by J. G. Martin
“What about the troops and defenses? How did you get all those resources when they were needed to try to help prevent the Collapse?” Derek pressed.
“We had sympathetic friends, like the General, in positions of authority. When the Collapse started they moved troops and other resources here to protect our burgeoning community. Most of the soldiers here came from a unit whose family members worked on our project in Alabama.” Dr. Banek continued.
“So they deserted?” Derek accused angrily.
The general bristled at that accusation. “We didn’t desert, the government deserted us. We came here to protect the only hope of civilization surviving after it became obvious that the legitimate government was decapitated and the new government was only interested in accruing more power.” He snapped.
“Hold on. The ‘only hope’? Isn’t that a bit melodramatic? What is really going on here? And how is it connected to the Collective?” Derek demanded.
He noticed that Rora had stopped eating and was listening intently. Both the general and the doctor squirmed in their seats. It was obvious they were holding something back. Derek figured they were holding back the real reason this was all here. It wasn’t just a spontaneous movement of people and resources to a possible safe place. It was an organized and well planned creation of a well-defended and fully supplied safe haven.
“All right. Cards on the table.” Dr. Banek finally acknowledged. “This is much larger than NASA. It started back in the 2001, before the decline of NASA. Following 9/11 the government formed a think tank to postulate possible disaster scenarios and design responses to them. It was a disparate group that included Hollywood screenwriters and science fiction authors, as well as scientists and CEOs. From the beginning it was run by the then Vice President and now President Rickard Channing. When he was reported to be at an undisclosed location, he was meeting with us. Rora’s father and Stefan Doors were founding members. It quickly became known as ‘The Collective’, apparently Doors was a huge Star Trek fan.”
Derek was stunned. He had never heard mention of such a group, and to learn that Doors and Channing had been co-workers was astonishing. Even more amazing was that the genesis of the current Collective had been in a government think tank. He wasn’t surprised Rora’s father had been part of the group; it was obvious he had been connected to Doors.
“At first we stayed true to the mission and thought up possible scenarios and possible solutions. But Channing and the military started pushing us towards developing weapons and other projects to counteract or pre-empt the possible scenarios. Things that were pure science fiction, and science currently prohibited by law, were pushed into development. Rail guns like the one we confiscated from you were the first thing to be worked on. Then we started working on viruses and other biological weapons. That was when we realized they were trying to create ways to inflict the scenarios on our enemies.” The doctor continued.
“Wait.” Derek interrupted. “You mean like a crop virus that would decimate enemy food supplies rendering them helpless?”
Dr. Banek sighed and Augie hung his head. “Yes, I’m afraid the crop virus that decimated the world’s plant life almost certainly came from that project…But we never intended it as a weapon. And we certainly never designed it to wipe out all plant life. It was supposed to only target a specific strain of plant. We created it to use as part of the project to develop the counteragent and it was also considered as a possible weed killing solution.”
Derek shook his head sadly. “Didn’t you realize that there are always unintended consequences?”
“We were working in secure facilities with total containment. There was no way that the virus could have escaped. It was also designed to go dormant after one use, meaning it couldn’t spread.” Dr. Banek said defensively.
“So you are saying someone modified it and spread it deliberately?” Derek asked.
“That is what we believe.” Augie interjected.
“Why don’t you know what happened? They got it out of your lab didn’t they?” Derek pressed.
“When we realized that the military and the government were going to misuse our work we resigned. There were enough scientists and we were important enough that they couldn’t just disappear us. So they made us sign ironclad non-disclosure agreements and continued to monitor us.” Dr. Banek explained. “I still had a few contacts inside the group who managed to keep me secretly informed on what happened in general, but I never knew all the details.”
“The military running amok with science is nothing new. How did we get to this point?” Derek asked.
“With most of the ethical scientists gone, they had very little to keep them in check. They began working on more and more fringe science projects and pushing the boundaries of ethics. In 2003 Doors was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He shifted the focus from weapons to finding a cure for cancer and then when they realized they couldn’t cure it to what is known as life extension.” Dr. Banek said slowly. “Cancer is a mutation of human genes and the longer you live the more likely they are to mutate because your genes ‘age’. So Doors and Channing pushed the group to develop a way to slow or even prevent the genes from ‘aging’. They figured this would keep the cancer from occurring and slow the spread of cancer in someone who already had it. They were successful in slowing the aging process. After a few human trials both Doors and Channing tried it. That’s why Channing actually looks younger now than 30 years ago.”
“One of the things they did was the SuPERHUMAAN project.” Rora chimed in.
“I was one of the human guinea pigs?” Derek asked in disbelief.
“It saved your life though. We looked at your records. They must have done the splicing during your surgery after you returned from China. According to the after action report you were ground meat when they got you. There is no way you should have survived.” Augie replied.
“Still…” Derek murmured.
