Faster

by Alex Schuler

  “Wow,” Ted said.

  “I walked in on her half an hour later upstairs,” Harry said. “It was the only time I’ve seen Lori get emotional. Don’t tell her I told you. She’d probably beat the shit out of me.”

  Ted chuckled and nodded in agreement. He turned and looked back at Cyclops. The right side camera assembly was dangling from the fender, banging back and forth in the wind. Ted walked slowly toward the Humvee with Nico and Harry close behind. They stopped beside the vehicle to inspect the damage.

  “Do you have a spare camera in the van?” Harry asked Nico.

  “I do,” Nico replied. “But it won’t make a difference. It won’t solve the problem.”

  The wind gusts were increasing their intensity, the snow and ice were becoming even harsher than they had been earlier. Harry buried his hands inside his coat beneath his armpits to warm them. Ted caught a glimpse and smiled.

  “Nico, can you take a drive back to DSU?” Ted asked.

  “Gladly. But do I have to come back?”

  “Sorry, but you do. I need you to see what we’ve got in storage to use for insulation.” Ted gathered up the tattered bits of the camera assembly and pushed them together as best he could, positioning the equipment back onto the fender mount. “We need to make a nice set of sleeping bags for these cameras.”

  “Yes!” Nico clapped his hands together and slapped Ted on the shoulder. He gave Harry a quick thumbs-up before sprinting off to his car.

  “And if someone did a food run on their way back, it wouldn’t bother me,” Harry called out.

  ***

  The snow had stopped falling just as Nico returned at 2:00 p.m. Though the sun was out, it was not strong enough to cut through the subfreezing temperature and melt the two inches of snow covering the ground. Nico joined Harry inside the Econoline van. The heat and fan were both set to high, keeping the interior toasty warm. Harry was fixated on his laptop, monitoring the telemetry they were receiving from Cyclops. He had one hand hovering over the keyboard and another clutching a glazed chocolate donut.

  “Can you see him?” Harry asked. “He’s only got two laps to go.”

  “Not yet,” Nico replied. He lowered his mug of green tea, raised a pair of binoculars to his face, and scanned the area ahead of them. “Ted should be in view by now. Unless—There! There he is!”

  Cyclops emerged from a crop of barren oak trees on the other side of the compound. Ted was inside, riding shotgun in the passenger’s seat. The robotic controls occupied the area that used to be the driver’s seat. The servos whirred and hummed as they navigated the Humvee down a small hill and across a set of train tracks. The steering, accelerator, and brakes all received precise adjustments based on the commands being sent from the bank of computers loaded in the rear. Ted could not wipe the grin from his face as the Humvee approached the van with Harry and Nico inside. He waved as Cyclops turned and passed by them.

  Ted’s smile was short-lived. Just after the turn, the lights on the control panel began blinking red. Cyclops began accelerating. Ted was well aware that this part of the course was not meant for speed. The Humvee veered off course to the right and straight toward a row of parked freight cars.

  “Shit!” Ted yelled. He waited a few more seconds to see if Cyclops would take corrective action, but the vehicle continued accelerating. The train cars were rapidly closing in on Ted’s side of the Hummer. “Damnit!”

  A large red button on the control pad was labeled “Kill.” They were so close to completing their milestone that Ted hesitated. With a heavy sigh, he slapped his palm on top of the button, taking the AI and robotic controls offline. Instead of slowing, however, Cyclops just got faster. Panic set in as Ted realized he was less than ten yards from slamming into a thirty-ton freight car. A secondary kill switch was on top of the dashboard directly in front of him. Ted smacked it and closed his eyes. Several alarms went off before Cyclops finally began to decelerate.

  Ted braced himself against the passenger door as the Humvee slowed and ran over a set of train tracks. The rails nudged the front wheels just enough to turn the vehicle away from the train cars. Cyclops rocked back and forth so violently, it jumped one of the tracks, just missing a Norfolk Southern engine. After several seconds more, Cyclops rolled to a stop and Ted let out a big sigh of relief.

