by Paul James
Alexis appeared thoughtful. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said at last. “By linking the two games in the future, we make our two big pools of players into one huge pool of players. They’d have a bigger world to play in and it would provide some protection against newcomers.”
Shane grinned. “Exactly! Players could get the thrill of a new environment in our joint world and not feel the need to go off and try someone else’s world.”
“We should get our teams together to talk about it,” Alexis said.
“Let’s do that.”
The two teams got together that very same week. The result was exactly as Shane had foreseen. Weeks of collaboration turned into months, and as Alexis and Jamie spent more and more time on their quest for space, the two game teams became one—but with Shane now as the unspoken leader. And among his old team, Karl and Yves also drifted away from programming to become the leaders of their security project.
Looking back, he realized that the lecture Dean had given them after the security program rollout debacle had freed him from the gnawing worry that drove him to humiliate Alexis and his team. Dean’s lecture, though censorious, had included the statement “We need you two to work together for the good of the institute.” While he hadn’t consciously understood it at the time, it confirmed to his subconscious that he was indeed a future Founder. And with the changes he’d initiated on the games’ teams, and the others drifting away to new interests, Shane felt he’d secured his own future position remarkably well. The way was smoothed for everything that was to follow.
Chapter 4: People Don’t Just Disappear
“Shane.”
Kurt’s voice broke into his thoughts, interrupting a mental run-through of the escape sequence for tomorrow’s final test.
“What?”
“Yves and I think we have a problem.”
“You think you have a problem or you know you have a problem?”
“That’s just it. We aren’t too sure.”
“So, what is this possible problem?” Shane asked impatiently.
“You remember how Tomas asked us to let his robots train with our security guys?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s been weeks now—”
“I know,” Shane interjected, growing tired of this slow recital. “I watched one of the early sessions. Remember?”
“Yeah. And it was okay then. The robots were cool, Tomas was cool, and the trainers were good with it too. In fact, a lot of them thought it was great we were on the leading edge of warfare—you know, men and machines working together.”
“So, what’s changed?”
“It’s hard to say. Tomas has developed some really incredible battlebots from those early prototypes. It’s like watching every sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen. His ‘NuMan’ robots are real androids—they almost look like human soldiers, only they’re bigger, incredibly fast, strong, and seem to be totally immune to bullets.”
“Then our security is looking good for the future.”
“Yeah, it is,” Kurt said, “only it doesn’t feel right. The troops are too good and they follow their own orders. Tomas says he’s building them for us, the institute, but we aren’t so sure anymore.”
“You think he’s planning a takeover?”
“We don’t know. But I’m telling you he could. These things are scary beyond all belief and they have a mind of their own, or maybe it’s just Tomas directing them.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“We’re not, but Leon is, and you know he’s been one of our chief commanders on all the defensive exercises. He says we’ve got to act soon. So far, the robots have taken part in the exercises without any problem, but even the elite trainers from the outside world are saying something funny is going on.”
Yves, who’d been standing silently beside Kurt with a worried expression, spoke up. “Leon has been warning us for some time. He’s been bugging Tomas too, demanding more information and more transparency. They’ve had arguments about it.”
Shane frowned. Leon wasn’t the sort to be paranoid about things. “The robots don’t have live ammo, do they?”
“No, but if they did we’d all be toast or taking orders from Tomas.”
“Do you have any actual proof there’s something going on or are you guys just jealous that the robots are tougher than you?”
“If we had proof, we’d destroy them now before they destroy us,” Yves said bluntly. “But no, we don’t have anything but intuition.”
Shane thought for a moment. “You say others are concerned as well?”
“The two Navy SEALs instructors who are training us now came to Yves and I this morning with their concerns.”
“Well, their spider senses are good enough for me,” Shane said. “How can we disable these things?”
“Not easily, but it can be done,” Kurt said. “Our concern is that Tomas has built more that we aren’t seeing, so that if we move against the ones we do see, we’ll get creamed. That factory of his is impossible for regular guys to get into.”
“We need to talk to the Founders,” Yves added. “There’s a night exercise tonight. Why don’t you come and see what you think before we go to them? We need your support because they won’t like our concerns. You know how pleased they were to get Tomas here.”
The night was overcast, the only light a slight phosphoresce from the sea that made the surf shimmer as it washed against the rocks and beach. Wearing the night-vision goggles, Shane could see the training defenders spread out across the terrain. Even Tomas’s robot defenders gave off enough heat to show up. The sea gave no sign of attackers, just the usual, steady rolling swell and waves.
Time passed and the night grew cold. Even bundled up, Shane wished he’d stayed indoors and watched from the monitors. It seemed the cold was making him feel sleepy rather than keeping him sharp. His thoughts drifted to his final test, the suit escape from a sunken Ray. He went through each step in his mind, determined to be perfect when the time came.
