most of the lecture was directed at. L talked about gambling, at first hesitantly and then with growing fervor. The topic surprised some of them until someone brought up how L would look in a gamblers getup. Leila talked about puzzles. Like L, she started slow and picked up the pace. Before the cataclysm, the pharmacist had been possessed of a vast collection of the things. Anything from four peices to forty thousand. Flat or 3D. Some of them she'd even made herself with magazine cutouts  glued to thin peices of sheet wood. Catnip of course, talked of the farm and her "family," then she took a turn none expected, but should have. Machines. Not robots, but machines. Cars, motors, mechanisms, engineering. Gas and smoke and steam. Internal combustion, radiation, and electrical theory. She spoke on the subject very matter of fact you, and with words and phrases that seemed to have both nothing and everything to do with her interests. Like an inexperienced zealot giving a sermon. More people joined in here there, those trapped with them. For a little while, people forgot the trouble of the day.

Catnip moved away from the group, not liking the close confines of the small crowd. On the outskirts of the group, she found Tenny fiddling with some kind of bracelet.