by Steven James
A driver sat quietly in the front.
The two tattooed thugs positioned themselves on each side of the colonel. One of them produced a blindfold and handed it to him.
“It’s either this or drugs.”
He accepted the blindfold, put it on, and the vehicle pulled away from the curb.
Autonomy
The only sound in the RV is the flipping of pages as Xavier and I make our way through the files and photocopied pages he has spread out before us on the table.
I have a pen in hand, and I’m taking notes from the “Technology Horizons” Air Force document as I move through it.
It states the priorities of Air Force research and development in the coming years:
Two key areas in which significant advances are possible in the next decade with properly focused Air Force investment are: (i) increased use of autonomy and autonomous systems, and (ii) augmentation of human performance; both can achieve capability increases and cost savings via increased manpower efficiencies and reduced manpower needs.
Autonomous weapons and augmented human performance. Precisely what Xavier had been telling me about earlier.
As I read on I feel a squirm of discomfort in my chest when I consider the implications of what this document has to say.
Closer human-machine coupling and augmentation of human performance will become possible and essential.
I peer across the table at my friend. “How did you get ahold of this, anyway?”
“It’s in the public domain. Anyone can access it.”
“So all this stuff you’ve told me over the years about the experimental aircraft out at Groom Lake . . .” I can hardly believe I’m saying this. “It’s for real?”
He nods toward the report. “According to those Air Force documents—and other ones—the research is occurring as we speak. The military just doesn’t announce where they’re doing it. But one of the most secure military installations on the planet is Area 51. It’s also where they test their most classified experimental aircraft and drones; we know that too.”
I tap my finger against the pages. “So, it only makes sense that they would at least be doing some of these tests there.”
“Yes.”
Among conspiracy theorists, Area 51 is famously known as the place where the alien body, or spacecraft, or both, was taken after the supposed UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, back in 1947. According to Xavier and his friends, the Air Force has been studying the aircraft since that time, reverse engineering it, or at least trying to.
“How come you never showed me these documents before?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “You never took any of it seriously. I didn’t think you’d accept them as legit.”
“Okay, I’m taking you seriously now.”
“Glad to hear it. Despite what they say, you’re not an entirely lost cause.”
“Thanks.”
I go back to the Air Force document.
Augmentation may come from increased use of autonomous systems, interfaces for more intuitive and close coupling of humans and automated systems, and direct augmentation of humans via drugs or implants to improve memory, alertness, cognition, or visual/aural acuity, as well as screening for specialty codes based on brainwave patterns or genetic correlates.
Considering what Xavier has been telling me and what I’m now reading, I can actually see where he and his conspiracy theorist friends are coming from.
The military wants to augment humans with drugs and implants.
A specific, direct, and purposeful move toward transhumanism.
Earlier, Xavier had mentioned that Emilio had shown interest in Groom Lake, we found a military-encrypted USB drive in his things, and he was murdered and his home ransacked. All of it is interwoven somehow, I just have no idea how.
When I consider the military’s goal of augmenting people, my thoughts return to what Xavier and I were talking about earlier—enhancement and augmentation. It’s clear that the more we merge with machines, or with other species, the blurrier the lines become about what makes us human.
“Xavier, the Air Force is looking for ways to augment and enhance its soldiers. Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the negative implications of all this. I can picture it now—you have unenhanced humans and you have augmented ones. How will they compete in sports contests? There won’t be any way of evaluating them, comparing them, making things fair.”
“And that’s not all.” He’s flipping through manila folders looking for something. “Follow with me here. Machines follow protocol. In a sense, they would be better than human operators who might miss something, make decisions clouded by anger or feelings of revenge. Or even just weariness. Machines don’t get tired in the afternoon and need a cup of coffee to stay alert.”
“But what happens when a drone makes a mistake and kills innocent civilians? Who do you hold accountable? I mean, you’re not going to court-martial the drone.”
“The programmers. The ones who came up with the algorithms. Or maybe the manufacturer of the drone or its computer system. It’s still a big question mark. Right now no one really knows. For the time being, killer robots are still on the drawing board.” He taps the Human Rights Watch document. “But not for long.”
That was a scary thought—that a computer programmer could be tried for war crimes for coming up with a certain algorithm.
Or what if he did it on purpose? Without human operators in the loop, all you’d need to do is hack into a drone—and that’s already been done.
“Reprogram a machine with different parameters or rules of engagement.” I’m thinking aloud. “And then if you started to get AI that could analyze data trillions of times faster than humans can . . .”
“Skynet.”
“Autonomous weapons.”
“A Terminator scenario.”
“Exactly.”
It’s more than a little disconcerting how well the pieces fit together.
It’s all just conspiracy theory stuff. They always find ways to “prove” their theories.
Yes, that might be true, but Emilio is dead.
But what did he have to do with any of all this? And how might he be connected to RixoTray?