Then the night exploded. A blaze of light blinded him and he was stunned by a deafening, screaming howl. Out of the sea and onto the island came troops, guns blazing. They seemed to leap ashore and onto the defenders before Shane got his mind around what was happening.
Fortunately, the defenders had not been lulled into sleep. They fought back fiercely. The flashing simulator lasers weaved intricate tracer patterns through the darkness and revealed more crafts landing on the beaches with troops leaping from them. They began firing the moment they landed, responding fire erupting from the beach defenders. The noise and flashing lights left Shane stunned. It had been so long since he’d attended one of these exercises that he hadn’t realized how far they’d come or how realistic they now were.
The battle was short, however, and the defenders had the higher score. If this had been real, the institute and its people would have lived to fight another day.
Shane saw that Kurt was right. The new robots Tomas and his team had built were superior to those from only months ago and far superior to any human soldier. If they had a weakness, it wasn’t apparent in the exercise. Even seawater didn’t harm them and they bounded across the rocks on their flexible paddle feet like Paralympic athletes.
Nothing about the robots, however, suggested that they were a threat to the island or its men. Only their awesome capability made them frightening. As long as the institute was in control of them, they would make a formidable weapon against any possible adversaries.
“What did you think?” Kurt asked. He and Yves watched anxiously as Shane gathered his thoughts.
“I thought everything looked fine. Why, what did I miss?”
“It’s hard to explain. Tomas controls them and they don’t do anything they shouldn’t, but—”
“If you can’t explain it, does it really exist?” Shane asked.
“The two instructors will be here in a minute. Maybe they can explain it better than we can.”
The instructo
rs, however, were also reduced to saying it was “just a feeling.” Shane frowned. He hated the phrase but had come to be wary when it was used. He could never remember having this “feeling” himself, or at least not as others described it. Over the years, though, he’d discovered that even ordinary people seemed to have this ability to know things were happening when he couldn’t see anything wrong. And here were four people who he knew were not ordinary telling him that something was wrong.
“Have there been incidents or events that were odd on any of the other exercises?” he asked.
“Yes,” Yves answered, “but Tomas said they were just due to the earlier versions being slow learners.”
“This new version hasn’t shown any odd behaviors?”
“No, and that’s odd, don’t you think? Even humans make mistakes when they’re first trying something.”
“Maybe, but Tomas will have taught them everything the earlier bots knew and everything he’s observed in all the exercises,” Shane responded.
Yves hesitated. “You remember when you created your Interview Responder and people said it was more human than you?”
Shane nodded grimly. He’d been surprisingly wounded by those jokes.
“Well, that’s what we have here. Those bots are more soldiers than we are and we’ve been practicing with the world’s best soldiers for almost a year now.”
“Yves has gotten it right there,” one of the instructors said. “And it’s not just your institute soldiers that the bots are superior to. They’re already the best soldiers I’ve ever seen and they’ve only just started.”
“Then we need to get control of them in the Founders’ hands,” Shane said. “We can’t have just one person controlling them.”
“Will Tomas give them up though?”
“If he has the best interests of the institute in mind, I’m sure he’ll have no objection.” Shane prepared to leave, signaling the end of the discussion.
An anxious voice came across the communicators. “We have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Leon is missing.”
Shane and the others exchanged horrified looks.
“What do you mean ‘missing’?” Kurt asked.
“He was with us in the boat as we landed but nobody has seen him since.”
“How is that possible?” Yves demanded. “Everyone in the exercise has monitors all over them. Even if people can’t see him in the dark, it isn’t possible for the security system to lose him.”
“There’s no record of him from the moment his boat hit the beach.”
“Then get every man and every robot looking for him now,” Shane said.
“We are looking,” the voice said, “but there’s no sign. That’s why I called.”
Shane muttered a curse under his breath.
“He can’t have disappeared,” Kurt said. “People don’t just disappear.”
Chapter 5: Adulting Sucks
But Leon had just disappeared. Shane couldn’t comprehend the fear in his belly. Men did die in the institute—pushing themselves beyond every limit was central to the ethos—but this was different. It wasn’t just because he knew Leon or that Leon had been on his first team. In truth, none of them had been close to Leon. He was a loner, equally comfortable running with Alexis or shooting with Jamie as he was training with Kurt and Yves on the security teams. Leon seemed to have no preferred “home” with any of them. He was just Leon.
No, the fear wasn’t the result of personal ties. The fear came because the situation itself was different. Leon was an experienced soldier by now, one of the best—fit, strong, a marksman, and a tough leader of men. There was no way his disappearance was an accident of either his own making or anyone else’s.
As the days passed, the fear didn’t leave. People like Leon don’t just disappear, Shane’s mind told him over and over again. He couldn’t help thinking of Leon’s arguments with Tomas, his opposition to the continued development of autonomous robots, his early warnings to the security leaders. Shane could see how Tomas and his team might think removing Leon would remove a dangerous opponent, but Tomas would be crazy to do so in a way likely to confirm the opponent’s fears to the world. The event was troubling on so many levels and the fear in Shane’s gut was only part of that.