“Unfortunately for Doors it slowed but didn’t stop the cancer. So he started moving the research towards machine intelligence and cybernetics. He became convinced that he could remove his failing body parts and replace them with something more durable, something that would never fail or need to be replaced. That was when they started creating the Humeks; to see if that would work for him. The cybernetic parts were a success, but his cancer had spread too far for them to be enough.” Dr. Banek related. “He decided to take a more desperate step. Doors had already developed the LINC for the Humeks to utilize and he realized it would grow as more were added into it. So he transferred his mind electronically into the LINC.”
“What?” Derek interrupted, confused.
“Are you familiar with the movie Lawnmower Man?” Augie asked.
“The original or the remake?” Derek replied cynically.
“Same plot in both…” Augie growled.
“I saw the remake.” Derek acknowledged.
“He made that happen. He no longer has a physical body and exists only in the machine. He might be crazy but the man was a genius.” Augie told him.
“He was already reclusive and when he removed himself from public view, people just assumed he was being eccentric.” Dr. Banek further explained. “I’m not sure whether he was already mentally unstable or the loss of his humanity pushed him over the edge, but once he no longer had a body he became obsessed with the fact that humanity was a blight on the earth. He believed that we were an invasive species that needed to be removed. He started focusing the Collective’s research in that direction.”
“Didn’t the government have a problem with that?” Derek asked.
“They did, but in 2009 when Channing left office the Collective was no longer funded by the new administration. They were unaware of what it really did and saw it as a vestige of the old administration that needed to be removed.” Augie explained. “So Channing and Doors secured private funding and moved the work to more remote facilities. Using his connections, Channing maintained some contracts with the milita
ry and the CIA on black projects. That allowed them access to government data and resources.”
“Like the project we found in Zinc, Arkansas that created the Drinkers.” Derek muttered.
Dr. Banek continued. “Without real oversight they got even further into banned and fringe science. The drones for example were developed from a CIA mind control experiment. Clones were created to replace world leaders or enemy agents. None of these projects were immediate success, but they kept working on them. As you know, they must have eventually been successful because we can see their results in action.”
“Are they still working together?” Derek asked.
“We don’t believe so. Even though they were working together, we believe they each had a separate agenda the other was unaware of. It was a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Doors continued to expand the LINC and his abilities within it, apparently creating the ability to control the drones remotely. He also recruited like-minded people to become what we call the Humeks. This was all done separate from what Channing was connected to.” Dr. Banek said. “Channing on the other hand, was using the knowledge to create a separate power base within the government and military in preparation for a coup. They believed the government was weakening the country and that it was moving towards socialism. He and his cronies didn’t want to become poor and subservient to the government so they were preparing to take action.”
“That’s ironic.” Derek said caustically.
Given how ninety percent of the population of the U.S.T.G. lived, that statement was pure hypocrisy. Most citizens of the U.S.T.G. were poor, lived very restricted lives, and worked incessantly to support the regime. Only the elites, the party members, lived in fortified and gated suburbs with green lawns and big houses. They shopped in well stocked malls and had cars and designer clothes. The average citizen lived in a squalid apartment building, ate processed crap, and wore one of three choices of gray shaded work uniforms. But, Channing and his cronies lived the high life so they were getting what they said they wanted. They just weren’t worried about the rest of the country’s freedoms and economic well-being.
“We aren’t sure if they worked together to engineer the Collapse, one of them did it by themselves, or if they took advantage of an already occurring event; but both executed their plans at that moment.” Augie added. “I don’t think Channing was aware of Doors’ plan because they seemed taken by surprise when the satellites went dead. Not to mention the ill-fated invasion of the Pacific Northwest. I think he and his group had expected to seize control of the entire U.S. not just the Midwest.”
“Except for the Northeast I assume?” Derek asked.
“Yes, intelligence indicates they disabled the missile shield for the Blue states in the Northeast.” Augie agreed. “That shield was an early Collective project so I’m sure they had back doors built in.”
“So who unleashed the virus?” Derek pressed.
“We don’t know.” Dr. Banek conceded. “But we know it was deliberately spread throughout the world. The original strain was only designed to attack food crops and it was supposed to be disabled by a counteragent. The strain that struck the U.S. was not the same as what was released in China. It was completely different and did not react to the counteragent.”
“How do you know that?” Rora interjected.
“Umm…we have a sample here we are working with.” Dr. Banek reluctantly acknowledged.
“What?” Derek exploded. “You are working with the virus that almost wiped out the world?”
“Relax, Major.” Augie insisted calmly. “We are working to find the counteragent in case whoever released it the first time does so again. We cannot start to plant crops on a large scale again until we make sure we can defend against it.”
