His Stepping Stone, Their Entrance.

Percival rose his finger and approached a desk that sat on one of the walls, he pulled out a drawer that lined the front, inside it revealed was a keyboard. Percival pushed the power button that was located on the keyboard, a couple of lights flickered from what seemed to be a lamp on the top of the desk before it projected a computer screen (We are in the future after all).

"If you are looking for something portable then we will pick something up tomorrow when we get you a phone." he said as then sipped the rest of the scotch from the glass he carried inside from the limousine. Percival walked after the room and placed his hand on Bliss's shoulder "Now, get some sleep, come to me tomorrow and we will get the things you need, even the things you just plain want." Percival gave he a friendly smile. Percival removed his hand from her shoulder and began to walk away before stopping "Feel free to come and go as you please, if I ever need you for anything.....I'll find you." he left the room and made a right to go to his room.

Bliss laid back on the bed and put her hands under the pillow to support her head. The room gave her the impression of a soft soul. A delicate intelligence that looked lost in today's age perched along the walls. The wardrobe would fit fine, the communications access would suffice, and the bed met her standards. All that she needed now was a private study for herself. She went to the laptop and opened up a system of files and then set a failsafe for the network to keep them safe. She began rattling off several thoughts that came to her head during the conversation, and more importantly the silence, between her and the others that day. She began to type about rectifying human consciousness and the decay of the chemicals that contained the consciousness with a machine that would transfer it to a cold storage unit. She needed to get the meager make up of files to someone who would know what to do, no matter how much she despised helping him. She closed the files and enacted the failsafe that would erase the documents if accessed by anyone other than her. If they were erased it would hardly bother her, half of memory rested merely in writing something down. She sat back on the bed and concentrated on what she just compiled.

She rested for several minutes before rising to her feet. She walked through the hall to Percival's study. She knocked on the framework of the door and then peaked her head into the room to try and find Percival.

The room was fairly dark even the wall lights in his room were off. Further inspection would reveal two office doors both open, and a small light peeking into his room, his desk was visible from the entrance to his room. Percival looked up from his desk, his pencil still resting on the paper beneath him, blueprints and schematics were strewn across his desk, plans and schemes coupled with each of them. Percival put his pencil down and rubbed the bridge of his nose it wasn't until he stopped focusing on the paper did his head begin to ache for a bit. "Yes?" he asked her in a calm polite voice. As Percival waited for Bliss to speak he gathered the papers together in a neat stack and set them aside for now.

"I'd like to take that tour now." Bliss spoke in a rather endearing voice, for once. "We can skip most of the rooms that aren't heavily ventilated and don't have access to excessive power usage. Also, I'm going to need a particle detector and two symmetrical tube with identical golden or platinum isolation within them." He did say he would help her with whatever she wanted. She planned on putting that to the test.

Percival stood up and grabbed his papers, sliding them into a drawer. "Alright follow me." he said to answer her first question. Percival nodded in agreement to her second request. "I will tell you what." he said as he walked up to Bliss. "At the end of the tour, I have a special room to show you, you can tell me all your needs there." Percival placed one of his arms around Bliss' shoulder to lead her out of the room. "Better yet, the rest of my house probably doesn't interest you." he said as he made a sharp right to the wall of his bedroom. On the wall was a keypad, Percival's fingers tapped the buttons with great speed, far too fast for the human eye to see. Percival leaned over and whispered "8167723". The wall moved back as hydraulics hissed, the wall moved to the side and a long metal staircase leading down was revealed. Percival lead Bliss down the stairs.

"Hurry. The militia's on their way here!" Gregor stole into the saloon behind Gunslinger, greeted by the smell of a strong alcohol. A smile crept across his face. It had been days since his last drink and Gregor now intended to make up for it. Following Gunslinger down to the basement, Gregor popped the cork from one of the barrels and take a nice long draw of the aged whiskey. He placed the cork back in the barrel and picked it and another barrel up to make his way back to the helicopter to start the rotors and wait for Gunslinger.

Bliss accepted the arm around her shoulder and took the step with him. "A hidden basement level. That sounds more like a housing design I would expect here." She shadowed Percival down the stairwell. Percival held onto her hand and lead her down into the dark.

Upon reaching the bottom of the staircase a bright light hit the two of them in the face, quite a contrast from the dimly lit upstairs. "I can understand your mind, constantly racing for new information. I saw it in your eyes when they first caught mine, it reminded me of looking into a mirror." Percival was speaking in a full tone, as he kept hold of Bliss's hand. "This is where I go to quell my mind's incessant need for new information, for new plans, new designs, new...." Percival stopped there and looked at Bliss again his eyes flaring up with silver cosmic energy. "Cures." he spoke a little quieter now, Malady was the only one Percival ever spoke to about this place and about it's purpose. The room was completely white, machines hummed and containers pumped, it was Percival's personal laboratory. "You can find anything you need down here, and if you are missing something, go there and order it." he said as he pointed to a console on the wall.

The sight was truly marvelous the lab was easily the size of the house that it sat under, "I am a lenient man Bliss, but I do have one rule down here." Percival said as he moved to be in front and facing her. "I gave you the access code and you are welcome to use this place to your heart's desire, but you must never ask about the research I do there, or enter that part of the lab." Percival pointed to a small door to his right, the door was completely metal and had a turn dial knob at it's center. "Two people know what goes on behind that door, and I am one of them." Percival smiled a bit "Normally I wouldn't even mention it, but as I said before your eyes remind me of mine, and I know what I would do if I saw a unknown door in a science lab."

