E.N.D.A.Y.S. by Lee Isserow Page A

fascination.
    “That it?” Hayes asked, knocking back another glug of whisky
    “Hopefully.”
    “Great. How long's this gonna take?” he asked.
    “However long your nanotechnology takes to work out what we're trying to do... assuming they're actually programmed to...” he trailed off as his eyes slowly panned to movement in his periphery. The blood left on the scalpel was slowly crawling from the blade across the counter towards Hayes.
    “It does that.” Hayes said. “You get used to it...” he gestured his healing thumb towards the blood, and it sped towards him, crawling back inside his body. “Security mechanism.” he explained. “Decreases the risk of advanced tech being left in a mundy world if I start bleeding everywhere.”
    “Do you bleed 'everywhere' often?” Parry asked.
    “More often than I'd like...” Hayes replied, knocking back the whisky.
     
    They say patience is a virtue. Hayes had once noted that In 3281, patience is also a currency of sorts. The population waited indefinite periods of time for sustenance, breeding privileges, and would lie down as they sensed rain was to come.
    It should probably be mentioned that 3281 is the world in which the dominant species is the cow.
     
    Hayes however,  did not have the virtue of patience, and the professor bore the brunt of his boredom for over an hour, tapping at the magnets lying under his ring finger with his thumb in frustration until something finally happened.
    “Wait, something happened...” Hayes said.
    “Can you control the lens?”
    “I don't know...” Hayes said. “But I feel something, waves of energy pulsating around my fingers....”
    “Ahh, a side-effect of the neodymium.” the professor explained. “It often gives one magnetoreception.” he observed a blank expression on Hayes's face, and realised that he had to explain further. “The... Well, it's the ability to sense magnetic fields.”
    “Great. Real helpful skill.” Hayes sighed.
    “But that means your body is adapting to the magnets!” Parry said, ignoring the sarcasm. “And at a remarkable rate! Try swiping your thumb against your finger again, think of it like a touchpad.”
    “What the fuck is a touchpad?” Hayes asked, which led Parry to pull a laptop out from his office and demonstrate how a touchpad worked. “That's fucking idiotic.” said Hayes. “Can't you just think or gesture?”
    “Not with a degree of accuracy, at our current level of technology...” Parry murmured. He was beginning to get tired of being thought of as a Neanderthal.
    “Of course...” Hayes scoffed, with a roll of his eyes. He swiped along the magnets in his finger with the one in his thumb, and a menu in his lens became highlighted. “You're fucking kidding me...” he said.
    “Is it working?”
    “Yeah it's fucking working!” Hayes said, tapping his thumb against his finger, closing all the displays that were obscuring his view. “About fucking time!”
    “Congratulations are in order!” the professor said, reaching for the whisky, to discover the bottle was empty. He glared at Hayes.
    “Almost back to my normal damn self...” Hayes said, walking around the lab, catching sight of his reflection in a metal cabinet, his face almost completely healed. He began cycling through the menu in the lens and tried to get in touch with Kali. “Still no comms...” he said to himself, trying to work out how to attempt alternate channels of communication, swiping and tapping at his finger.
    He quickly gave up, distracted. The magnetic fields were stronger at the wall than they were at the workstation. He felt the air around him, as if somewhere nearby was the source of the pulses. He followed the signal around the outskirts of the room, trying to find its origin.
    “Everything ok?” the professor asked, shuffling over towards him.
    “Yeah...” said Hayes, rubbing his finger and thumb together. “Just trying to make sense of this...” alongside the magnetic fields he was