The Spaces In Between

[Mina Ward]

The trip from England was pleasant...quiet. Which was a far cry from what the Los Angeles airport was. It was all noise, noise, noise. The moment the plane had touched down and the Captain had given the all-clear and everyone pulled out their cellphones, Mina felt nauseated. Overloaded with information. A headache was coming on and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

The rest of Los Angeles wasn't any different. And even though Samantha, her guardian, had continued to try and give her the most comforting smiles and offers to help that were far overstated (who gives a 13 year old vicodin?), there wasn't really anything she could do to stop Mina from regretting leaving the calm peace of Wentworth. It wasn't Samantha's fault though, although she had been charged with keeping watch over the girl, the woman wasn't her mother and really had no sway over the girl. A fact they both were keenly aware of. No, she was there to simply keep her safe. Which for the most part was an easy task.

But the girl had seen her purpose. Heard it over a thousand different streams and when the press release had ended, Mina had emerged from her bedroom full of determination. Her care-taker had stood there, dumbfounded, attempting to avert her eyes from the chaos of wires and monitors that was the small one's room. She could never understand.

The taxi came to a stop just outside the building and Samantha was left behind to gather whatever baggage she could as the girl practically sprinted from the car. Mina took a moment, only a small one, to stare up appraisingly at the sky scraper before staring down the door of Treadstone Industries, willing it to open but somehow afraid to make the final push.

[Emma Temple]

They were still running low on coffee. And it was all her fault. Oh, sure, Doctor Harriman was really nice about it. He didn't blame her for it; not out loud, or in his head. But she knew it was her fault. "Whatever you do, don't let me run out of coffee!" was what he had said. It was the only rule he'd ever established, and she'd gone and smashed it into smithereens.

Smithereens!

Clutching the ship-bought coffee carefully in her hand, and the marbled chocolate lump of delicious naughtiness that had insisted on being bought, she marched down the final stretch of sidewalk towards Treadstone Tower. Not entirely watching where she was going - having a face full of cake was a pretty good excuse for that, though - she almost ploughed into the young girl standing all touristy outside, which would have lead to an unfortunate hot coffee face incident.

Luckily, everything worked out just fine, and she came to a stop a good pace or two away. She turned, her gaze following the same path as the girl's towards the skyscraper above.

Her eyes glanced back. "Hello!" she offered warmly, "My name is Emma, I work here. Did you want to come in?"

[Mina Ward]

"Yes."It was a finite answer. 1. The cacophony in her head made it she couldn't really ration out much more. She had been told not to try and block things out, that it could have hazardous repercussions.
Mina slowly looked towards the one who had spoken to her, almost staring a wide-eyed blankness that refused to be overcome. Thankfully though, there was Samantha.

The care-taker had settled on letting the bags sit on the side of the curb for now and let out a deep sigh and strode quickly to take her place behind the girl, placing her hands protectively on her shoulders. She was the very picture of properness with her dirty blond hair pinned back in a tight bun, her outfit modest and yet feminine. In Mina's mind she was simply one thing: Dull. "Sorry about that, I'm afraid everything has been a bit overwhelming for her. We're here to see Doctor..." Samantha paused for a moment before continuing "Harriman I think it is. He's not expecting us, I'm afraid."

[Emma Temple]

Emma mustered a smile, though it wasn't as easy as it normally was. Most people broadcasted thoughts by accident, and though she tried she couldn't always block them out. It was like trying not to hear what someone was shouting: it didn't always work.

This girl was strange, however. Her mind seemed to broadcast noise; something blurry and confusing that Emma couldn't decipher. She wondered if this was what it felt like to read the mind of another psychic - she had never met one before.

Regardless, she was bound to find out an answer soon.

"Lucky for you," Emma said in a conspiratorial whisper. "Doctor Harriman's lab is where I work. I'm pretty sure he'll be okay with us just wandering in. He doesn't really like appointments anyway."

[Mina Ward]

"Wonderful." Samantha responded before Mina could and the girl looked up at her guardian with a small frown. She was just beginning to make sense of the world again and the woman wasn't letting her fully adjust. You had to speak to do that, to pull yourself from the space and back to the waking.

"I..." She began, slowly, cringing as if wracking her brain for each syllable. "I would... like that." Mina attempted to smile hopefully but it was still clouded. She had done everything she could to be brought to this place and now that she was here... uncertainty. It wasn't a feeling she was used to. Not since everything had started.