Bliss peered at the door and then back to Percival giving him a nod. She walked through the lab and stepped over to an empty table. Spare parts lined the walls in prefect order; base chemicals looked plentiful in the lab. She grabbed two siphoning hoses and poured water into a vat. She scavenged through an emergency supply pack and grabbed a lantern battery. Copper wire made a good extracting reagent for what she needed. She dropped the battery into the water and put the ends of the wire over two glass beakers.

With that part complete, she stepped to the table and built a framework of what her device would look like with the tubes she needed. All she really needed was that photon device. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a circuitry board. Not what she was looking for, but maybe she could take it in a new direction. Bliss screwed the tubes together with a power drill and tightened it into a vacuum seal. The circuit board now sat where she wanted to put the photon relay. Decay is Decay She thought. She needed some sort of connection to feed into the device that could subject itself to particle decay. The device looked good, but now she needed action for the device.

Gregor wrote:"Hurry. The militia's on their way here!" Gregor stole into the saloon behind Gunslinger, greeted by the smell of a strong alcohol. A smile crept across his face. It had been days since his last drink and Gregor now intended to make up for it. Following Gunslinger down to the basement, Gregor popped the cork from one of the barrels and take a nice long draw of the aged whiskey. He placed the cork back in the barrel and picked it and another barrel up to make his way back to the helicopter to start the rotors and wait for Gunslinger.

Gunslinger was not far behind. He only grabbed a small light laptop and his guns compared to two full barrels. Gunslinger jumped in and took out his M4, And placed his laptop on the copilot's chair. Gunslinger took out his M4 and took shots at the nearest marine, making sure he only used one shot and a true shot to the head. Gunslinger could not take up the machine gun due to his bad arm, but he still needed some help relocating it. Once in the air, gunslinger would take a seat in the copilot's chair.

The rotors spun quickly, spinning the propellers, chopping the air, and kicking up dust. Gregor was buzzed now but he got his most brilliant ideas this way. "I suggest you buckle up." With a quick flick of the conrols the copter made a complete 180 in less than a second. He took off, the nose of the helicopter only mere feet above the ground, creating such a large cloud of dust that it would be almost impossible for them not to escape the watchful eyes of the militia following close behind.

Gunslinger heard a shout from Gregor, "I suggest you buckle up." Gunslinger did not react in time to feel the chopper jerk violently to the right, knocking off his last shot, grabbed the door with his bad arm, yelling in pain. He held on for dear life. His bad arm was getting beat up bad. It made him realize how much he needed that arm. Gunslinger recovered quickly. Shutting the door and climbing into the copilot's seat. The laptop had fell on the ground, but luckily it did not fall out. He picked it up and put it into his lap. He sighed, rubbing his shoulder. "Thanks, Gregor." He said barely above a whisper.

Percival smiled at Bliss as she worked away, "Good luck." he said in a quiet voice. Percival made his way to the metal door and spun the knob. Percival looked back at Bliss to still see her working. Percival opened the door and stepped inside, he locked it behind him and prepared some medical supplies. Percival rolled up the sleeve to his dress shirt and inserted a needle into his his inner elbow he drawing some blood, it was red tinged with silver. The blood went through the needle and into a small vial, which Percival placed into a machine causing it to beep. A long strip of paper printed from the front of the machine which Perry grabbed to prevent it from trailing to the floor. Upon reading some of the results he shook his head and wrote down a few notes on a clipboard. Percival placed a small swab of cotton over the spot of skin where the needle entered and placed medical tape over it to keep it in place. Percival quietly left his secret room and made his way to the stairs to allow Bliss to work in privacy.

Bliss took a pair of goggles from the bench and put them on before walking back to the bench with the battery. She closed the beakers with a stopper and looked over to her device. Her assembly of the device in a primitive form was equivalent to an electrician building a closed circuit to develop a new way to move electricity through a more complicated structure. She moved the beakers over to the table and dropped one copper wire into the first beaker, which contained hydrogen protons, and the another wire into the beaker with hydrogen electrons. The circuit hummed as molecules moved towards the circuit.

Forcing a particle into decay would either need some reason to decay, or simply wait for the shelf life to send it into decay. She remembered her father telling her something about the four-momentum formula, but she couldn't remember norm required to get everything moving in an organized motion to prevent what Einstein referred to as 'Spooky Action at a Distant.' Percival might know something about what she needed to do, but she might just hold off on that. The details of the matter hardly mattered; she was unfamiliar with the physics of what she was doing. Intelligence barely mattered if you couldn't think with some imagination.

She stayed in the basement for sometime, scribbling non-sense about variables and half lives on the wall. Now she sat on a counter, laying her head in a corner with messy hair, staring at the machine. She made no real progress on the device, but did use up all the hydrogen she collected. Good thing it was the most abundant element on the planet.

She walked to the board and looked over the formulas. She never majored in physics, but she knew coding, binary, and matrixes. She cooked up another batch of battery generated hydrogen molecules and was ready to give it one more try before going to bed.

(Fade away to the next morning)

Percival was sitting in his office once more, he wore a pair of slacks and a dress shirt only half buttoned, revealing a gray undershirt. Percival rose a cup of coffee to his lips and sipped it. Percival was scribbling on the same notes from last night, he hadn't seen Bliss since last night in the lab, but he assumed she had spent the majority of the night down there. Percival set his cup aside on a coaster to prevent any marks getting on his wooden desk.