Capítulo 21: CHAPTER 21 - HOOK TAKES PRIYA AND CREW TO RIKIRAL COMPUTER

Not long afterwards the dry, languid, anything-but-eccentric Mr. Hook returned with a clique of university staff and academics. "Come with us, I have something to show you" he enjoined, and they hastened down a series of corridors into the depths of the main building, until it terminated in a boiler room, the type where only bad things happen to good people. Removing a key-card from his suit-pocket, the geriatric scooted over to a little door encroached upon by thick pipes and swiped it on a dusty pad. "Here is something you'll see which is our best kept secret" Hook promised, gesturing for them to follow. Nadine, Felicia and Dominique shrugged their shoulders. Apparently, she was not the only one. A few at a time to squeeze through, they came to an elevator big enough to fit a horse. Lurching, the box creaked its way into the hidden underbelly of the earth. "Unbelievable" Priya gasped as they were all released into wider space, ogling like drunken peasants at a laboratory large enough to contain an auditorium. But it was not that which made her devolve into a gigging dunderhead. "Here is where we kept after liberating it in the war. Ladies and gentlemen … what you have before you is a Rikiral computer used to oversee an entire Forward-Marker, the most fearsome class of warship the navy faced. After the ship was dissected, it was left here by the military authority for safekeeping. They had myriad futile attempts at probing its design … and all were met with disappointment" Hook explained, replaying history in their minds. He led her up to one of its segments containing rows of compartments, "Priya, perhaps with your … skills, you can bring it out of dormancy". She leaned against the bulky thing, itself like a boiler room folded into origami, and looked to the right across a series of glass vessels, some of them containing hovering exclamation marks, others question marks, "Yes, but I may need some additional financing for this project, if you could inform the panel, and have them pardon my recent shortcoming".