[Emma Temple]

This was not the job she'd expected to find herself in when Treadstone Industries - Treadstone Industries! - had accepted her application. Fresh from MIT, she'd expected to find herself at a computer terminal pushing the buttons that let someone else's experiments make them famous, or scurrying around setting up equipment for scientists too important to do the legwork herself. Instead, the emphasis seemed to be on the assistant part of lab assistant; and Doctor Harriman didn't really seem to know how to abuse someone in that role, so he merely treated her like an actual assistant. He let her help; let her participate; let her contribute -

She fought the urge to sigh. He was handsome, too. Such a shame that he spent so much time thinking about someone else, really.

Emma's smile became warmer; the kind of easy smile that you couldn't fake, of someone who generally thought that life was great and the world was a wonderful place to live.

"Come on then," she said gently, holding out a hand towards Mina. "Lets go find him."

She hesitated for a moment, glancing back at the young girl's guardian; but her question was clearly directed at the young girl. "Would you like to come in on your own? Sometimes it's easier to talk about your abilities when you don't have any family with you." She reinforced her smile. "There's a very nice little café downstairs that she can wait in for you, if you'd like."

[Mina Ward]

The hesitation, strangely enough, came from the woman not the girl. As soon as the hand was offered, Mina took hold. Samantha looked taken aback from the simple action and fidgeted in the slightest, as if unsure of what she should do in response. Before the woman could begin any sort of verbal protest to Emma's suggestion, the girl glanced back at her.

The look that Mina gave to her care-taker went unseen by Emma, but it had the desired effect almost immediately. Samantha nodded her head in understanding and backed off. The girl turned her attention back to Emma and nodded herself. "Yes... I think... I think that would be best."

[Emma Temple]

The exchange between woman and girl was uncomfortable to watch; but sadly Emma had seen - and heard about - much worse since Applied Sciences had started receiving volunteers. She supposed she shouldn't blame the parents; after all, coming to terms with the fact that your children were different must have been hard for them. but she did blame them. She blamed them for their ignorance, for their faulty belief that their children were somehow sick or deformed, and for allowing themselves to love their children less as a result.

She mustered a reserved scowl for disapproval, but her sunny disposition refused to let it last for more than a few seconds. Without another word, Mina's hand held firmly in hers, she set off into the building with the little girl in tow.

They'd reached the elevator by the time Emma thought to speak again; to liberate a hand she'd balanced her cake atop Tom's coffee, and the balancing act was taking a lot of effort to maintain. The distraction had been enough to clear her head however, and she was considerably closer to her chirpy self.

She offered Mina another smile; smaller this time, but still very much genuine.

"So, where are you from, Mina?" she asked; the kind of question that one should really have left as-is, but her bubbly vocal chords made it impossible not to add more. "You sound like you're from England. Doctor Harriman is, too. Well, he's from Scotland, which is sort of England."

She hesitated, frowning at herself. "Don't you have a wall to keep the Scottish people out?"

[Mina Ward]

"Not anymore. Well, I think parts of it remain, but I've never seen it in person." Mina hoped it would be a good enough answer to not elicit too much more small talk. It wasn't something she was very good at, and although Emma seemed like a genuinely nice person... Mina felt it was best to not fully trust her. Not that she trusted a lot of others, even Samantha was only given so much respect in that realm.

Her speech was coming easier now, the rest of the world coming in to focus. It wasn't necessarily quieter in the building, but it seemed less chaotic. Though management might want to have a talk about what certain security officers were doing on their free time while on the premises.

"Have there been lots of others coming here?"

[Emma Temple]

"A few," Emma replied, as the elevator trundled upwards, floors ticking away on the screens as they climbed through the building.

"Not as many as we'd like," she admitted, "But probably about as many as we can handle at the moment."

The elevator seemed to bounce ever so slightly as it came to a halt, but Emma knew it was a sensory illusion; something to do with the change in momentum of the fluid in her ears. The doors slid effortlessly aside, and she led the young girl out into the floor beyond, down the box-lined corridors that heralded the approach to Tom Harriman's lab.

At least Emma's desk, in the small lobby just outside, was an oasis of tidiness and organisation; no matter how hard Doctor Harriman tried to clutter it up by 'accidentally' leaving coffee mugs there in the hopes that Emma's OCD would swoop them away and clean them.

Letting go of Mina's hand, she fumbled her security pass from where it clipped onto her blouse, and waved it in front of the proximity sensor. It wasn't quite as stylish as the way the Doctor did it: he wore his clipped to his belt, and had become quite proficient at a sort of jumping hip-bump that seemed to unlock the doors just fine.

It also gave Emma an excuse to look at his backside if he ever did it while she was at his desk; and that was definitely not something to complain about.