Before I can reflect on that anymore, we hear from Charlene that she hasn’t been able to get anywhere with the FBI. It’s closing in on 11:30 now, and we need to be leaving soon if we’re going to have time to grab lunch and make the one o’clock rehearsal at the Arête.
After the break-in at Emilio’s house, and considering we have the USB drive that whoever was there was very likely looking for, I’m not keen on the idea of leaving Fionna and her kids alone here at the house.
I suggest to Charlene that we all meet at the Arête for lunch. Fionna can take her kids to the pool or to the rock climbing wall while we go to rehearsal.
I don’t tell Charlene all of my reasoning, but she agrees with the idea of meeting at the hotel to eat, and while we finish up the conversation, Xavier goes to the house to see if Fionna is on board with the idea.
Since the Arête caters to the affluent twenty-something single crowd, there are more bars and nightclubs there than family-friendly sit-down restaurants. In fact, there’s really only one choice.
“So, Jenny’s Grille?” I suggest to Charlene. We’ve been there countless times, so I don’t need to tell her where it is: just south of the main lobby, near the boutique shops.
“Sure,” she tells me. “I’ll meet you there.”
Xavier returns and informs me that Fionna and the kids will be right out. We gather up our notes, and when the McClurys appear, I pack the kids into the Aston Martin so they can experience riding in the DB9, Xavier climbs into Fionna’s minivan with her so he can fill her in on our transhumanism discussion, and we all take off for the Arête.
Dust of the Dead
Colonel Derek Byrne felt the SUV roll to a stop and heard a garage door rattle shut behind the vehicle.
“Te lo puedes quitar,” t
he man on his left said: You can take it off.
Derek untied the blindfold. They were in a dreary, abandoned warehouse.
The men opened the doors and ushered Derek out of the vehicle. The shorter of the men went for the suitcase and demanded that he, rather than Derek, carry it.
“Of course.”
Derek stood quietly with his arms outstretched, allowing the gigantic man to pat him down. When he found the spool of thick suture thread and the needle in Derek’s pocket, he frowned. “What’s this for?”
“Sewing.”
“Sewing?” He gave the colonel a scoff of disbelief.
“A hobby of mine. But if you don’t trust me to have a needle and thread, feel free to hang on to them. I’ll just get them back from you later.”
“You know what?” He pocketed them. “I think I will.”
Derek did not carry a gun. If he needed a weapon he would simply take one from the people attacking him and use it to kill them.
It was how he’d handled things in the past when he was on assignment in the Middle East working for the United States government. It was how he would handle things today, if necessary.
He noticed that the two thugs were both packing. That could work out well for him later.
The man frisking him pulled out the Ziploc bag of gray powder that Colonel Byrne had in his pocket. “What’s this?”
“It’s for my coffee.”
The guy grunted. “Alright.” He handed Derek back the plastic bag and announced to his associates, “He’s clean.”
The driver led the way, and the two brutes followed closely behind Derek. The warehouse smelled of long-accumulated dust and grease and was lit only by two narrow, grimy windows set in the wall nearly twenty feet above the oil-stained concrete floor. A thin fringe of dirty light crawled in beneath each of the three garage doors, but didn’t offer much relief at all from the warehouse’s consuming shadows.
Dead industrial machines languished in the center of the room. In the dingy light Derek wasn’t able to make out what they might have been used for. Textiles, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure.
The driver grabbed a sliding metal door and yanked it to the side to reveal a room illuminated only by several dozen candles. All the flames leaned to the side as the rush of air from the opening door swept over them, then flickered their way back to normal.
A statue of Christ nailed to the cross hung on the wall.
Three more men, all Hispanic, stood inside the room. Two had AK-47s in hand and slings of ammo draped across their chests. They flanked the third man, who was dressed in an immaculate, flawless white suit and carried no visible weapon.
A chair sat beside him. A small table with a carafe and two cups waited in the corner.
“Colonel,” he said. “Hola.”
“Hello, Jesús.”
Jesús Garcia, head of the Los Zetas, one of the most powerful Mexican cartels operating here in the States, gestured toward the chair. Some of the cartels in El Salvador or Colombia are more established, but the ones in Mexico are quickly becoming one of the biggest threats to Americans, and Colonel Byrne knew better than to take this meeting lightly.
“Have a seat, my friend,” Jesús said.
Derek knew it was a power play. There was only one chair. Sitting would put him at a lower level than the rest of the men, make it easier for them to loom over him.
He’d only met Jesús twice before, but said, “Let’s both stand. That way we can look each other in the eye. Like friends do.”
That brought a smile and a small laugh. “Sí, sí, claro. Of course.”
For years, the US government has referred to its efforts against controlled substances as the War on Drugs. And now, the cartels have reached the levels of military sophistication to make that statement truer than ever.
They far outgun the police, even the SWAT teams, of nearly every major US city. They have better body armor, heavier artillery, and their communication systems are rivaled only by the US military.
