Chapter 39 – Visitations in the Desert
Thursday Evening, July 23, 2308
As the sun reached the horizon, Fox noticed a figure cresting it. From where he sat on the bluff, he could hear the patrols behind him.
He watched the creature approach from the west. He could tell it was a four-legged animal, but it was some time before he could see it was a cat and not a dog or coyote. Before it became any clearer, the animal disappeared into a shallow wash.
In the desert, the cat pressed on, padding forward, its robotic legs pulling it forward across the sand, gliding as smoothly as any cat in real life ever did.
Fox could feel the animal as it continued its approach. He could feel the vibrations caused by the padded feet, each step bringing it closer. A few minutes after the sun had set, but long before its light had faded from the sky, the mechanical cat emerged from the shallow ravine.
Fox could hear the hum of electrical components, capacitors and servos, magnetic fibers contracting and releasing as the animal continued its approach. The robot wore a tawny blonde fur coat, its whiskers and ears shifting in the breeze.
Its eyes looked directly at Fox and spoke to his mind in the voice of his wife. “Te really outdid himself time.”
Fox smiled.
In a single moment, his mind shifted through the emotions of envy, curiosity, frustration and then fascination.
Te had obviously continued down the path they had originally started on. Using the progress they had made wiring the centaurs, he seemed to have reversed the process. Fox realized that he had simply re-mapped the translator, in effect, placing the user inside the robot, as opposed to bringing the robot’s senses directly to the user. On one end, he mapped the user’s mind, then simply projected it to meet a shell program inside the robot.
Te’s creation was impressive; there was no doubt about it. The electro-magnetic muscle fibers behaved like real muscle only better. The carbon-nano coat and protective layers made the cat water and bulletproof, while the terillium chassis and frame gave an operator complete control over the cat’s weight, elevation and momentum.
Fox was impressed. Hell, he felt positively jealous. Then he remembered; he’d kind of gone past that now.
“What do you think?” Ana asked. “It’s like I’m really inside it.” She lifted a paw and turned it. Then turned the cat’s head and ears back to Fox.
He was amazed. ”It’s awesome.”
“So, what, they just let you wander around, free like this? I guess there’s not really anywhere for you to go.”
Fox laughed. “Let’s walk a little bit.”
“Where to? It’s the middle of the desert.”
Fox gestured with his arm, “How about down to that little grove, by the mountain over there.”
“That’s like fifty, maybe seventy miles away,” Ana replied.
Fox rose and took a couple of steps toward it.
Ana looked around and realized they were there already. Fox had teleported them to the foot of the mountain.
“How did you do that?” she asked. “Don’t you need the amplifier, and all that equipment and the giant golden floor?”
Fox smiled, raised a hand, and transformed himself into a full grown, flesh and blood lion.
Ana was frozen, speechless.
“I’m not actually here. Technically, I’m still in my cell,” Fox explained.
Ana switched through her spectrometer, Fox’s body showed the same temperature as the rapidly cooling sand.
“You’re not real?”
“I’m real. I’m more than real,” he answered.
“And here I thought the robot was impressive.”
“It is impressive. This is weird. I was just sitting in my cell, no amplifier, no nothing. Hell, they’ve got me in a plastic box. I was just sitting. Then I stood up and walked out. I’ve been wandering around out here for three days.”
Ana blinked, and Fox had transported them from the edge of the forest grove, back to the low rise where she found him. Fox was no longer a lion, but again a man, in spectacles, white linen clothes and sandals.
“By the time, I got to this spot, I was actually leaving tracks in the sand,” he explained.
Ana, the robotic cat, stood and padded around Fox. “These tracks are almost a day old.”
“I mostly walk at night. Sometimes, during the day, it gets hot out here, so mostly I just sit and think.”
Fox looked down at the ground.
The daylight was quickly fading from the sky, blue and red chased into the west by violet and black.
“Oh, watch this,” he said, raising a hand over head. Fox closed his eyes and a flame burst to life, dancing in the air above his hand.
Ana leaned back, her thermal sensors registering light, but no heat.
Fox lowered the hand and extinguished the flame by clapping his left over the burning right.
“What’s that about?”
“Well, it could come in handy. If you ever drop the car keys, or…”
“Funny.” Ana sat, the cat’s front arms extended vertically. “Well, anyhow, we have a plan for getting you out, now that we know where you are. Except you’re already out.”
“Not really,” Fox said.
“Ross and Croswell have a plan.”
“I bet they do.”
“Every night these ass-clowns test their jamming equipment.”
“And they want to drop in and bust me out during the test?”
“How’d you guess?”
