He opened one bleary eye to look at her, and was about to reply that running laps this time of day should be considered criminal, when he discovered, despite the bleariness of his vision, that she was completely sans clothing. That’s right, he realized. The previous night’s activities left had them both in such a state.
He found there was one thing that seemed to wake him up even more quickly than coffee. He grabbed her by an arm and playfully pulled her back to him. “How about you run those laps right in here, with me?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sammy had begun life as a photon computer, embedded in the shell of an old, early-generation Macintosh computer. Now, however, he had a body. Something Scott had designed.
When Sammy looked in the mirror, what he saw looking back at him could easily pass for a human male, maybe thirty years old. Dark brown hair, a light complexion. Gray eyes. This face could even grown a beard. Sammy actually had to shave every morning. Facially, if seen in the right light, and with a little imagination, and if you weren’t looking to closely, he thought he might almost look a little like Nathan Fillion. Maybe.
It was not a nuts-and-bolts android body, with pulleys and gears and such. This was so close to a living organism, Sammy doubted if the average human physician could tell the difference at first glance. Or even second glance. Synthetic blood ran through synthetic arteries and veins, providing oxygen which fueled synthetic skin cells and bone cells and muscle cells. The draw-back was if Sammy cut himself shaving, he tended to bleed a sort of bluish fluid, but what the hell? He now had a nervous system. He had a sense of taste that, as far as Scott could tell, approximated the human sense.
Sammy could have a beer with the guys. He found his favorite was Pabst, to which Chuck said, “Maybe Scott needs to adjust those synthetic taste buds a little.”
Everyone at the complex had a job, and Sammy’s was still the same as it had been before. However, where before he had run everything remotely from within his old Mac casing, he now sat in a chair and pushed buttons and watched view screens.
His brain was still a photon computer, running on enough gigabytes to choke an elephant. He could run many functions at once, though he was finding he could not run as many as before. Small price to pay for being more human, he supposed.
He was also stronger than the average human. He could lift a man with one arm. And he had super-human endurance. Scott had built in these things specifically as an added defense should Sammy ever find himself in a life-threatening situation. And Jake knew a thing or two about martial arts, and was teaching Sammy efficient ways to use his strength and speed.
Since Sammy could no longer really function as the central computer for the complex, he and Scott had built another. This one was less high-tech than Sammy, functioning on more of a traditional processor. If they kept building photonic computers, Sammy thought, all of which would eventually gain sentience and then ask for a more human body, they would never get any work done (Scott had told Sammy he had a warped sense of humor, which convinced Sammy he would fit in fine as a member of the team). This new computer had to have a huge processor, as things like maintaining a teleportation field required a load of memory. Sammy and Scott had designed innovations such as sub-micro circuitry, but still the computer required a lot of room. Jake had burrowed a new chamber beneath them the size of a basketball court, and the new computer filled most of the space.
They had built a small alcove off the main laboratory, to serve as a terminal to the new central computer, and this was now Sammy’s primary workplace. Fifteen monitors were mounted to the alcove wall, where he could glance at them. Because of his ability to do serious multi-tasking, he could actually keep an eye on all of them almost simultaneously. Before him was a keyboard, though the computer also accepted voice commands.
At the moment, he was powering up a teleportation field that would be used for today’s mission. It was taking it a while to power up because they would not only be teleporting, they would also be time traveling and dimension hopping, and such things required an enormous amount of power.
They would traveling be to the distant past of the alternate Earth Scott had been observing for some time. This Earth seemed to be exactly like ours in every way, even in the shape of its continents, except that it had experienced a recent ice age, and only now the glaciers were receding. Humans existed there, but in limited numbers. Those in the wintry tundra and early forests of their Europe and North America were living in stone age conditions. In the North Africa area, which seemed to have weather more like Canada on our Earth, a civilization similar to old Egypt was starting up.
This provided a great opportunity to observe the development of early human civilization. It also might provide an answer to the question – why, on this alternate Earth, where conditions were so similar to ours, had another ice age struck?
Sammy hypothesized the answer might lie in a crater in the area of what would be Quebec on our world. The crater was huge, and observational satellites Scott had launched into their atmosphere suggested it might be maybe seven thousand years old.
As soon as Scott got enough coffee into himself to get his super brain functioning, he would join Sammy and they would prepare the final protocols for departure.
Scott would be taking Jake with him, and Rick and April. They expected to be gone no more than a few hours, but this would be the first time a living human had actually stepped into the past, except for the brief trial run Scott had given the device a week earlier.
Sammy had to admit, he found the whole thing quite exciting. He would like to accompany them, but someone had to remain behind and monitor the mission, and he was the best suited for this. And Chuck was remaining behind to provide security for their home base. Scott wanted Sammy’s full focus to be on monitoring the mission.
“I don’t mind staying behind,” Chuck said to Sammy, when he learned he wouldn’t be joining the time travelers. “My ability would probably be useless there, anyway, unless they wanted to start another ice age. I’ll be much more valuable here.”
“You just want to be within reach of the beer cooler.”
Chuck shrugged. “Well, I do have my priorities.”
