by M. V. Kallai
So, it was settled. In two months time, the biomachines would be set loose to takeover Tyrine and control it’s population. When the call was finished, Pike wiped the sweat from his face and called his wife, Enira to let her know he wouldn’t be coming home that night.
Then, he called Mace Magner.
“Hello,” Mace answered in a gruff voice when his phone rang.
“Mace…you asleep?”
“I was, sir,” Mace said recognizing the general’s voice.
“Well, get up and get your ass in here! We’ve got work to do,” General Pike said and hung up.
Chapter Forty-Three
In Deeper
Mace Magner arrived at General Pike’s office door toting two steaming cups of coffee. The clock on the wall said 4:05 a.m. and Mace’s breath still reeked of the beer he drank before he went to bed.
“Morning, sir,” he said.
“Mace, we have a problem,” General Pike said and explained to him the time crunch they were facing with turning out functional, glitch-free weapons.
“And if we can’t gain control of them through programming?” Mace asked.
“Then our department will be shut down,” General Pike replied.
“We can’t let that happen. Those machines are our key to controlling Tyrine.”
“Alternate plans of attack are being drawn up by the heads of government as we speak, but I didn’t call you in here to cry about it. I have worked too long and too hard on this project to let it get snatched away from me over a glitch in the system,” General Pike said.
Mace took a long sip of his coffee as he listened to the general’s rant.
“Mace, it’s time we made our own alternate plan.”
General Pike pulled out plans of the TRU Building and spread them across his desk. “Here,” he continued, pointing to a wing of the building that used to be used for interrogation and prisoner holding before the upstairs rooms on the thirteenth floor were built.
“We can fit seventy-five biomachines in these rooms and no one will ever know. We will move them at night. If we can get five a night, we will be at capacity in our two-month time frame. I will get Agent Quinn to clear the route and alter surveillance. You will secure the restraints and the two of us will work on building the stalls ourselves.”
“That just leaves one missing necessary person, a handler.”
“Yes, I know. That is the problem. You have today to find someone from your team down there who can keep their damn mouth shut.”
“They’re all whiney little bastards as far as I can tell, sir. All of them would pose a risk.”
“I was afraid of that. Well, we’ll just have to pick the one who is the biggest threat to the program already and keep him…well, let’s just say his coworkers will think he was an unfortunate casualty of yesterday’s chaos with the weapons yesterday.”
“You have someone in mind already.”
“Yes. The boy you brought in here after the first accident…Luke.”
“That could be a problem, sir. His work may be vital to making the project successful. He’s one of the two top programmers.”
“He still can be. He just won’t work with the others. He’ll work from his new home office…right here,” General Pike said and pointed to the building plans again, this time to a small room adjacent to the old prisoner cells where the seventy-five would be kept.
“People will know he’s not dead. He was working yesterday.”
“I’ve scrutinized the security footage of the facility from the outburst until the end of the day and he is nowhere to be seen. How many people down there are really aware of his presence?”
“Well, one that I can think of.” Charisa’s face popped into Mace’s mind as he said it. “But aside from her, he stays mostly confined to his office…which is somehow out of view of the security cameras,” Mace said, scanning the still pictures of the security pictures. He wondered why that was. He was sure every inch of the place was monitored.
“Ha, that’s easy. One person. Easily contained. It can be written off as rumor if she says anything,” Pike argued.
“She’s gonna be so busy she won’t have time to start a rumor, but I kind of have a way with this girl,” Mace said. “I’ll see to it that she doesn’t talk.”
“Good. Now go find this Luke at his home and bring him in so he doesn’t have a chance to come into work and interact with anyone,” Pike ordered.
Mace clicked his feet together and saluted the General, then left to locate an address for Luke.
Later that morning at Tripple Laboratories, Bearden arrived unexpectedly to help with Lee and Dana with the biomer before he went into work. He walked into an empty main lab. The embryos wriggled around in their tubes, looking distressed, but still alive. He walked back toward Lab E, where the biomer was kept, and knocked on the door. Four seconds later, the door cracked open and Dana’s big brown eyes peered through.
“Oh, it’s you,” She said and opened the door all the way.
“Who else would it be?” Bearden said and walked past her. Dana shrugged. She and Lee looked exhausted. He doubted if they had slept since he saw them the previous morning. Lee was dropping cells of biomer from a tiny glass dropper onto a sheet-like mold. He didn’t look up when Bearden came in and probably didn’t even notice.
“We’re making a womb,” Dana offered with excitement.
“Huh. I can see how that would work. Just have a good buffer in there while the embryos are still developing. You wouldn’t want to take a chance with untested bonding,” Bearden said half joking and half wondering if it was possible. After what he saw in the weapons unit yesterday, his mind was open to accept just about any possibility, and it made him feel sick to his stomach. Dana rolled her eyes at his comment.