“That thing wakes me up every night. That’s why I started coming out here. Actually, I kind of expected you guys to show up a week ago, but nothing.”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me. Croswell sent me to goddamn Jerusalem.”
“Oh, we were planning that. Sorry. Since the kids are at camp and all, it seemed like a good time for you to get away and see the old man.”
“Were you planning on being captured by Stanwood too?”
“No,” Fox laughed. “Anyhow, there’s no way they can get in here and get me out in sixty seconds. The approach is at least ninety, maybe seventy but that’s cutting it close. They’d have to find some way of extending the jammer, maybe bring their own or just hack it…”
“That’s the thinking.”
“I suppose I could have tried to hack it, but it’s so loud. Anyhow, those plans don’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because there would still be a shoot out, and this place is loaded with directional mics. The whole place is wired with fiber optics, straight from the sensors to a server farm a hundred miles away. That server farm is a situated directly over thirteen missile silos. A sustained firefight consisting of three or more gunshots, without an issued failsafe code, will result in the launch of two or more warheads, wiping this place off the map.”
“So?”
“So? So, really, what Stanwood did, was put a gun to the heads of twenty guys I have never met before. If I try and get out of here, if I do get out of here, they all die.”
“We can do it silently, and invisibly.”
“I kinda like these guys. I’ve gotten to know them. Donovan just had a kid. I can’t do that to the guy. If the cell is opened without the release code, same warhead scenario.”
“Well, I can’t see how it actually matters, considering that you’re walking around out here…” the cat nodded to Fox’s second body. “Putting you in prison doesn’t seem to have slowed you down much.”
“To be honest, I’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet. I can’t remember the last time I got a chance to just relax.”
The cat laughed. “A prison cell turns out to be your ideal vacation? Who knew?”
“It’s far from ideal, but then again, I hadn’t exactly perfected Astral Projection in my spare time either,” Fox smiled sheepishly.
“Is that what your doing? Is this just a projection?” she asked.
“It’s not just anything. Look, you know how we use the amplifiers…”
<
br /> “Yes…”
“Just extend that understanding to every atom, every sub atomic particle… Everything was once a Terillium Atom. Point of fact, every atom is still a Terillium Atom. I can change the atomic structure of anything into terillium, and then into whatever else I want it to be.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Remember the first time we met?”
“Of course,” Ana answered.
Fox raised his left hand, and a dozen other Fox’s rose from the sand. He even raised a copy of the cat.
“Nice trick. A little more complex than what I pulled.”
Fox lowered his hand and the duplicates vanished.
“He’s going to kill you. Stanwood is going to kill you, if you let him.”
Fox laughed. “He can’t kill me. He can’t hurt me.”
“He can. He can hurt me, and he can hurt our children.”
“Remember the ranch in Wyoming we talked about? We can still do that. Now is the time,” Fox said.
“Okay, great,” Ana answered. “Let’s get you out of here, and let’s do that. Wyoming sounds good.”
“We just have to let this play out.”
“I wish I could call Ross and Croswell right now.”
“Why can’t you?”
“After Von Kalt took your amplifier we went radio silent.”
“I’ve sealed it off. He can’t hear us.”
“Okay, hold on.” On the couch in Dr. Te’s lab, Ana pulled the amplifier from her pocket.
Croswell picked up his amplifier, responding to the alert ringing in his head. “I though we were radio silent?” he asked.
Captain Snow spoke in Secretary Croswell’s mind. “You were right about White Sands. I found him. The two of you should get down here.”
“We’re on our way,” Croswell answered, disconnecting.
“They’re on their way,” Ana the mountain lion told the silica apparition that was not her husband.
“Let’s not waste any time,” Fox said, closing his eyes.
Ross and Croswell appeared before them, wearing their inactive anti-gravity harnesses and phase camouflage.
“Let’s get you guys fired up,” Fox said.
A moment later, the men were hovering over the ground and visually undetectable. Ana and Fox, however, were both capable of reading the non-visible spectrums and could see them clearly.
“This is just outside their thermal range. Nice little dip created by this hill, good call,” Ross said. “You could hang out here all day and not get noticed.
Fox laughed.
“Enjoying yourself, Doctor?” Croswell smiled.
“I am actually. Guys, it’s good to see you,” Fox said. “But before we start, I’ve got a couple of things to show you.”
“The ride over was pretty incredible,” Ross said.
Fox raised his hands and then lowered them again.
The light that erupted from him could be seen from space.
On Dr. Te’s couch, in Jerusalem, Ana jumped up and stumbled off the couch onto the floor, ripping the glasses from her head.