The time travelers would first be beamed to the alternate universe, and from there, backward in time. A two-step process. They could not be beamed to the exact mountaintop point that corresponded with the location of this facility, because on the alternate Earth, glaciers covered this entire mountain range. They would have to be beamed to another location, and this complicated matters a little. Required many more computations.
On another screen, Sammy was monitoring atmospheric conditions on the alternate Earth. He and Scott had also launched some weather satellites. Lightning storms tended to muck with teleportation fields, so they wanted to beam into an area where the sky was clear. The data was arriving in the form of binary code, which Sammy and Scott could both read more easily than the average human could read words on a page, but no one else at the complex was fluent in binary, so Sammy was having the central computer translate it all into English.
On yet another screen, a baseball game was in progress. The Yomiuri Giants were taking on the Yakuit Swallows. This time of day, the only baseball being played was in Japan, but that was fine with Sammy - he was fluent in Japanese, as well as a couple dozen other languages. He was developing a serious obsession with baseball, with all of its multi-layered intricacies, and found its fascination to be never-ending.
Sammy was also hacking into FBI computers and communications, monitoring chatter. He was only half-listening, as the computer chirped out binary code into a receiver built into his head, but the computer was programmed to alert him to certain catch phrases and words. Specifically, anything relating to Quentin Jeffries or Mandy Waid or Kimberly Stratton or Peter LaSalle. Also, anything relating to an apparent meta-human who seemed to be operating out of both Boston and New York, as a self-styled vigilante. News reports on this meta-human had begun to surface a few mon
ths after this facility became operational. None of the reports were all that conclusive, but it seemed this meta-human had some sort of ability to become immaterial, possibly like April, but he also seemed to have some sort of telepathic ability. Attention had been drawn to him when he had rescued a child from a kidnapper, a few months earlier. He operated only at night, and seemed to focusing his vigilante activities on everything from large scale drug trafficking to breaking up muggings. The cops were trying to find him, but were having zero luck. The F.B.I. had been brought in, and they weren’t doing much better. News reports were referring to him either as The Great Darkness.
Scott felt investigating him might be worthwhile, and it was on their ever-growing list of things to do.
Quentin Jeffries had seemed to fall off the proverbial face of the Earth after Scott beamed him from the complex back to Boston, almost a year and a half ago. Mandy had seemed to disappear, also. Peter LaSalle had been sprung from prison about a year ago, and Scott and Jake suspected Quentin to be responsible. There had also been a couple robberies that might bear Quentin’s mark.
Scott had no logical reason to suspect Mandy was working with Quentin, other than they both seemed to disappear at the same time. Scott was using the thing humans called intuition. Something Sammy seemed to be devoid of, despite how fast he could think and how well he could multi-task. Oh, he could understand humor, and enjoyed a good belly laugh. But human intuition was simply beyond him.
Behind Sammy, in a playpen, was little Jeffy.
Little Jeffy’s first birthday had been a couple weeks earlier, and he was in a cute dark blue onesie with the New York Yankees logo on the front. Baseball, again. A gift from Sammy. Of course, Jeffy’s father Jake didn’t find it cute, because he was a die-hard Red Sox fan. And it seemed to be a rule of physics that Yankee fans and Red Sox fans were two of the strongest opposing forces in the universe. It was merely Sammy’s attempt to good-naturedly annoy Jake. And it worked.
Little Jeffy, being his father’s son, theoretically had the power to punch a hole through the concrete wall of this complex with one finger. Not that Little Jeffy knew it, because he was only one year old. But just to be on the proverbial safe side, Scott had devised a small implant and placed it just inside little Jeffy’s skull, which generated an energy pulse to interfere with Little Jeffy’s ability to power-up.
Scott could simply have had the central computer generate the pulse throughout the entire complex, so the child would not have to carry an implant. Or he could have had it bathe the entire complex in the anti-zeta energy field he had used on the child during Jeffy’s gestational phase. But with either scenario, Jake wouldn’t be able to power-up, either. We can’t have that, Scott said.
Right now, Little Jeffy was playing with a truck, and was drooling.
Jake stepped into the alcove. “There’s my little man.”
He reached down and lifted Jeffy from the playpen. Jeffy smiled and kicked, and said, “Da-da-da.”
“That’s right.” Jake was grinning. “It’s Daddy.”
Sammy said, “I don’t think he was actually speaking a word. He’s a little too young for that. He was simply emitting the gibberish April calls baby talk.”
“No,” said Jake, looking into the eyes of his son. “You were saying daddy, weren’t you?”
Little Jeffy said, “Da-da-da-da.”
“See?”
Sammy rolled his eyes, with a grin. “I stand corrected.”
“Of course you do. The super android proven incorrect by a one year old. But what can you expect, from a guy who buys a kid a Yankee’s outfit?”
Sammy chuckled. “So, are you ready for this afternoon’s trip?”
“As ready as I ever am for one of Scott’s adventures. Are you sure you don’t mind watching Jeffy while we’re gone?”
