"Heavenly God, I've never been so cold!" Cameron Jennings moaned as the icy Siberian wind caught hold of every bit of moisture in and around his nose, instantly freezing each drop of condensation produced by his labored breathing. He pulled his frock around his reddened cheeks tightly, hoping it would ease the bite.
"Smile, Cam!" Jim Walker retorted as he slammed the door of the black SUV that had escorted the two of them to the compound. It was an imposing structure - violating the otherwise barren horizon with its harsh boxy lines and muted cold-war issue colors. "You're about to make history!"
"That may be the case," Jennings answered. "But even that doesn't change the fact that I now have snot frozen to my face!"
Walker was cold too, but his mind had been racing with anticipation for the entirety of the six hour trek they had just endured en route to the facility. The events that would unfold over the course of the next several hours would represent the culmination of everything he had accomplished in his storied life. Facing what would be the climax of his journey was exciting -- but troubling, just as well.
He had been drawing sketches of machines that were considered the stuff of science fiction since his time in grammar school, his life seemingly scripted from the second he first laid eyes on I, Tobor during late night reruns over summer vacation in 1953. While his contemporaries spent their teenage years in a torrid love affair with The Beatles, Walker was partaking in a fiery romance with the works of Isaac Asimov.
After college, he watched as his generation dove headlong into life; establishing careers and searching for their soul mates with aspirations of starting a family of their own. Deep inside, he had wanted a family too -- but he found more comfort in cradling an oscilloscope, a heap of wiring and scraps of aluminum than he did a living, breathing woman.
While his friends built nest eggs, Jim Walker built robots. Despite the objections of his parents, who seemed to believe that following his father into the accounting business was the best bet for a young mathematician, Walker set his sights on cybernetics.
Four decades later, his only regret was in the fact that the automation era came years after the death of his mother. He had always hoped to show her that his struggle to get by for so long had not been in vain. When she had last closed her eyes to this world, she had seen her son standing before her as a failure.
He was worlds beyond that at this point in his life. Lucrative contracts with General Motors and an eventual gig as a high-dollar consultant to the Department Of Defense had made him a very wealthy man. Wealth was wasted on him, however, as all he ever needed to make himself happy was a place to work -- and a goal to work toward.
Twenty two years ago, he had a revelation. Swearing off the quest for any further earnings, he chose instead to chase his true destiny. It was then that he assembled his team... seven of the greatest scientific minds in the world, working together towards one seemingly unattainable goal -- the creation of truly sentient artificial life.
They called it Project Livewire, and their collaborative work over the first several years showed incredible promise. The path to success had been riddled with mines, however, and roadblocks seemed to be stacked ten deep as the team grew closer and closer to unlocking the mysteries of awareness.
It didn't take long at all for Project Livewire to siphon the majority of Walker's fortune into nothingness - and the few partners in the project with money of their own were apprehensive, to say the least, to thrust their retirement funds into the healthily glowing fire.
The torch had nearly burnt out in 2002 when a new conflict sparked interest in the project amongst certain high ranking officials within NATO. Nothing turns the public's stomach more than scenes of young soldiers being gunned down in the desert - but in the theater of war, the need for a presence on the ground in the hot zone will never fade. Technology had provided a means by which men could rain fire from above by remote control, but putting boots in the sand still required the presence of a living, breathing human being.
As it happened, NATO had a vested interest in taking warm feet out of those boots and replacing them with the cold and clammy flesh of androids. If a nation could impose its will upon another while its foot soldiers sat in their lover's arms at home by the fire, well -- that would be worth billions.
The cash infusion they provided kept the project alive, even if it changed the objective slightly. The military wasn't interested in a machine that could form its own thoughts and opinions, which is what the team had initially set out to create. With sentience came the possibility of pacifism - and that certainly wouldn't work for the customer's application.
