Linkage

3

Wes got home late. This was not in his favor. He was tired from seeing Byron and from the previous day. That didn't mean he wasn't going to burn the midnight oil, however. Work had to be done. Progress was what kept him going on. Relaxation was not an option.

His apartment was small, but it was what he could afford at his current salary. Not that he needed more than that. He was the only one who lived there, so all he needed was a cot, a bathroom, and a kitchen to get by. He had built in a mapping room for his operations, but the rest had been dedicated as an engineering workshop. It was not as if he had much in the ways of decorations.

In fact, there were only two framed things in his house. One was the Kantonese Congressional Medal of Honor which hung in its infamous frame on the wall. He'd gotten it as a gift for putting Giovanni behind bars. The other was a photo of himself and a friend from Orre. It was the only photo he had with him and her together. He missed her, but knew she was in a better place. The bullet had been the quick way to go.

Thinking of his gun, he checked the magazines on the table. He had to refill them from having done target practice. His bullet maker was broken though. He would have to fix it. He didn't want to though. That would require effort on his part that would distract him from the real goal. Distraction, like failure, was not an option. Not on the schedule he was running. If he wanted to keep fresh on the leads of grunts going amuck, then he had to keep the hand that fed him full. His source required it.

He let his Pokémon out onto the fire escape. Umbreon and Espeon liked the unique view. Their nightly routine was to sit and rest while feeling the wind, and depending on the season, fall asleep outside. That was only in the summer though. His Pokémon missed the desert as much as him.

Deciding not to dwaddle anymore, Wes turned to his desk while trying to gather his thoughts. Different penned blueprints of various sizes laid out. His sketches needed work and more importantly, he needed to build those eventually. Especially since his Rapidash could be equipped for transport. For grunts in the field, that would make capturing a lot easier. Unlike the mine, he had nowhere to corner them into. His first focus, however, was getting his taser upgraded and working on his handcuffing gun. That would make field capturing even better. All he would have to do is aim and shoot, not have to chase with the best of his stamina. He had been trained by the army, and maintained his form the best he could, but lack of exposure to the elements had made his life too luxurious. He made a mental note that he had to go on a backpacking expedition to Mt. Coronet soon.

Wes took a pencil and bit it in his mouth. His focus was aimed to a petite sketch on the top-right corner of his board. The design was perfect for the first stages of testing. If only he could get the damned thing to work. There was no dice though. The calculations for how to shoot the gun would be difficult to program on his computer. He would need to find the proper sensors in order to make it function correctly. At the moment his gun was operating purely on a calculation of time, which was bad. Velocity and angle of the gun were hardly taken into account with such a calculation.

Perhaps he could model the calculation finders to take a supersonic reading, but that would be highly inaccurate considering a fleeing suspect and it would also making a sound to alert the suspect to flee. What he really needed was an infrared sensor, but just the notion of where to get one was beyond him and how he could afford such a thing was a shot in the dark. Government salaries did not pay well. Especially not with Lt. Dunnan as a boss. He would have to read up on how television remotes were manufactured. Perhaps there was something to be derived from there. At the very least, it was worth a moment of his time.

Much to his dissatisfaction there was nothing to truly accomplish for the night. He would begin with bullets later and refill the majority of his ammunition boxes which had been depleted. For now though, he just resolved to have a break. Opening the window, he crawled over the clutter of his desk and slid out onto the fire escape. September nights were something he'd yet to grow accustomed to, no matter where in the world he was. He preferred the heat. It made him feel powerful. However, the moon was nice.