equipment checklist for that area and tried to find any item that matched its description and location. He found none and so did an item inventory of that area. It took the system only twenty seconds to come back with a complete count of thirty-two hundred items. But – just as he had figured – the computer screen displayed: “WARNING! DISCREPANCY – THIRTEEN ADDITIONAL UNACCOUNTED FOR ITEMS FOUND! RED ALERT! NOTIFY ON ALL CHANNELS!”
He complied immediately pressing the notify-on-all-channels button, upon which an abundant number of alarms sounded throughout L-1-Con.
1:05:00-PM-12/24/2110
Bill Larantz had managed to stop the snake-like machine from carrying out its program instructions just as the two sharp brain electrodes entered the skin of his temples. However he had only stopped it temporarily and he was still locked down in place by its force field. He could feel the blood from his pierced temples slowly flowing down both sides of his face, but nevertheless, he went to work on getting the photon radiation gun completed. He was reasonably sure that if he had not already been detected, he would be very soon, as he had needed to amass too much nano-material in his local area in handling the snake machine.
He frantically worked to program the final components of the gun; it was the only hope he had to keep himself alive. He had not known that his newer capsule-prison-cell model was pre-equipped with psychiatric testing machinery and that was why he had been taken by surprise. He realized that he had become just a bit too cocky in his endeavor; that attitude had nearly cost him his life and escape. As mental images – via the many nano-signal-transmitters – came to him from the gun locale, he
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