Perfection to people holding the cash was, instead, in the form of a humanoid analog that could be manipulated by an individual trained in the combat arts from a continent away. With Walker's prodding, though, they grew to accept the idea of a machine with some basic model of consciousness that could use its own 'brain,' if you will, to feed tactical suggestions to the soldier in control and continue on its pre-determined mission, even in the event of jamming or some other form of separation from its pilot. This meant that the concept of sentience still played a part in the story of the machine code-named Darius, even if it wasn't in the form that Walker and his comrades had originally intended.
"Gentlemen," a rather formidable looking man called to them with a thick Russian accent as they approached the exterior perimeter of the compound.
He had emerged from an elevated watch tower planted at the gate of a Constantine-Wire topped brick and mortar wall surrounding the building, which was still at least four hundred yards off in the distance. The man wore full military garb - a thick white-woodland camo from head to toe, complete with ski-mask and tactical goggles. Then, of course, there was the M-16 rifle held firmly in his hand. It was pointed towards the snow below at the moment, but it was clear that this fact could be changed with lightning speed and precision if the man deemed it necessary.
"Please, stop where you are."
Walker and Jennings froze in their footsteps for obvious reasons, the cold not among them.
"You sir, in the trench coat," The soldier beckoned to Walker as his tightly bundled London Fog rippled in the wind. "Your name, please?"
"James Edward Walker," he answered.
The soldier used his free hand to retrieve a radio from his belt and cued it up. "Alpha, this is the Guard Dog; I have two to verify - the first is Walker, James Edward -- Over."
The transmitter beeped as the man released its button. A similarly harsh masculine voice responded, its words nearly inaudible to the visitors over the howl of Mother Nature.
"Remove your hat and sunglasses please, Mister Walker" The soldier ordered. Walker did as directed and, after taking a moment to look him over, the soldier cued the mic again to report "Approximately 5 feet 9 inches, lean in stature. Late-fifties, brown hair... pronounced nose and chin. Over."
Walker was flattered by the man's underestimation of his age, but wasn't quite sure how to take the 'pronounced nose' thing. He knew he wasn't the most attractive man in the world, but he had always felt his features were in proper proportion.
"Affirmative, stand by." The man responded to a second inquiry, presumably from within the compound. "Mister Walker, a pleasure to meet you." He continued. "I understand the weather is beautiful in Las Vegas this time of year - it's a shame I've never made it there, I would love to visit a Casino."
"Um, yes," Walker answered, recognizing the pre-arranged clear code question. "If you do make it, may I recommend the Craps table... I'm a sucker for The Pass Line."
"Confirmed," the man again spoke into his radio. "Now you, sir." He called out now to Jennings. "Your name, please?"
"Jennings, Doctor Cameron Jacob," he answered, unraveling his scarf and removing his hat in anticipation of the next command. This revealed his clerical collar, which seemed to catch the soldier off guard.
After a brief pause, the guard echoed the na
me to whomever was on the other end of his transmission. "Approximately five feet, six inches. Mid to late forties, chubby -- especially in the face and torso. Thinning gray hair, glasses... wearing priestly garb."
Walker blushed as he realized the description given for himself was quite favorable in comparison to that offered of Jennings.
"Should I tell him I have a mole on my posterior as well?" Jennings quipped to his friend.
"Stand-by," the soldier said once again. "Mister Jennings, a pleasure to meet you... I am an animal lover. I've always wanted to own a Saint Bernard."
"Really?" Jennings responded, his mind inexplicably going blank. He stood there in silence for a moment, frost bite potentially inhibiting his higher reasoning.
The moments of silence that followed clearly agitated the guards. They were undoubtedly under orders to protect this place at all costs; but the grim reality of what that means is often intangible until the moment is in sight. Failure to recite the clear-code would mean that this man presenting himself as Cameron Jennings may, in fact, be an imposter. Jim Walker clearly knew that this wasn't the case, but convincing a trained killer with nothing more than security on his mind of that fact would be a mission beyond even his own means.
"Cameron?" Walker snapped under his breath sensing the tension rising as potentially precious seconds ticked by.