  His body racing with adrenaline, he did a quick inspection of the control panel to try and figure out what had gone wrong. The roar of an engine drew his gaze over his shoulder, and he watched as the Econoline came skidding to a halt. Harry and Nico burst from the vehicle and ran to the Humvee. The whole scene suddenly struck Ted as funny, and a giggle began to take hold.

  “Are you okay?” Harry asked as he whipped the driver’s door open. “What the hell is so funny?”

  “Two laps! We were so damn close.” Ted leaned back in his seat and began to laugh uncontrollably. “I really thought we had it this time.”

  “I thought you were going to die.” Nico opened the passenger’s side door and did a quick visual of Ted, looking for injuries. “Are you hurt? Why weren’t you wearing your seat belt?”

  “I’m fine, Nico. Cyclops is the one you need to worry about. He just took off. The main kill switch failed, too. Do we know what happened?”

  Harry ran his hands across the robotic servos anchored in front of the steering wheel. A maze of wires connected the actuators to a matrix of circuit boards, mounted to a rack bolted to the vehicle’s floor. These, in turn, connected to the seven Pentium computers jammed into the backseat.

  “Maybe your robot got mad you didn’t give him eyes in the cockpit,” Harry replied jokingly. “You were so close to making a Johnny Five.”

  “His eyes are on the fenders and roof. There’s no point in giving this thing a face.” Ted flipped his control pad over and traced the cabling, hoping to figure out why the kill switch had failed. “And if I gave the robot inside Cyclops eyes, Harry, I’d want him to look more like a terminator, not that dorky Short Circuit robot.”

  “Rise of the machines!” Harry laughed as he started checking the wiring coming from the computer array in the backseat. “I think we’re a long way from artificial intelligence taking over the planet, Ted. Don’t you?”

  “I found the problem,” Nico said from outside the Humvee.

  Ted stepped down from the passenger’s seat and let out a moan. His right thigh ached from bracing himself against the door during the wild ride against and across the tracks. He stopped to massage it momentarily before slamming the door shut. Nico was standing next to him, pointing at the camera mounted on the right front fender. The camera was wrapped tightly in the new insulation Nico had designed for it. It had pivoted sideways and was pointed at the sky. Harry ran over to take a look, too.

  “Well, if it’s looking at the sky, of course it thinks you’ve got clear roads ahead,” Harry said. “But the assembly on the driver’s side is intact. They work together to eliminate false readings. It should have realized something was way out of whack.”

  “Why are you telling us?” Ted said. “You’re the software guy.”

  “I know!” Harry shook his head in frustration. “I’ll run through the programs and see what I missed, but from inside the van where it’s warm. Then I’ll upload the changes back into the computers in Cyclops.”

  “It’s a hardware problem, too,” Nico said. “The camera shouldn’t have worked its way loose. I replaced the entire assembly that Rusty broke. I must have screwed up. We can’t afford these mistakes. I’ll check the van to see what we’ve got to repair this.”

  “I’m sure there’s some duct tape in there,” Ted said.

  Nico frowned and stomped off toward the Econoline. Harry shoved his hands into his pockets and started to follow Nico, when something caught his attention. There was a thick metal post, about five feet tall, a few feet between the Humvee and the Norfolk Southern engine car. Most
of the gray pole was caked in ice, except for one section that was red. Harry bent over to inspect it, wondering what on earth it had originally been used for, and looked back at Ted.

  “What?” Ted asked as he joined Harry. He ran a fingernail across the red streaks.

  Harry pointed to the Humvee’s right front fender. A large scrape ran from just behind the wheel to several inches back across the bodywork.

  “It’s just some paint, Harry. Aren’t you planning to give Cyclops a fresh coat before the competition?”

  “Well, sure, but . . . Ted, if that post hadn’t been there, you probably would have slammed right into the train. Or worse, rolled down the hill into the river.”

  “I didn’t even see the post.” Ted looked past the Norfolk Southern engine and for the first time, noticed the embankment that led to the Allegheny River. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Nico said you weren’t wearing your seat belt. We can’t afford to lose you—or Cyclops.”