Lao looked over but said nothing.
Fox, Ross, Croswell and Ana stood at the epicenter of the blast, Ana in the form of Sabor the cat, Ross and Croswell both invisible and floating and Fox being himself but not himself.
“Do you see?” Fox asked. “All matter is Terillium and Terillium can be switched into any other element. This is behind-the-looking-glass. This is the great secret. This is something only a human mind can do.”
“You sound reasonably pleased with yourself.” Croswell smiled broadly.
“I am. After all, the first thing I did, was teach you. Now we are all equal. Now we all have the same tools.”
“Not to rain on your parade, but I remember being taught calculus in high school too, doesn’t mean I learned it,” Ross said.
Fox heard Ana laugh, but the cat had gone semi-catatonic after Fox’s optic blast. He knelt to check on her.
In Jerusalem, Ana shook her head, she could still hear Andrew and Ross and Croswell, out in the desert, but she was also aware of her place in Lao’s robotic showroom.
She heard Fox call out to her, despite having set the glasses on a side table. She reached out for the lenses and put them on as she lay back.
“You with us?” Andrew asked the robotic cat.
Sabor woke and looked at Fox and the floating operatives.
“What’s your take on all this?” Fox asked the cyber-cat.
“My take?” Ana tilted her head. “I would clean house. I wouldn’t feel guilty for killing these soldiers. I would walk you out of here, or teleport you out of here, or whatever you want. But I wouldn’t stay. I vote we go after Stanwood and remove him from the equation.”
“What’s stopping you?” Fox asked.
“I don’t know respect, loyalty, curiosity. After all, it’s your show.”
“That’s how I feel about it too,” Ross said. “It’s your show, amigo.”
“I didn’t choose you guys because you’re the kind of people who sit around and do nothing. I know this is frustrating; I just want to run it out a while longer. I’m not in any imminent danger, so there’s nothing to be worried about.”
“What’s this King was telling me about you insisting that he let an aggressor fire one round before intervening?” Croswell asked.
“That sounds like a death wish if I ever heard one,” Ross replied.
“We could always try our luck at a couple of rounds of Russian Roulette, if you’re feeling frisky,” Croswell offered.
“That’s just crazy,” Fox said.
“About as crazy as letting an enemy take a shot,” Croswell replied.
“I don’t believe in pre-emptive action anymore. It just makes things worse,” Fox said.
“It was pre-emptive to act before he kidnapped you. Now it would be self-defense,” Croswell said.
“Von Kalt has the Metachron,” Fox said. “He took it from me at the café.”
“Yeah, we know. We saw the surveillance footage. Fuck-tard thought he could slap a security seal on it and keep it buried.”
“It’s not just any old amplifier. This is The Metachron,” Fox said.
“What the hell is The Metachron?” Croswell asked.
“After Epsilon, in the crater, there was an amplifier. It was everything, the entire facility, and all the subjects, compressed into one device. I had it. Now Von Kalt has it.”
“So we’ll get it back from him.”
“He’ll be able to see through your phase-cam.”
“Is that so? What about all this other shit you can do now? Can he do any of that?” Croswell asked.
“Maybe, yes,” Fox replied.
“Maybe what, exactly?” Croswell asked.
“I don’t know. It depends on how long he has it. The longer he has it, the better he’ll get at using it.”
“Beautiful,” Ross said.
“And the first amplifier you lost, the one Pierce took? They still haven’t recovered his body…” Croswell said.
“I had response teams standing by, they took care of Pierce,” Fox explained.
“So, it was you?” Croswell asked. “And the amplifier?”
“My daughter has it,” Fox answered.
Ross took a deep breath. “So, what? You’re staying here then?”
“For the moment,” Fox replied.
“You know they’re trying to take Ana and the kids. King is undercover on Von Kalt’s team, and they’ve staked out the campground.”
“I don’t envy them. Would you want to go up against her?” Fox smiled.
“Listen to me, this is not a joking matter. Stanwood is sending guys after your family,” Croswell said. “Ana said that in the last three days, the camp has grown about three dozen running video streams. This is not a joke anymore. You are putting all of us at risk.”
“I understand that, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Like I said, you know ever
ything I know now, so whatever you decide to do, I’m cool with it. If you want to fly in there and drag me out of here, fine. I won’t resist you. Just realize; these guys are going to be killed if you do that.
“If you want to go after Von Kalt, do it. Let King have at him. If he goes after my kids, God help him, because well, if you go after a kid, you deserve whatever you get.
“In the meantime, I promise, I’ll talk to Conway and get all this straightened out.”