"Father Jennings?" The soldier said firmly, stepping back towards the guardhouse and raising his weapon so that the barrel was now leveled off and oriented in such a manner that, with the twitch of a finger, he could spray down both scientists where they stood. "Prepare for Nova Contingency!" He shouted into his radio before continuing. "I repeat, Sir -- I've always wanted to own a Saint Bernard!"
Jennings' face had fallen at this point, and the panic was as clear in his eyes as the confusion was in his body language. He had never faced down the business end of an automatic assault rifle in his days on the pulpit, nor those spent in the operating theater in the days before he found The Lord.
"Cameron!" Walker shouted now, his trousers in danger of a soiling. He found that he couldn't pull his attention away from the weapon - its deadly accurate sight now training a red dot squarely in the middle of his partner's forehead. It was an amazing piece of engineering, really, despite its inherently sinister nature. He couldn't help being overtaken by its beauty in form and function; its ability to take life so simply. In the space of a millisecond it could rob an individual of something that no man had yet been able to replicate in spite of all his skill and knowledge. "Cameron," he continued. "Give him the god dam response."
"I --" Jennings stammered. "I --"
"Father Jennings!" The soldier barked again as another guard clutching what appeared to be a sniper rifle crept to the edge of the roof of the lookout tower. "The response, Father Jennings. This is your final opportunity."
"I -- I --."
"Jesus Christ, Cam, he'll kill you! Give him the clear code!"
"But I --"
"Three seconds, Father Jennings!"
"Cam!"
"I don't remember!" Jennings wailed, his voice shaking. "I --"
"Two..."
"I -- I would too, if --"
"One second, Father!" The soldier's finger moved from its safety position to clutch the trigger now.
"Fucking-A Cameron! Now!"
"I -- I would --"
Walker closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, waiting for the bang and the darkness that would follow.
"I would too, and I would fill his keg with the Blood of Christ!" The priest blurted out hurriedly.
The soldier dropped his finger from the trigger, returning it momentarily to the safety position before finally lowering the weapon back to his side. The sniper slid back into his hiding, the moment of horror fading away in seconds that seemed as hours. Jennings was shaking, what would have likely been a tear freezing upon his face. Walker exhaled for the first time in what seemed like an eternity and licked his severely chapped lips before cautiously opening his eyes.
"Alpha, this is Guard Dog." The soldier spoke again into his radio. "Clear code verified, stand down Nova Contingency."
"My God, Cameron," Walker spoke quietly to his partner. "What was that all about?"
"I --" the man continued to stammer. "I just went blank. My mind went entirely blank."
"Assault rifles tend to have that effect on civilians," the soldier explained. "My apologies, Father, but our orders leave no room for interpretation."
"And if I hadn't remembered the line?" Jennings asked, though he certainly knew the answer.
"Then you would no longer be with us, sir." The soldier answered coldly. "You would both be dead, in fact."
"Well we certainly thank you for your patience," Walker added.
"You were lucky that I remembered how to count in English -- the words sometimes escape me in tense moments, and a countdown is not mandatory. Truth is," he explained. "I have never taken pleasure in killing a man of the cloth. Come, gentlemen, the others are waiting inside."
With a wave of his hand the guard called for the gate to be opened and the large slab of steel parted down the center. Beyond it was a heavily armored vehicle almost resembling a tank but riding on nearly a dozen wheels as opposed to a set of tracks.
"Please move into the personnel carrier." The soldier directed as he stepped back into the lookout tower.
The men did as ordered, though Jennings walked like his legs were made of Jell-O.
"Well, that was hairy." Walker noted as they walked.
"You're telling me? You weren't the one the sniper had his eyes on."
As they climbed inside of the mobile monster they hoped that they were leaving most of the excitement behind them, but both of them knew that the day had only just begun.
"Jim!" A familiar feminine voice beckoned from the front of the APC as the door closed firmly behind the two.
"My word, Denisa?" Walker replied inquisitively, recognizing her as the point woman on Darius' assembly team. "Denisa, is that you?"
