Content/GlitchInTime

A Glitch in Time

Glitch held her breath as she soldered the final wire into place on the circuit module. The ozone like smell of burnt out electronics and burnt rosin filled the communal area of the base. Helen had finally let the girl down after almost half an hour of persuasion to not send the data out. Instead, Glitch's short attention was instead turned towards the project in front of her. She took a quick look at the book next to her before grabbing the LCR meter on the table. With a few probes, she was certain that everything was in perfect working order.

And she was certain that this system would work very nicely for helping the more goody-goody members of the group. A part of Glitch didn't care about fighting crime. And it seemed that more than a few members of the group wanted to go after criminals the size of the Loch Ness Monster with the superpower equivalent of a child's fishing pole. Instead, they should have been setting their sights lower. Like with small gangs, theft, murder. And this set up would allow them some real time feeds from within the city. All she needed to do now was to hook up a few transmitters at strategic points around the city connected to the camera and phone systems. It didn't matter that it was illegal. Only the best of the best would actually be able to trace the signal to any meaningful location. And it didn't hurt that the transmitters would be modified routers from the 90's.

All that was needed was a special little something only the short circuited brain of Glitch could provide. Plugging in the last few circuit boards into her computer that was plugged into the TV. One last bit was required. She grabbed the audio cable and shoved the loose end into the back of her skull. She gave a quick shudder as a spark of electricity made her way through her brain, Karen walking in as she did. "What the fuck?!" she exclaimed as Glitch went about her way. "Why the hell did you do that?" She asked out of morbid curiosity.

Glitch turned and looked at Retrospect and shrugged, the stereo cable hanging from beneath her hair. "It-it-its a c-c-control c-c-cable..." she said calmly. "Simple w-w-way to send s-s-s-signals." Glitch wasn't talkin about an outright electrical signal, but simply a method to transmit a mental pulse into the  device. She pulled her hair up and showed Karen the small battery pack device sticking out of her implants. The electrodes that wrapped around her brain affected her speech, that was certain. But the scientists who had implanted them had a purpose. They had wanted Glitch to be able to learn by computer input. Glitch was the lucky one of all the children that had been raised at that base. By shear happenstance, the Chinese genius had actually experienced an intelligence boost from the event, the network of wires in her skull acting as artificial neurons. She wouldn't recieve, just send. And allow her to shut the system off in case of catastrophic failure. And it was quicker than trying to type in Ctrl-Alt-Del. "Read-d-dy?" she asked the other woman as she flipped the on switch and began to fiddle with the controls.

The screen flickered briefly as Glitch calibrated the system. However, her preparations were interrupted by a massive sneeze behind her, causing the normally unfazed young woman to jump, sending out a pulse of power into the system, causing the screen to come to life. However, the image and audio was not a feed from the city, but something what appeared to be a documentary.

"Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed." came the fuzzy audio as the two looked on at the screen.

"The moon landing? Strange subject to bring up now..." said Karen as she watched the history on the screen.

"M-must be a w-w-w-wrong channel." she said as she flipped the channel.

"Good evening. Mt. St. Helens will never be the same again..."

"Mt. St. Helens news broadcast? Strange that you'd hit two documentaries."

"N-n-next channel." Glitch flipped the channel again.

''"That looks like a second plane!" ''

"9/11?" They said to each other as the two women stared into the others face. They returned their gaze back to the screen before they began to flip through the channels slightly quicker. Each new channel brought forth another broadcast out of the past. And the pattern quickly emerged. These were not documentaries, but live news and television broadcasts from the prior fifty years.

"Okay, this is just the weirdest thing I have seen in a while, and that's saying something given our recent history." Glitch just shrugged, caught in a moment of fascination at the broadcasts. She had created a time TV. Heaven forbid, she would try this again at some point. Maybe try and pick up some old telly programs form Beijing or Taipei. Deep inside her head, new gears were beginning to turn. Gears that the military trained brat had never thought of.