It was against all his instincts, but he called Alexis to get his view of what had happened. They had little in common but a shared belief in their future role as Founders and, in this case, they’d both been as close to Leon as anyone.
“You say Leon’s body hasn’t been found,” Alexis said when Shane outlined his thoughts, “so I don’t see how you can think he was murdered.”
“I don’t think he was murdered,” Shane said. “I just think he might have been. What happened was inexplicable. Leon jumped out of the landing craft ahead of the others. There was a bright flash that blinded everyone, followed by utter darkness. When they could see again, there was a NuMan soldier where Leon had been and Leon had disappeared.”
“Are they sure it was Leon who led them that night? Everyone has the same uniform, helmet, night goggles, and breathing mask. Could it have been a NuMan right from the get-go?”
“They say they could see Leon’s human heat signature when they left the boat. The NuMan, of course, had only the usual glow around the battery pack.”
“Could the NuMan’s skin have emulated a warm body but suffered a failure after the bright flash?”
“It could, and it’s this kind of thinking that makes me suspicious about Leon’s disappearance,” Shane said. “We’ve had deaths before, accidents, but this is strange and convenient.”
“Tomas would be mad to kill Leon when everyone knew Leon was growing worried about the NuMan program. If anything, I can imagine Tomas being even more unhappy about this than you are.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. But then . . . maybe he did remove Leon . . . because he knew it would look like he didn’t do it because of the obvious advantage he gains.”
Alexis grimaced. “A bit convoluted, don’t you think? Anyhow, this can’t be settled without proof. I assume the security people are looking into what happened?”
“Of course, but they won’t find anything,” Shane said grimly. “If I’m right, whatever made Leon ‘disappear’ kills without leaving a trace. The only good news is that everyone’s concerns about the NuMen are now in the open and the Founders will have to address them.”
“If you’re right about Leon—but it isn’t certain. Anyhow, Tomas may cut up rough and the problem will be solved without any further damage to the institute,” Alexis replied, unwilling to believe that any institute man was as wicked as Shane clearly thought.
Shane brought the call to a close. His inability to get others to take his concerns seriously was frustrating. If he were more persuasive or had more of an ability to engage with people, they’d listen. That was something he’d shared with Leon.
With or without help, Shane decided, he’d do right by his fellow introvert somehow. The first step would be to get surveillance on Tomas. The institute didn’t allow such behavior, but the institute—and the rest of the security team for that matter—didn’t need to know. He’d do this alone—for the institute, for Leon, and for himself.
Chapter 6: Success and Suspicion
The Manta Ray spiraled downward, its propulsion pods pushing it faster toward the seabed. Inside the capsule, Shane tried to focus as the spinning threatened to empty his stomach into his suit. He lifted the cover on the suit’s emergency control panel and pushed a button.
The triggered check routine took only seconds, he knew, but it felt like a lifetime as darkness deepened around the capsule. The moment the green light signaling “all clear” appeared, he operated the capsule’s emergency release hatch. It, too, seemed to open in slow motion. He slipped through and watched the Manta Ray continue its rapid dive into darkness and out of sight.
Shane relaxed. The emergency suit would carry him to the surface slow
ly to save him from the bends. He had nothing to do but monitor his progress, ready to step in if there was trouble. Just as he was becoming bored, he reached the sunlit water where bigger fish could be seen on the suit’s monitors. He unclipped the underwater rifle attached to the suit and flicked off the safety catch.
None of the many fish about him appeared to consider Shane desirable eating, and his slow, steady ascent went without incident. The suit released its location buoy when he was still a hundred feet below water, and when he surfaced, the rescue chopper was waiting. The Manta Ray appeared nearby. He watched it turn and head for base as he rose from the water.
Inside the helicopter, he lay back in the chair with satisfied relief. He would now be approved for solo voyages, and his dream of creating his own underwater world could finally begin.
The meeting with the Founders three days after Leon’s disappearance wasn’t as successful as his final test had been. Leon’s disappearance had changed everything, but not quite to Shane’s satisfaction.
The Founders listened politely to Kurt and Yves as they described what they had witnessed since the new generation of robots had begun training with the Security Forces, sharing their uneasiness at the robots’ incredible skills. However, it was Leon’s disappearance that the Founders were focused on and not the superior abilities of the NuMen.
“We want Leon’s disappearance fully investigated,” Dean said. “There will be no more exercises until we understand what happened there.” He turned away from Shane’s team. “Tomas, we’ve heard from the others. Can you shed any light on what happened?”
“No, Founder. I can’t,” Tomas replied. “Nor can I explain the bright flash we all witnessed. It was not something the defenders set off. I was bewildered and for a moment thought it must have been some new weapon the attacking force was using, until I remembered that we are all aware of what weapons we have. It couldn’t have been something new.”