"It is," she responded sweetly as she turned from her position at shotgun to face them.
Walker had never met the woman entrusted with the construction of his life's dream, though they had spoken via sat phone several times a day over the course of the past two years.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you." She continued
Denisa was as stunning as she was brilliant- a twenty nine year old Israeli prodigy highly touted for her work in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering. Then there was her tough as nails command style honed as fine as a razor through her training with the IDF.
The NATO advisory board responsible for what they were calling Project Ground Squirrel had handpicked her from a deep pool of candidates to head up the assembly phase of the program. She brought to the process an expertise that none of the original Project Livewire partners possessed.
Though her previous work had not touched upon anything nearly as complex as the prototype she had been charged to build, Denisa seemed to have a rich understanding of the demands a fully functional human analog would place on gearing and gyros. Her input had led to the alteration of nearly every joint and point of articulation within Darius' endoskeleton. Some of her suggestions regarding the electrical makeup of the machine's 'brain' had changed the very nature of what the team was calling its Positronic matrix.
The term 'Positronic' was used simply as a homage to Asimov, who it seemed was an inspiration to every member of Project Livewire/Ground Squirrel. The complex unit that served as Darius mind contained no platinum or iridium, so by definition it was not at all what Asimov had conceived. As it turned out, the Positronic brain could exist only in the realm of fiction -- it simply didn't work in the real world.
"My dear," Walker explained. "I had never dreamt that your beauty could outshine the caliber of your genius, but it seems my imagination has failed me for the very first t
ime in all my life."
Denisa seemed to blush briefly, then turned to Jennings. "And shall I call you Doctor or Father, Mister Jennings?"
"Cameron will do just fine, young lady. I've never been one for formality."
"Very good, Cameron." She said as the heavy door of the APC closed and sealed behind them. "Welcome to the Eden Compound, my friends. I apologize for the trouble at the gate, but certainly you understand."
"Of course," Jennings answered. "I do have a question, though. When I didn't know the response, the guard called for some sort of protocol -- I can't remember the verbiage he used..."
"Nova Contingency."
"Yes, that's it. What exactly is Nova Contingency?"
"Don't ask," she explained. "To sum it up, it would entail the utter destruction of the compound. Everyone and everything involved with the project would have been reduced to piles of ash it had been initiated."
"Oh," Jennings gulped. "I see..."
The cabin was very dark, as it seemed this vehicle had no windows. The driver monitored the outside world via a fairly small view screen that couldn't have been any larger than the television in Walker's den. The only internal light, sparing the operator's display, was provided by several recessed lamps that threw off an eerie green hue, making it seem as though it were being seen through night vision goggles. The world seemed to rumble as the engine fired and the occupants were jolted back into their seats, the vehicle starting to roll.
"We'll be at the operations center momentarily, Gentlemen. Sit back and enjoy the ride."
"Don't take this as a complaint, Denisa," Walker started. "As it's much warmer in here than it was out there -- but is this really necessary considering we could have probably just walked to the building by now?"
"We could have, but the operations center isn't in the building that you could see - in fact, there isn't anything in there at all except for the elevator."
"Elevator?"
"Yes. The building is a decoy - the ops center is two miles west and a half mile beneath us. We will drive into the warehouse that is visible and descend, via the elevator, into a tunnel under the surface. It's a labyrinth, really, more than a tunnel -- a very complicated maze. We'll navigate to a second elevator which will take us into the housing area. You'll have a chance to greet the team, and then we'll take you to meet Darius."
"Wow - you folks don't take any chances, do you? I figured he was sitting just beyond those walls waiting for us."
"We believe we've kept the lid on the project pretty tightly, but no one wanted to consider what might happen if this technology fell into the wrong hands. It's a bit inconvenient this way, but we'll have you staring into his eyes in just a few minutes, sir -- whenever you're ready, that is."
Walker's heart pattered at the notion. "I've been ready for the entirety of my life. What have the other developers had to say?"