  Ted smiled at how concerned Harry was. He scooped some snow from the ground beneath the post and began to roll it into a ball. The heat from his hands melted the edges, which froze once they were exposed to the frigid air. Ted ran the snowball up and down the side of the pole, removing the streaks of red paint.

  “Relax, Harry. What’s a little spilled blood in the name of progress?”

  11

  August in California’s Mojave Desert could sometimes see early morning temperatures hovering around the sixty-degree mark. As the sun began its slow ascent, the wind that had been pummeling the sandy landscape for days continued its assault. Rusty did his best to ignore the plinking of sand against the aluminum siding of his temporary home. He had more important things to focus on.

  He followed a strict routine every morning regardless if it was a weekday, the weekend, or a holiday. He attributed his discipline to his military training. First was a series of stretches his physical therapist designed around his hip injury for him to do before even leaving the bedroom. The exercises warmed up the muscles in his lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. It took Rusty precisely fifteen minutes to complete the routine. Once done, he would immediately shower, trim his beard and handlebar mustache, and follow with a cup of strong black coffee. Then, he could move forward with whatever the day had in store for him.

  Working out in the cramped quarters of the thirty-four-foot-long National RV LX-6320 was a bit of a challenge. He made the best of it, though, as he silently and methodically went through his routine undistracted, even by the rocking of the RV, buffeted by the wind.

  Once his coffee was in his US Marine Corps travel mug, he stepped outside, checking his watch—6:30 a.m. Rusty took a sip from his mug and smiled as he looked a dozen yards away at the three tents staked to the ground next to the second RV in their fleet. With the forecast calling for a high of one hundred degrees, conditions would be perfect for the day’s test schedule.

  He went back inside and rummaged through the kitchen. The RV was one of a handful of vehicles DSU had rented as part of their desert camp. He was grateful to have the space all to himself. He had flown from Pennsylvania to Las Vegas a day earlier to rent the RV and make the two-hour drive to the DARPA campsite in the Mojave. The RV, geared for families vacationing in the nearby national parks, came fully stocked. Rusty found what he was looking for—a two-quart aluminum pot and soup ladle—and headed out.

  Harry, Nico, Lori, and Ted had driven across the country in a rented SUV as part of a convoy, made up of the Ford F-250 pickup and trailer transporting Cyclops and a semi-truck housing the DSU rolling lab, to make sure all arrived unscathed. The 2,200-mile journey took them four days. Once in Las Vegas, they swapped the SUV for a National RV, similar to Rusty’s but a slightly larger model, LX-6342. The four of them would share this space for the next month. The rest of the DSU team flew out yesterday and were staying in a total of three tents, four to a tent, arranged in a semi-circle. To help keep their occupants cool, the tents included ventilation and reflective covers. Each tent represented a team of four that supported each of one of the three team leads—Lori, Harry, and Nico.

  Rusty walked into the middle of the encampment and started clanging the spoon against the pot. After a good twenty seconds, the first zipper opened. One by one, the team members filed out, bleary-eyed and dazed.

  The door to the RV opened and Lori, hair disheveled, stuck her head out and frowned. Rusty stopped banging and pointed the giant spoon at Lori.

  “Get everyone out here,” Rusty said. “We have a long day ahead of us.”

  Rusty paced back and forth, his feet imprinting a path in the silty desert sand. He checked his watch repeatedly as he waited for everyone to assemble. Sand blasted across his forehead as he grew more and more impatient with each passing minute. Harry was the last to arrive as he struggled to keep the wind from blowing his 12 Monkeys T-shirt above his stomach. Rusty looked at his watch one last time and frowned.

  “I don’t need to tell all of you how important today is,” he said. “Three weeks from now is September ninth, the start of the DARPA FAST Challenge. This means we have exactly twenty-one days to complete our final testing. I know this sounds like a long time, but trust me, it’s going to fly by quickly. We have a strict schedule to follow each day. That schedule will not change no matter what comes up. Lori, you’re up.”

  The support team members stood grouped behind each of their leads. Lori took a couple of steps forward and turned to face everyone. Her bright pink M.A.D. Robots sweatshirt rippled in the wind.