“I’ve got a couple hours before I have to be at work. How can I help?” he asked. Dana smiled at him and looked happy, for once, that he was there.
“You can help me stretch this biomer sample into quadruple cell layers for Lee to work with,” she said and led him over to her workstation. Bearden smiled back at her and put on a pair of gloves.
At the same time, Mace Magner was standing out in the cold in front of a small residential building not far from the TRU Building. The sun was just coming up behind the cloud-covered sky, casting a purplish gold aura around him. His arms were crossed and his breath made a white mist in the air. The effect of the morning combined with his height and build made Mace, from a distance, look otherworldly. He waited a half an hour for Luke to walk out of the building. When he did, Luke saw Mace right away and dropped his coffee from shock. This was satisfying to Mace who stomped over to the spindly programmer and grabbed him by his arm.
“You have to come with me this morning, Luke. The general and I have a job for you,” Mace whispered to him.
“Oh, a job for me? Are you sure? I mean I have so much to do already,” Luke said in a loud nervous voice, stumbling while being half dragged through the street by Mace.
“Shut up,” Mace whispered again.
“Okay,” he whispered back. “But I just need to call Charisa. She’ll go nuts if I’m not there to meet her. We planned to meet early today.”
“Where?”
“Coffee shop. Two blocks from here,” Luke said as Mace shoved him into the back of an unmarked government transport.
“Stay here. I’ll take care of Charisa. Which direction is that coffee shop?”
Luke pointed north and his face scrunched into a deep cringe when Mace slammed the door and locked him in. Luke had no idea what was going on. He worried that he was in trouble for the faulty biomachines and wondered what Charisa would do when Major ‘Pain in the Ass’ walked in instead of him. He felt bad for her. Charisa never wanted to be in a situation where she had to be alone with that man, especially outside of the unit. Luke slouched down in the seat of the transport and reached for his phone, only to realize that Major Magner must have lifted it from his jacket while dragging him to the tra
nsport.
“Dammit!” he shouted and reached for the door and tugged on the exit handle. It wouldn’t budge. He beat on the window with his fists and yelled for help, but it was early and the side street that Mace had parked on was deserted. It was useless.
Two blocks north, Charisa was sitting at a small table in the back of the Morning Dew Drip House. She was watching the door in between sips of her steaming coffee. Mace stood outside and just watched her for a minute with a dirty smile on his face. He ran his fingers through his spiky hair and walked in and straight over to her table. Charisa gasped when she saw him. Her instinct was to run, but he didn’t act like he was there coincidentally and Luke was nowhere in sight. Her expression turned to worry as Mace sat himself across from her with a straight face.
“Major, what are you doing here?” she asked looking around to count the others in coffee house, in case they were needed as witnesses.
“You look frightened, Charisa. I hope not of me,” Mace said and reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
“I am frightened, sir. Where is Luke? Why are you here?” Charisa asked and jerked her hand away from him.
“Fine, if you don’t want consolation,” Mace said.
“Why would I need consolation? Where is Luke?”
“Luke’s dead, Charisa. Found in his flat early this morning. Gunshot, possible suicide, we’re looking into it.”
“What! No…that’s not possible,” Charisa said, her hands beginning to tremble and tears falling out of her eyes. “I was with him until late last night. He was fine. You are lying to me!”
“I wish I was, but it is what it is. I just thought I’d be a gentleman and tell you in person.” Mace said and smiled, enjoying her pain.
“You! You did this!” she yelled and stood up. Everyone in the coffee house was staring at them. She ran out and down the street in the direction of Luke’s flat.
“Where are you going, Charisa?” Mace called after her, coming out of the coffee house too.
“I don’t believe it! I have to see for myself.”
Mace ran and caught her easily. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her tight into his body.
“Don’t do that, girlie,” he said softly in her ear.
“Let me go!” She was kicking and fighting him. Mace put his hand over her mouth and pulled her into an alley and pressed her up against a wall.
“Now, you listen to me. You are going to have to deal with this and deal with it fast, because you are needed at the unit in under an hour. Now, I suggest you pull yourself together and forget you even saw me this morning.”
Charisa squirmed and grunted while her tears soaked Mace’s hand, still over her mouth. He was pressed so close to her, she could tell he was enjoying himself. Finally, she stopped moving and Mace stepped away from her. She wiped her eyes on her jacket and caught her breath.
“That’s better. Now, I’m going to watch you walk away to work. I’ll come and check on you when I get there. And if I find out you’ve gone anywhere else…well, sweetheart, let’s just say, I know where you live…and I don’t always knock.”
Charisa folded her arms across her chest protectively and hurried off to work, her hair matted against her wet face, looking behind her every few paces to see that Mace was still watching her walk away.