The lock flashed green and clunked, retreating away into the wall with a noise that always disappointed Tom by "not being as swooshy as I would have expected". She gestured with her free hand for Mina to walk through first, offering her yet another smile; a reassuring one, this time.

"After you. Doctor Harriman should be right inside."

[Mina Ward]

With her hands free, Mina had started to nervously tap one set of fingers against the back of her opposite hand in little patterns, keeping both close to her. She wasn't sure why she was nervous. Maybe it was just that she wasn't used to being out and about. The girl had practically been a shut-in for a decent amount of her life, cloistered and secluded.

She liked the pristine whiteness of the lab though.

"Okay..." As she stepped through the doors she cast a glance back at Emma and pulled her hand reluctantly away from the others and pointed at the coffee perched under the remains of the cake. "Do you want me to give that to him?"

[Emma Temple]

Completely misunderstanding the suggestion - for the first time in a long time, in fact; this inability to get a proper read on Mina's thoughts was extremely disconcerting - her eyes widened in horror. Why would Mina think that the half-eaten cake was for Tom? Should she share her chocolate bounty with him? Should she have bought him one?

Oh god, was she being a horrible person by depriving the poor, hard-working Doctor Harriman of sugary sustenance? Maybe if she went now, she could make it to Starbucks and back before he even noticed she'd come back at all --

Her eyes settled on the coffee cup. She fought the urge to blush.

"Yes," she said, willing the little girl to scurry away so she could collapse into an embarrassed heap. "That would be a big help, thank you."

[Mina Ward]

While Mina was hardly an expert on reading the emotions of others, there really was no mistaking what had just gone on with Emma. The girl couldn't help but be amused that she had easily vexed the woman so, even if it was only for an instant.

She wondered if the woman was the sort to suddenly flock to Facebook to post about the moment when she was left alone. Either way, she'd know soon enough.

As the coffee was handed to her, she took great care to not spill it. It did seem to have some sort of importance to it, after all. But much like her other senses, the smell of it was overwhelming. Just how could people drink this stuff??

"I'll just wait..." She looked back into the lab before pointing again at an empty char in front of one of the computers. "There. If that's okay."

[Emma Temple]

"I'm sure he won't be long," she assured, with an approving nod.

Her knee-jerk reflex kicked in, and she barely followed through on offering the child a coffee. She had done so with every volunteer thus far; that was exactly why she'd had to run errands to Starbucks, and while Doctor Harriman acted as if he was totally fine with that, she knew that he was secretly annoyed by the absense of coffee in his immediate vacinity.

More than that however, she wasn't entirely sure that the girl would want a coffee. She seemed to be clutching it with a certain amount of trepedation and discomfort. Perhaps she should offer tea instead?

A thought occured to her, prompting a faint frown.

"I never caught your name," she admitted, not entirely sure it had even been offered.

[Mina Ward]

"It's Mina."

The girl took a a seat in the chair, letting the coffee cup rest in her hands. The warmth coming from it felt strangely comforting. She looked around the lab, pausing to look at the computer in front of her again.

It seemed strange to be so close...and yet...so far away. Her attention turned on Emma once more, a small mischievous smile playing on her lips.

"You have a power too, don't you?"

[Emma Temple]

"I do," Emma answered carefully.

She wasn't ashamed of her ability; while to some it may have seemed like an invasion of privacy, there were plenty of ways to work out what someone was thinking without posessing any kind of mutant ability. Body language and facial tells could give away most of the things that she overheard. And there was no intent to her ability: no deliberate choice to invade privacy or rummage through people's secrets. She had come to terms with it, and felt no guilt about what she did.

Not everyone was as understanding and accomodating of her gift however, and she knew that revealing it was always a delicate process.

"Sometimes I can hear people's thoughts," she explained; normally the sometimes was there as a reassurance, but with Mina it was a little more true than she was used to. "I can't rummage around in their mind for secrets or anything invasive like that... it's more like I... overhear what they're saying inside their head."

She tried to smile, but the expression faltered a little. "Not with you though," she admitted. "You must have some sort of telepathic gift too?"

[Mina Ward]

"Something like that..."

Mina fidgeted slightly, trying to find words for something she hadn't really been forced to explain before. Other people had always done it for her as a way of introduction or even warning. Best to try though, she would have to probably be as specific as possible when speaking with the Doctor.

"Like you overhear people... I overhear..." She looked around a bit before settling back at the computer in front of her and pointed at it.