  “The first thing we’ll do is verify the accuracy of our maps.” Lori’s long red hair whipped wildly across her face. She pulled an elastic from her sweatshirt pocket and tamed it back into a ponytail. “We’ve mapped over fifty-five thousand acres the past two years, including this exact section of the Mojave. DARPA still hasn’t told us where the individual challenges are going to take place. I want to send Cyclops out for some real-world scans of the area so we can confirm just how accurate our maps are. We will send the findings back to the team members at DSU for any map calibrations needed on the mainframe computer system. Then we can adjust the maps loaded inside the computers in Cyclops.”

  “My guess is the three challenges aren’t far from our testing area,” Rusty said.

  “I’ve been studying a radius of fifty miles around us. Assuming the competition sites are all fairly local, I think I’ve been able to narrow down where they might occur.” Lori searched the skyline for several seconds and then turned to look at Rusty. “We aren’t allowed outside this test area, are we?”

  “No.” Rusty began to pace back and forth once again, focusing his eyes on the dozen people standing behind their team leads. “If we leave the test site, we’re disqualified. There are to be no hunting expeditions anywhere. We aren’t even allowed to talk to the other teams. Harry?”

  “I’m at the mercy of Lori and Nico,” Harry said. The wind gusts rolled through the camp in waves. Harry tilted his head sideways to block the sand trying to get into his right ear. “My team and I are ready to handle whatever adjustments are needed. I’ve also confirmed the link and protocols to communicate with the rest of the software team back in Pittsburgh. Our remote computer center is ready to go.”

  Rusty nodded and stepped in front of Nico and Ted. Nico turned to avoid the wind and to face the group.

  “The big test will obviously be how Cyclops performs in this heat and sand,” Nico said. He remained calm with his gaze set on his team members. “The winter conditions we experienced earlier this year were brutal, but I’m confident we can handle whatever the Mojave throws at us. We’ve run simulations with winds gusting over forty miles per hour, including debris. Our main focus is on this dust and sand to make sure we have things covered—literally.”

  “Good.” Rusty turned his attention to Ted. “Anything to add, Mr. Wolff?”

  “No.” Ted’s response was
short and curt, and he refused to make eye contact with Rusty.

  “Are there any questions?” Rusty asked, his voice raised, his eyes looking at each DSU member. “Anyone? Now’s the time to ask. I don’t want anyone coming to me in a week or tomorrow with any issues we can address today.”

  Several seconds passed before Harry raised his hand.

  “Have you learned anything else about the competition?” Harry said. “I mean, there are dozens of other camps out here just like ours. But they’re so far away it’s hard to tell what we’re up against.”

  “All I can tell you is there are a total of forty teams, including ours.” Rusty turned and walked a few yards away, with his back to everyone. He scanned the horizon, allowing his gaze to momentarily pause on the clusters of tents and trucks far off in the distance. “I know that we’re up against some major university talent besides Ashton. MIT and Princeton are out there. So is Berkeley. I’ve also heard rumors that we will have some impressive competition from military suppliers.”

  Rusty glanced at his watch and frowned. He spun around and walked back to the DSU team. His limp wasn’t particularly noticeable this morning, partly due to having just finished his physical therapy exercises, but Rusty was thinking it also had to be the desert heat. The momentary relief from constant pain felt good.

  “Our journey is almost at an end.” Rusty paused to study the faces of the sixteen people standing in front of him. He took note that a few had visibly aged over the past two years. “We’ve got three weeks to test Cyclops and confirm he’s battle-ready. Today’s wind and sandstorms will push all of you. Everything, from how secure the rig is to how accurate the sensor calibrations, mapping, and software running the robotics are, must be nailed down by the end of the month.

  “I know you’ve all sacrificed a lot these past two years. I may not say it often, but I’m proud of this team and what we’ve achieved. I’ve built many robots in my lifetime but none are close to the size and scope of Cyclops. This is more than just a competition. The technologies we’ve pioneered have the potential to change the world as we know it. You know what we have to do as a team. You know your role. Trust in each other. Work together. Let’s get this done.”