"They haven't seen him yet," she chuckled. "The assembly team has, of course, and the pilot as well -- but in terms of the design team, I thought it only fair that his fathers were the first to lay eyes on him."
"Oh, he has but one Father." Jennings chimed in with his timid and squeaky voice. "And that man is Jim Walker. I've been blessed to be along for the ride, but I've been no more than a spoke in this great wheel."
"No, no, Cameron," Walker argued as the vehicle seemed to stop momentarily. "I am not a whore for glory. You have been with me every step of the way, and without your knowledge and insights regarding the workings of the human nervous system, our Darius would be no more than a pile of titanium and silicone."
"That may be, but this is -and always has been- your baby. Perhaps we can agree to call me Darius' -- Godfather? Seems fitting, wouldn't you agree?"
"Ark to Alpha," The driver interrupted speaking into his own transmitter. "We are ready to descend."
With that it felt as though the floor had fallen out from underneath them. It was obvious that they had reached the elevator and were being lowered into the Earth at an almost alarming pace.
"If I'm not mistaken," Walker tried to distract himself by picking up the conversation where they had left off. "That means a baptism is in order. Did you bring your Holy Water, Father?" He smirked.
Jennings burst into laughter at the suggestion. The thought of dunking a forty billion dollar prototype into a pool of water was as ludicrous as the concept of a machine being blessed with the sacraments of God.
"I'm sure I can conjure some up," He said. "But first I'd like to be made certain that Darius is waterproof."
"That he is," Denisa explained. "As well as bullet proof, unaffected by concussion, impervious to fire, immune to the effects of radiation and otherwise -- damn near indestructible."
The falling sensation came to an abrupt halt as a loud whoosh accompanied a feeling of being driven back into their seats.
"Christ!" Walker exclaimed, a bit perturbed by the sensation. "Speaking of water, it sounds and feels as though we're sinking!"
"We are," Denisa said matter-of-factly.
"What?!"
"Don't worry," she chuckled. "This is an amphibious vehicle. The labyrinth is submerged. If someone did find their way down here we had to be sure there was no conceivable way they could reach the installation. The water fills the tunnel from floor to ceiling... it's very dark, and very cold. There is only one proper path through the maze, and it covers two miles of travel. There are nearly eighty false routes that lead nowhere -- to traps and dead ends. Even if a team of divers made it past the perimeter and somehow overrode the controls of the elevator, they would surely die trying to find their way out of this place before they ever discovered the command center."
"So --" Jennings muttered nervously. "We're basically driving through an underwater cave right now?"
"Essentially, yes."
"Completely submerged?"
"Completely."
The churning of the preacher's stomach was loud enough to be heard, even above the strained sounds of the hull as the pressure played its games with the metal.
"Heaven help me."
"We're fine, Cameron." Denisa comforted with a smile. "We've made this trek a thousand times, and we only lost the one unit."
Walker found her jesting obvious, but the continued whitening of Jennings' flesh showed that he hadn't picked up on the joke.
"So, back to Darius." Walker again tried to ease the tension. "You've described him as nearly indestructible -- but even Achilles had his heel."
"Yes, well -- he doesn't fare well when subjected to an electromagnetic pulse, but what the bad guys don't know can't hurt our mechanical friend. Even if they did know how to stop him, generating an EMP isn't pretty business -- it's not likely anyone would voluntarily do it in their own backyard to disable a platoon of Drones. The damage it would do to their own infrastructure would be immeasurable."
"And that, Cameron, is why NATO was willing to go to such lengths to bring Darius into being." Walker explained as though Jennings didn't know. "Not only will our drone spare countless lives on the battlefield, an enemy force would have to essentially render itself defenseless in order to hold back its invasion."
The preacher nodded, though he wasn't comprehending anything at this point. He gasped aloud as there was an audible thud coupled with another jerking of the vehicle.
"There," Denisa chimed in. "We've made it."
The passengers again had the sensation of being driven into their seats as is became evident that they were now rising at a high rate of speed.
"It's time, friends. Let us go fulfill our destinies."
Chapter 3