Derek was only slightly mollified. It seemed to him like they hadn’t learned their lesson from the first time. That man shouldn’t be messing around so much with nature. Nature always had a way of striking back. The Happening may have been a terrible movie, but it had gotten one thing right. Nature was fighting back with what it had at its disposal. Plant allergies had sent more people to the emergency room than anything else. He wondered what else they were working on here in this supposed Utopia? What lurked beneath its idyllic exterior?
“We are not the enemy here Major.” Dr. Banek cajoled him. “The enemy is out there trying to turn all of us into slaves or zombies or eat us. Quite frankly I’m not sure which one is worse. We are the good guys. We set this all up to create a bastion of freedom from which to work towards rebuilding what we lost.”
“And who are you guys exactly?” Derek asked very directly.
“We call ourselves The Society. We formed it after we left the Collective and began recruiting members all over the world. We kept it very secret and very informal at first. We never met in person and operated through fake personas on message boards. We knew we were being watched by the government and then the Collective. So we operated under a cell structure even online. It was all purely talk and theory at that point anyway.” The doctor explained. “Once the general here joined us, we were able to utilize his connections to start to put some substance around our plans. The creation of this safe haven was our main priority. The project as put to the members was ‘What would it take to survive an Extinction Level Event?’. Anything we felt was real and doable that was suggested, we worked to make reality. This is a result of that project.”
“How does Rora’s father fit into this?” Derek asked.
“He was a member.” Augie informed them. “He decided not to come here because he didn’t want to put even more of a target on our back than we already had. His split from the Collective was not collegial, and we were already considered an enemy by both the Collective and the U.S.T.G. Neither one had attacked us yet, and he was afraid that if they knew he was here they would do so.”
“Why were they so interested in my father?” Rora asked quietly.
“The device.” Dr. Banek said flatly. “The device is a very powerful tool, one that controls the fate of this country. Both sides are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. However, neither side wants to be in open conflict with each other so they won’t just come here to seize it. If one side gains it, the other will be forced to attack the other to stop them from using it or destroying it. While your father had it, they were forced to remain neutral. Now that it is in play, all bets are off.”
“In play?” Derek asked.
“We know you have the device Major.” Augie answered. “We allowed you to keep it in hopes that it would show good faith on our part and we could convince you to join us.”
“That and it allowed me to complete the rescue mission without the Collective knowing where I was.” Derek replied sarcastically.
The general chuckled. “That too. But now we need to get to the real mission. The real reason we need you.”
“Let me guess. You want the device too, but you are too nice to just take it from me?” Derek asked sarcastically.
“Not exactly.” Dr. Banek said slowly. “What do you know about the device?”
“It makes the holder invisible to the Collective.” Derek replied simply.
“That is one of its functions, but it does so much more.” The doctor said in a lecturing tone. “It is making you invisible, as you put it, by interacting with the LINC at a core level. The device is removing you from all data streams the LINC receives and stores. You aren’t just invisible; you don’t exist according to the LINC.”
Derek wasn’t super impressed by that, but Rora seemed to be. She was leaning forward, totally focused on what Dr. Banek was saying. Being the daughter of a scientist and obviously way smarter than he was, it probably made more sense to her. But to him, all that mattered was they couldn’t see him or track him.
“The device is capable of accessing the LINC and changing it at its base code.” Dr. Banek continued. “This means it has the ability to override Doors’ control of the LINC and possibly even shut it down alto
gether.”
Rora gasped aloud at that statement. “So someone could either seize control of the LINC from Doors or turn it off and disconnect all the drones?” She asked.
“That is correct young lady.” Dr. Banek replied.
Now Derek understood why everyone wanted this device. The Collective, Doors really, obviously didn’t want someone to take control of his empire away from him. Everyone else was probably salivating at the possibility of gaining control of a ready-made army of mindless warriors with advanced weapons. Some were just in it for the money to sell the device to the highest bidder. And here he was stuck right in the middle. He had the device which everyone wanted, and which everyone was trying to kill him to get. What should he do with it? A big payoff and ride into the sunset, give it to someone who could use it wisely, keep it to maintain his ‘invisibility’ from the Collective, or give it to The Society and let them decide. All the choices seemed to have a very big downside of really pissing someone off.
“What do you want to do with it?” He finally asked.
The doctor and the general shared another one of their looks. Derek could tell they were deciding if they wanted to ask him to do what they really wanted and what his reaction might be. He wondered idly if there were gas dispensers in this room as well. They hadn’t disarmed him, which showed a level of trust; but it could also show a level of confidence in some unseen security system. He still wasn’t sure these guys were on the level, although Rora seemed to trust them completely. And they could have killed him while he was unconscious or simply taken the device. But they hadn’t.
“We would like to shut down the LINC.” Augie stated simply. “The controlling of humans as drones is an abomination and one we don’t wish for anyone to suffer from.”
“The LINC itself is a threat to humanity and its freedom.” Dr. Banek agreed.
“Okay, so why don’t we just do that?” Derek asked.
Another look was shared. “Well….” Dr. Banek started.