[Emma Temple]

It took a few moments for realisation to completely settle in; then Emma's expression went from confusion to wonderment in the blink of an eye.

"You hear computers?"

Suddenly what she had overheard made sense. She had often wondered what it would be like if someone with her gift listened to her mind: would they hear the same voices of other people's thoughts echoing around, as well as her own? Clearly that must have been the confusion that she'd heard when she'd touched the girl's mind; except instead of the sound of surface thoughts, she was hearing the processes of every Treastone computer within the little girl's range. As anyone with a laptop in Treadstone Tower knew, the building was a hive of wireless networks and bluetooth signals: if that was what Mina was tapping into, no wonder her thoughts had been so confusing; and no wonder she seemed so overwhelmed.

Emma offered her brightest smile yet. "That's incredible!" she enthused, practically beaming. Her curiousity wasn't quite prepared to let social graces have full run of her vocal chords, however. "Can you just hear them, or can you -" She searched for the best phrasing. "- talk to them as well?"

She gestured towards the computer. "Could you make it run a program or open a file, if you wanted to?"

[Mina Ward]

Mina nodded, finding that Emma's enthusiastic response was not only unexpected, but overwhelming to a degree. Excitable people made her nervous, always had. It seemed like her ability was nothing short of a blessing, it gave her a reason to be aloof and deal with people through an interface rather than in person. It was easier to process emoticons than the many nuances that someone's face showed.

"Well, not probably how you're thinking. It's kinda like... I could tell it to, but not as a user, but like a separate console giving the command across a network. If that makes sense."

She could just show Emma, it would make for a better explanation than words ever could... But Mina figured that sort of exertion would be best left for the Doctor. Not that getting there would be hard, but pulling back was always a new challenge and having to do it in short order, just to dive back in again would be less than ideal. The migraine that would trigger alone...no, best to wait.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom chose that precise moment to enter.

The moment had not been chosen because of what was going on inside the lab. Rather, it had been chosen because of what was currently going on inside his face. A sneeze that refused to be sneezed had been haunting him all day, pranking him by charging up to the back of his nostrils, only to retreat and collapse into a giggling heap somewhere between his ears. If the strange urban myths were true, and sneezing did fire off a noteworthy fraction of the same neurons as an orgasm, he supposed that must make his sneezelessness the nasal equivalent of blue balls.

What ever it was, it was decidedly unpleasant; but no amount of effort had managed to free it. Twenty minutes had just been waiting exploring the internet for possible ways to reliably induce sneezing; a scrap of paper clutched between his fingers listed the supplies he would need to experimentally determine which of them would prove successful.

Not even looking where he was going, he was half-way through explaining: "Emma, I need you to grab some things for me," when his gaze settled on the unexpected extra person occupying one of the swivel chairs at one of his many computers.

He didn't need many computers. He just felt more important for having several.

Drawing in a deep breath - partly to reset himself to conversation square one, and partly in the hopes of blasting the unsneezable sneeze back into his lungs - he fought the urge to use his powers to trigger the handle on the side of the chair, and lower it enough so that the girl's feet would meet the ground.

He made a mental note to do it with more malicious intent next time Jim Lewinski was around.

"Hello!" he started again, offering the girl his best please don't think I'm crazy smile. He glanced at Emma. "I didn't realise we had a visitor."

[Mina Ward]

He wasn't at all like what she figured. Every feed she had seen of the presentation had portrayed a man that was comfortable, confident, self-assure. This...Well, it wasn't what she figured.

Mina hadn't figured out if that was a good thing or not.

She raised a hand and wiggled her fingers in response, finding the unexpected having smashed all planed conversation in her mind to pieces. It was floating about in tiny little lime green and orange bits, she was just sure of it.

[Emma Temple]

"This is Mina," Emma explained, offering the young girl her most reassuring smile.

She spoke carefully, not saying too much in one go, hoping to prompt Mina into speaking up for herself: but she couldn't completely stop herself from leaping to her rescue. Emma was much older - well, okay, not much older - and even she had found her first visit to Treadstone a daunting experience. She couldn't even begin to imagine how that might be for such a young girl: especially one who had come so far, and had such a big secret resting on her shoulders.

"She's a technopath," she added, making herself sound as enthusiastic as it was possible to sound in three words.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom's face split into a grin. "Technopath, huh?"

While most mutant abilities were the stuff of science fiction, technopathy was straight out of the cool parts of scifi. People capable of plugging in and interacting psychically with machines? Such was the foundation of neural interfaces, memory transfers, and holographic replicas of Lexa Doig.