Sammy smiled. “Taking care of Jeffy’s a pleasure, though Chuck will be helping, because much of my attention will be on monitoring the mission. Usually April helps, but she’ll be going along with you.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the gym, running laps. She got a late start, but strangely, she seems extra chipper this morning, even for her.”
“That’s April.”
Sammy’s eyes darted from one monitor to another. “You know, we have to figure something out. I mean, originally, April’s job was to be Scott’s lab assistant, and Girl Friday to both of you. But since this meta-human ability of hers has manifested itself, she’s been taking on more of a security role.”
“Logical development, I suppose.” Jake was holding Jeffy up with a hand under each arm, making the silly faces an adult tends to make when looking at a child. Jeffy was smiling widely.
Sammy said, “True. But we still need a Girl Friday. If, for nothing else, to help with Jeffy.” Sammy let out a long sigh. “I’m on the verge of posting something in the want ads.”
April stepped in, and she gave a wide, silly smile to Jeffy. “Hi, cutie.”
Jeffy garbled some syllables back at her. She took him from Jake, and said with the cooing sort of mock baby talk an adult takes on when talking to a baby, “Don’t listen to these two. They don’t know what they’re talking about. No, they don’t.”
Jeffy gave a little kid giggle. It reminded Jake of a stream of water babbling over some rocks.
April was in a tank top and running shorts. Her hair was pulled back into a tail, and sweat was streaming down her face. Her shorts were high cut, flashing legs that were toned and curvy. She was chesty, but not overly so, and had a smile that made the room light up. Hers was the kind of beauty that might be taken as subdued and ordinary at first glance, but the more a man looked, the more he would find himself wanting to look. Jake could easily see what Scott saw in her.
She looked at Jake and said, “Why does it have to be a girl Friday? What about a boy Friday, huh? I mean, Batman had Alfred, who was a guy, right? We need an Alfred.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Sammy said. “So, I’m a sexist android.”
“We all forgive you. So, who’s up for a fruit smoothie?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The team gathered in the hangar deck. The roof was two floors high, with steel breams criss-crossing along a concrete ceiling, and the walls were simply gray, as April didn’t think earth tones would do much for a hangar deck. No matter how you tried to dress it up, it was still just a hangar deck.
Scott had assembled the teleportation apparatus in the hangar deck, because it was the largest deck in the facility. The equipment looked to Jake like four satellite dishes, each mounted on a four-foot pedestal. The dishes were positioned twenty feet apart.
Each member of the team was in a battle suit. Scott’s was a metallic gray, April’s the color of sunlight. Rick wore an orange suit, with a piece of artwork (courtesy of April) on the upper right portion of his chest resembling a comet with a fiery tail.
Scott had reminded her comets do not really have fiery tails. She replied by saying, “Oh, poo.”
Jake was in a suit that was black and navy blue, which replaced (again, thanks to April) his old God-awful ugly suit of aqua.
Mounted on one wall was a large-screen plasma monitor, on which was the image of Sammy, as he sat at his console. Behind them, they could see Chuck, a beer in one hand.
“All right,” Sammy said. “Here we go. Twenty seconds. Captain, try to power-down as much as possible. Your zeta energy is on the verge of creating a red zone, and then we’ll have to start the whole process over again.”
“Doing what I can,” Jake said. “And don’t call me Captain.”
Rick said, “Are you really sure this gizmo will work?”
“It should,” Scott said. “I did give it a trial run last week.”
“Right,” Jake said. “When you went two minutes back in time. Got to shake hands with yourself.”
Scott smiled. “That disproved a number of theories, didn’t it?”
April said, “Now, let’s remember to be careful. Do
n’t step on any butterflies.”
“Technically, the so-called butterfly effect isn’t possible. From the point of view of theoretical quantum physics, one cannot actually alter the past. The reason being - ”
“Don’t start,” Jake said, cutting him off, “or I’m not going.”
“Sorry.”
They had taken their predetermined positions. Jake, along primarily as security, stood immediately behind Scott. To Scott’s right was April, and to his left, Rick.
After a few beers one evening, Scott had said to Jake, “You know, since you’re chief of security around here, maybe we should give you a red battlesuit.”
Jake said, “Not a chance. I know how you overly zealous leader-types treat security guards who wear red.”
A hum of energy began to increase, and to the team it appeared there was a growing light emanating from each disk.
“I forgot to mention,” Scott said, “this might tingle a little.”
“Thanks,” Jake said. “That’s what I need. A little tingle from a mad scientist.”
The light grew until it completely engulfed them, and then they were simply gone.
Watching from the monitor room, Sammy said, “And they have transitioned out of this current plane in the space-time continuum, into the alternate one. And without materializing them there, we are instead sending them backward through time, seven thousand years.”
“Cool,” Chuck said. “It will be even cooler if you can actually bring them back.”
“Really, huh?”
From the perspective of the team, the walls of the hangar deck seemed to fade away, to be replaced with a forest of tall, straight pines on one side, and a grassy plain on the other.
“Ooh,” April said. “That really did tingle.”
“Was it good for you?” Scott said.
She shot him a grin.
Grass stood knee-high all about them. Above, a wisp of cloud hung lazily in an otherwise blue sky.
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