Malfunction

Dr. Jones finished typing up the incident report and transferred it to the company's off-world servers. It had been a long, arduous, wished-he-had-stayed-at-home kind of day.

It had already started off poorly when his assistant forgot the dosage of his caffeine infusion, leaving his eyes bloodshot and his fingers twitching for most of the day. Those damn bots hadn't had their context length upgraded in at least a decade, and it showed. You'd think the most prestigious lab in the corp would at least spare the expense to get the latest models for their researchers, but no, the funds needed to go towards "more important ventures" and "maintaining facility standards."

Then the power went out. So much for facility standards. Fumbling in the dark for the back-up power switch, he realized in horror that the new ECU's cryostasis systems would soon fail without electricity. As soon as the lights came back on, he raced to the opposite end of the facility to warn the staff, who hadn't been told about the frugality with which the system's pumps had been chosen. With frustrated looks, they let him into the secured area.

It wasn't a pretty sight. Coolant spurt from the locked-up pumps, covering the floor around the ECU in a slick blue coating. The fluid inside the unit had already melted, revealing the dark mass floating alone in the center of the tank. It looks like a little jellyfish, he thought, with dark tentacles on one end and thick bundle of cables on the other, jumbling around before connecting to a thousand different sockets in the machine.

Once the system was reset and the gummed-up coolant drained from the pumps, he spoke with one of the neurologists who had managed to make it to the facility on time. "Will there be any long-term issues witht the project?" he asked, as the workers pumped gallons of new coolant into the systems. "We'll have to wait and see, Jones. You know this is a first-time experiment, we've never done anything like this before. Doubtless, the spontaneous temperature gradient won't be good for neuronal density. Perhaps we could schedule a scan to check for any microcrystal formation sites in the-"

WHIRRRR. The simultaneous roar of the refrigeration fans and coolant pumps coming back to life deafened all conversation, thankfully. Jones couldn't handle any more of the scientist's technobabble. He had his doctorate, sure, but when the theorists and specialists started explaining their models and simulations, his mind went numb. It's very easy to use many words, not so to use few, as his mother used to say to him on those long walks where he would talk on and on about whatever came to his mind at moment. With a slight shudder, Jones surpressed that memory and returned his focus to the problem at hand.

Gradually, the frantic movements of the staff around him slowed, and soon enough he was left alone in the room, apart from some nobodies in the corner monitoring the coolant systems. Jones wandered around the room, procrastinating as much as possible to avoid typing out that inevitable incident report that awaited him back in his office. He stopped as close to the front of the ECU as the many barriers around it would allow, and sat down on the cold concrete floor. He looked up and admired the hunk of technology the corp had gambled trillions on.

"It's the future," investors were told at every meeting, every prospectus. "Life extension, hyperintelligence, easy colonization, right at your fingertips!" In a way, Jones supposed, the entire planet's economy was being bet on this, on the company, on his team, on him, like those old Gen Betas with their life savings placed in prediction stations. He hoped they were betting right.

He watched as the crystals of frost spread from the edges of the ECU to the center, obscuring the delicate project hidden within. It's a very wrinkly jellyfish, he thought with a little half-laugh, as he returned to his office.