These were precisely the kind of scientific breakthroughs that Tom was hoping for: abilities that, if successfully reverse-engineered, could lead to whole new fields of science and industry.

He was getting ahead of himself though, same as always. He focused instead on the little girl in front of him: of the scientific challenge that the cosmos had presented.

"Do you think you could tell me a little bit more about what you can do, Mina?"

[Mina Ward]

"Telling doesn't work..." She felt exposed and looked the part perfectly.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, but Mina was beginning to understand just what the trips into the digital space did to her in the long run. They were good for her. The problem was the real world. It was too bright, too loud, too nonsense. "Autism" had been her cover story for so long it seemed to pop into her head as soon as she had to explain why everything was so difficult out here when in there was fluid, beautiful, crafted with elegance.

The spinning in the chair came to a stop as she grabbed on to the edge of a desk and took a deep breath. The girl's eyes shut tight as she brought a hand up and roughly rubbed at her forehead, no not exactly rubbed, more... dug the palm of her hand as hard as she could at the space just above her left eye. Another breath was taken and she dropped her hands to her sides and looked at the Doctor, trying to focus as best she could.

"Ok... so... Here goes. I used to have to wrap my wrists in bare wires connected to a port so that I could directly interface. It's like a computer is a more..." She struggled to find the word. "Primative version of my brain?"

Yes, that was right. She nodded in response to her own question. "And my body is just the housing. I leave it behind... mostly... when I network."

Another deep breath and she felt herself slipping. "But ever since the whole... wifi..thing... started... It's everywhere. I don't need the wires anymore and it never stops. I can talk to it, control it, become...part of it."

She fidgeted in the chair uncontrollably, her eyes darting from Doctor Harriman, to Emma, to her hands, to the computer, back to Harriman. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to word it."

[Tom Harriman]

It was like listening to someone try to work out what tense to use when talking about time travel or predestiny. The English language wasn't written to describe such things, and Mina earned Tom's heartfelt sympathy.

While Emma scurried away to retrieve what Mina had requested, Tom dropped himself into a crouch, bringing himself to eye level with the young girl. "My power is hard to explain, too," he admitted; talking to her not like a child who needed handling carefully, but like a kindred spirit in whom he was confiding. "When they cooked up the English language back home -" He jerked his head in an arbetrary direction, referencing - if Mina's accent was anything to go by - their mutual country of origin. "- they didn't think about things like this. They didn't think about people like us."

He flashed her a smile. "That's one of the cool things about being a scientist. You come upon the undescribable all the time: and then you get to make up the fancy technical terms, and the whole world has to start using them."

Emma returned swiftly, an assortment of USB cables and other periferal wiring bundled in her arms. Clutched between her fingers however was a small wifi device: one of those things that Tom couldn't call a dongle out loud while keeping a straight face.

"I didn't know if -" Emma started, her voice sounded a little hesitant and uncomfortable. It wasn't like her at all; Tom made a mental note to ask later if everything was okay.

Tom glanced at Mina, and gestured with his eyebrows towards the USB device. "Is that the kind of thing you need to connect up wirelessly?"

[Mina Ward]

She shook her head slowly, eying the wifi device as if it was a piece of rotten fruit. Oh, it would work. It'd made the signal all jumbled though, like listening to a recording of someone who was translating English from Swahili from a book that had been translated to Swahili from English.

But how to make that apparent...

"It works best with the wires if I'm hard connected directly. There's no gateway, no..." she fought for the word momentarily "...interference."

Her eyes crossed the device in his hand and she made the same face again. "With the advances in wireless... I just need.. me."

Mina frowned, still not sure if what she was saying what making sense. But really, it all fell back on what she knew had to be done.

"I'll show you." Defeatism laced the simple words. Not in that she was unable to get her point across without demonstration, just the knowledge of what was going to happen after.

Minda honestly hated the whole wireless thing. It was like being constantly connected in a half-state. Neither in one world or the next...it wasn't right... and it made the real world seem all the less solid every day.

The small girl took a deep breath and closed her eyes, letting in the sounds that only she could hear. The noises and blips and digits that were as plain as if she was walking in a park speaking with an old friend. Only...thanks to the lack of wires...it was all oily and grainy around the edges.

Her eyes snapped open as the computer she was sitting in front of sprung to life, exiting sleep mode and requesting a password. Several asterisks appeared, the submit button briefly highlighted... and the desktop displayed. A simple text program popped up and the following slowly appeared, one letter at a time...

It is really just easier to show sometimes than explain. Also... you should look into changing this computer's password to something a bit more encrypted than ChocolateCake.