When threatened, the cartels have gone as far as targeting US police officers and their families with sniper attacks. In some cities they have their own SWAT uniforms, they know the response times and routes, and they can respond before the actual SWAT team. They use high-capacity magazines and body armor and they’re not going to quit or walk away until they have what they’re after.
They also have high-explosive grenades and use standardized assault rifles and shotguns of the same design to make it easier to train and to exchange ammo and clips in gunfights. They’re starting to use rounds designed to go through body armor and armored vehicles.
Some cartels even use small remote-controlled planes and submarines to transport their drugs to the states.
Hezbollah has been bringing people across the US border, in cooperation with the cartels, for the last decade. Derek knew this, knew that this connection was one that the US government was reluctant to publicly acknowledge but that existed nevertheless.
He also knew that in Mexico, law enforcement and the military were so infiltrated by the cartels that there really was no way of stopping them apart from US military intervention. But the US hasn’t made a practice of deploying troops to Mexico because the cartels influence the judges, and if Americans are caught in that country, there’s a law that they must be tried by a Mexican court rather than shipped back to the US for their trials, and US soldiers definitely did not want to be tried by a corrupt Mexican court.
Jesús asked Derek, “And how is Mr. Becker?”
“As far as I know he’s hanging in there.”
“But, as I understand, he hasn’t served you as well as you’d hoped?”
“We’re adapting.”
“As you always do.”
“As I always do.”
Derek couldn’t help but wonder if Jesús was the person masterminding the project. It would make sense—he had the money, the resources, the manpower, and the motivation to get behind it. But there was something about it that just didn’t fit.
Maybe it was only a gut feeling, but whatever it was, it was there, and he held back from making too many assumptions.
Derek needed to feel things out, see where they led. As they say, discretion is the better part of valor, and he would do his best to discern the truth without being too blatant about it or coming across as unnecessarily intrusive.
On the other hand, there was something to be said about simply being direct, so he decided to play things by ear.
“I was told we were going to discuss the delivery of the merchandise.”
Jesús gave him a half grin. “Right to the point. Yes, and that is one of the things I like about you. Coffee first?”
Decorum dictated that he accept the offer. “Certainly.”
A few moments later the coffee was poured and Derek had mixed in the powder that he carried with him.
Jesús took a sip of his own coffee and watched the colonel curiously. “The first two times we met, you added that same powder to your coffee. It isn’t creamer, is it?”
“No.”
“And it’s not some kind of drug.”
“No, it’s not.”
“May I ask you, then, what it is you take in your coffee?”
The colonel dipped his spoon into the cup and gently swirled it. “Dust.”
“Dust?”
“Yes. Ground up from a mummy.”
The room was silent. Candles licked at the stale air. No one moved. At last Jesús laughed heartily. “Mummy dust?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Derek slyly out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t believe you.”
“In the 1700s and 1800s it was quite common in Europe to eat mummies. They believed it served as a remedy for many common maladies, and also that it granted them long life. I do it as a tribute to them and as a reminder of the brevity and transient nature of our lives.”
He took another sip and saw one of the men with the assault rifles swallow uneasily.
&n
bsp; “In a way, this dust is a bit like rattlesnake venom.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You can drink rattlesnake venom. Your stomach can digest it, but you wouldn’t want an open sore in your mouth while you’re drinking it. Or, let a snake pierce your skin with its fangs and inject the venom into your bloodstream, well, that’s when you’re in trouble. It’s the same with the mummy dust.”
“You can digest it but you wouldn’t want to get it into your bloodstream.”
“You absolutely would not. The chemicals they used to embalm the mummies. The germs. Not a pleasant way to go.” He dabbed the coffee from his lips. “It took me years, actually, to find legitimate mummies that could be ground up, but finally I stumbled across a private collector in Germany who was able to supply me with what I needed.”
Jesús shook his head. “I’ve seen some disagreeable things over the years, but even I find cannibalism a bit . . . excessive.”
“Throughout history, humans have shown a distinct ability to find the practices of other cultures cannibalistic, even as they practice culturally-approved-of forms of it in their own.”
A tiny smile. “Ah, but I’m afraid it’s rather uncommon to eat people in Mexico these days. And we certainly don’t grind up corpses and mix them into our coffee.” His men snickered in agreement.
Derek pointed to the cross of Christ on the wall. “Jesús, your namesake told his followers to eat his flesh, to drink his blood. Mass, or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, whatever term you wish to use, is a symbolic form of cannibalism that millions of Mexicans take part in every week. Catholics believe the body and blood of Christ are actually present. How is that not a cannibalistic ritual?”
Jesús clasped his hands together admiringly. “Well done. Very good, Colonel. Yet, despite that, I think I will pass on the mummy dust for today.” He downed his own coffee. “So then, on to business?”
“Yes.”
“The merchandise. It will be delivered tomorrow night?”
“At 8:46. Just as we agreed. That’s when the training exercise begins.”
