I rewrote this chapter to change it up. Things have been getting a little repetitive, haven't they? But isn't this what Abe did? Kill the sligs, free the muds. Solve a puzzle, free the muds. Kill the sligs, free the muds. Solve a puzzle, free the muds. Kill the sligs, free the muds. Solve a puzzle, free the muds. Anyway.
Chapter 76
46:00
There I was, in the boiler room. By now, I was a glukkon again, and was able to walk in freely.
The boilers stood high, majestic, and somewhat unsettlingly. The lighting was dim and orange. The boilers were arranged in a rough triangle, lining the center of the room. It was stiflingly hot. I could only imagine how hot it would be in the center of the boilers.
Because that’s where the mudokons were; tied to poles running from floor to ceiling in the center of the boilers. The heat would be unbearable, and they all looked to be unconscious.
Because it was so hot in here, sligs couldn’t be on patrol. And it was too close quarters for bigbros, who could stand the heat. Glukkons, who enjoy heat like this, were too important to be down here at all.
So they put a bunch of greeters down here to check for intruders, monitor the boilers, and administer the occasional shock to the mudokons, as added punishment for whatever crime had gotten them in here in the first place.
My first thought was of the story Orion had told me, about how Abe had destroyed Soulstorm Brewery by blowing up the boilers. It occurred to me that I could do the same.
But then the idea was shot down. Trying to sabotage the boilers now would be a disaster. There were still over a hundred mudokons on the premises, and they would all be needlessly killed. Further, setting them up to explode would likely give me even less time than I already had.
So, assuming there was a later, I would come back only after saving all the mudokons.
Now, to get those mudokons free.
Trouble with greeters is, if there’s anything in an area it doesn’t recognize, or it knows isn’t supposed to be in the area, it kills it. That goes for glukkons just as much as it does mudokons.
What could I use to combat the greeters? I didn’t have any morphs that could handle the heat and maneuver through their sensor devices…
[VISION]
an intern walks into the boiler room and walks right up to a greeter. the greeter does not zap him. the intern presses a button under the greeter’s toothy mouth, and a brake pops out underneath it, holding it still. the greeter’s mouth opens up, and the intern reaches in to perform some kind of maintenance.
[/VISION]
Intern? Could I trust this vision?
Sure I could. They’ve all been true before.
Okay. I switched over to mudokon form, then contacted Pyll, the leader of the cannibal mudokons.
{Pyll? Remember me?} It would have to do as a greeting.
{Yes.} Matter of fact. I think he still resented my victory in our morphing contest.
{I need that intern power. Help me out?}
{Yeah, whatever.}
That done, I began to chant, switching over to the intern body.
I suddenly had a thought … if, when the power went out, the Zippys went down, why didn’t the greeters, as well? Then, an answer, just as prompt: Greeters are charged to last for days and have their own AI, while Zippys are controlled remotely by a main computer. Whatever.
Now and intern, I closed my mouth tightly. I didn’t need the greeter to mistake the shape of my head and give me a jolt.
I tiptoed into the room (realizing as I did that the heat no longer bothered me) and walked up to a greeter. It did not react, except to say “Hi.”
I reached forward, as I had seen in my vision, and found a small button hidden under its lower lip. I pressed it and heard a
chunk. That was the break.
The greeter’s teeth separated, opening the mouth. Inside was a small console with three options.
Recognized Employees
System Check
Terminate
I thought about it … terminating each and every greeter in here - there had to be ten - would take too long. So, I’d leave it to the greeters.
I pressed the screen on the first option. It suddenly switched to two lists.
Allowed and
Not Allowed. The only items that were allowed were interns and greeters. The unallowed list was much longer, starting with mudokons, and including sligs, glukkons, vykkers, and, unexpectedly, steefs. Even though there were hardly ever any steef seen around this part of Mudos (the two I met on my trek likely the only exception), there they were.
Whatever. I moved “greeter” over to the Not Allowed list, and, after a moment, moved mudokons to Allowed.
I stood back and pressed the button, closing the greeter back up and reactivating it. I walked away and transformed again. I turned around in time to see the greeter shocking two of its own. Three of them, nearby, must have detected this, and were programmed to react to such behavior as a malfunction punishable by destruction. They rolled over to the first greeter, and both shocked it. At this point, another greeter had come over and caught these two, and shocked them. The remaining four had shocked each other, leaving two in the room.
Now a mudokon, not to mention an exhausted mudokon susceptible to the intense heat in the room, and satisfied that the reprogramming had worked, I ran over to untie the mudokons with no fear.
It took three minutes to untie them all. In that time the greeters somehow managed to destroy each other.
I chanted immediately and the mudokons leapt to freedom.
I bolted out of the room, now not having any guards to worry about, and back to the hub. A quick call to Druna and a quick chant got me rolling as a glukkon again.
I entered the ball car and pressed the Emergency Switch again, connecting myself to the control room.
“Hey! Do it! Move this ball car to the sales department!”
“Yes, sir!” came the slig’s reply.
I've just been lurking in and out lately, so you can expect me to pop up at the least expected time. 
Anyway, I read a few of the chapters that I missed and I really liked them. I can feel the whole thing building up and getting toward the climax, so I can tell the ending is going to be good! 