After she was out of sight, Mace went into Luke’s building and into his flat. He found a bag and packed as many of his things as he could fit, then left, padlocking the door behind him. He returned to the transport to take Luke to his new accommodation at the TRU Building. He was thinking how Charisa’s distress would surely make plausible the story that Luke was killed in the chaos yesterday. She would likely lock herself in her office for days, unable to talk about the details, to anyone. She was a mess and Mace was having a fantastic morning.
As he drove the short distance back to the unit, he decided to get a couple of things straight with Luke.
“Where were you yesterday during the er…incident?”
“In my office, helping a nurse with a wounded soldier,” he answered.
“A nurse?”
“Yes, I caught her as she was walking by to help the others. It was luck that I bumped into her. I didn’t even know that any nurses had clearance down there.”
“They don’t!” Mace yelled, filling with rage. This only meant one thing…the weaponry unit had been breached.
“Then who was that woman? I mean, she knew what she was doing and all…I was...”
“Luke!” Mace interrupted, “You talk too much.”
“Only when I’m nervous, sir, like now. I mean, you haven’t told me anything. Am I in trouble?”
“You will be if you don’t shut up. Like I said, the general and I have a job for you. I’ll explain when we get you inside,” Mace said and landed on top of the old interrogation wing of the building. “Do you remember what that nurse looked like?”
“Oh, yeah,” Luke said, “She was so pretty.”
Mace got out of the transport, unlocked Luke and rushed him inside to a small room with a computer and a cot.
“Here ya go. Your new flat. I hope you like it,” Mace said and hurled Luke’s bag into his gut.
“What?” Luke asked. “I don’t understand.”
“You will. General Pike and I will be by later to explain. In the mean time, keep working on your programming. It looks like the general had your hard drive copied so you should have everything you need,” Mace said, nodding toward the computer.
“What about a coffee pot?” he asked timidly. “I always have a coffee pot near my desk. I’m a coffee junkie.”
Mace laughed at him.
“You’re negotiating. Ok. I’ll get you a coffee pot. But you’ll have to earn the coffee to put in it,” Mace said, still laughing. “See you later, Luke.”
Mace closed the door and went directly to General Pike’s office to give him a report.
Chapter Forty-Four
Fix It
That afternoon, General Pike had Camden Riles brought to his office. Camden had never met the husband of the woman he had been sleeping with for the past year, but he was not thinking about that. He just wanted to get back to his life and his home. When he walked into his office, the look on the general’s face told him it wouldn’t be a congenial meeting. Without waiting for him to make an introduction, Camden decided to lead the conversation.
“How long will you keep me here, General?” Camden asked.
“You and Colonel Ganesh have conspired in crimes against your own government. That’s an executable offense. So, as far as you’re concerned, I own you and I can keep you here indefinitely.”
“Or else death? Those are my options? Do you even have proof of this heinous crime in which I’m being accused or does it just suit some ulterior motive of yours to steal my superior mind?”
“Silence Riles! How dare you stand there with your puffed up attitude talking down to me. You’re lucky you aren’t working in shackles, you arrogant son of a bitch. And I will be asking the questions here.”
“What is it exactly that you want to ask then, General? Why your machines keep killing your soldiers?”
Ganesh had been keeping Camden abreast of the situation in the weaponry unit.
“Uhh..well…actually, yes. Do you know why?” General Pike asked, half hoping that the smart ass Riles wouldn’t have the answer.
“Perhaps,” Camden replied taking a seat and crossing his arms and legs. His smugness was almost too much for General Pike to handle, but he gritted his teeth and asked,
“What do you want?”
Camden smiled, knowing that because of the press coverage on his space travel project, Pike was unlikely to beat any information out of him. Cuts and bruises would raise the public’s suspicion.
“I want to go home…unmonitored. Simple as that.”
“That’s not going to happen, Professor,” the general laughed with a hoarse voice.
“Face it, General, you need me,” Camden
said.
“Fine! You can go home on weekends…with constant surveillance. But you are still a prisoner and if I have to, I will end you and make it look like an accident. And if you jerk me around, or give me false information about any of the work you do for me, I will end…”
“Yes, yes, and make it look like an accident. I get it,” Camden said and thought for a moment.
“Okay, add one night out a week to visit my colleague, Lee Tripple, at our supper club…unsupervised…and you have a deal.”
The general laughed again.
“Fine. Fine. Take your night out.” Pike wasn’t worried about the supper club. Mace had recently placed Enira’s club under constant surveillance because Lee Tripple frequented the place. And he was confident that his wife would eavesdrop for him. Camden also was just as confident that Enira would lie for him if he asked her to.
“Now tell me what you know about the biomer that our scientists don’t,” Pike said.
“Here’s my theory,” Camden replied. “We know that once the biomer bonds, it holds capacity for memory, meaning it will always regenerate back to its programmed form. But I think the memory bond happens before, in its raw form. If I’m right, then logic follows that biomer, in any bonded state, from the same original unit of raw material, will recognize itself in any form, especially if it is gifted with artificial intelligence.”
