Sleeper Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

  “Crawley, Four Two November Zero.”

  “Granted,” the voice answered. “Orders, General?”

  Crawley stared out the window toward the sun glinting off the skyscrapers of downtown Sydney. One man’s journey suddenly felt like the weight of the world on Crawley’s shoulders. His long, successful career was in the balance, yet he did not hesitate. There were far greater things to consider. War was coming. The only way to fight it was with men and women who knew what it meant to lay everything on the line, not for king and country, but for the men and women alongside them.

  “Get her ready,” Crawley said and disconnected the transmission.

  Most second-year professors, regardless of institution, made a valiant effort to avoid teaching classes either late in the evening or first thing in the morning. The reasoning was simple: when the students would not get out of bed or put down their beer glasses, they wasted their instructors’ time since all second-year professors had to be present and ready to teach whether the room was completely empty or not. But at the age of twenty-six, three years removed from her unprecedented accelerated graduation from Cambridge, Doctor Gwendolyn Bennett welcomed the opportunity to teach at ungodly hours, even a first-period class. Unlike many of her peers, Bennett never worried about whether or not her students would be present for class. Usually, they weren’t absent more than once.

  The rule was simple: beat Doctor Bennett into the classroom and avoid having to write lengthy reports on highly technical subjects, mainly cybernetic theory and the transmission of varying degrees of information across the blood-brain barrier. The students got the message by the end of the first week or sought a different field of study.

  A stainless-steel mug of Earl Grey tea in her hand, Bennett walked with a leisurely but purposeful gait down Hawking Hall toward her first-hour class. She brushed a lock of blond hair away from her face and adjusted the stylish glasses on her nose. They were much more than simple glass lenses. No one wore glasses to see clearly, and likewise, wearable technology had never really hit the mainstream even in the twenty-fourth century. Bennett let her students think her glasses were like the nonfunctional ones the celebrities wore, but they had a purpose other than fashion. She’d made more than a few modifications on them over the years.

  Her peers smiled and said hello as they passed, and she smiled brightly. In front of her, a rush of first-year cyberneticists pushed down the hall like a herd of cattle, checking over their shoulders occasionally to gauge their distance. Several gave longing looks at the restrooms but ducked into the lecture hall instead of flirting with the chance Doctor Bennett would not get caught in a hallway conversation.

  Such encounters happened fairly often as friendly faces greeted her with handshakes and hugs of congratulations. Three weeks before, she’d received a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Cybernetics. The well-wishers made her feel light and happy, but all of the smiles and encouragement were for naught in her mind. Up against the likes of motor-neural alignment, fourth-generation artificial-intelligence engine design with suppressed emotional control, and complete petabyte transmission of the human brain and genome model, her experiments in laser communications in the .5 nanometer band paled in comparison. Her experiments could not facilitate an instantaneous download in fifty-petabyte range nor stand up to artificial intelligence design, but the interest of the Terran Defense Forces in her communications work allowed her a considerable research budget and private facilities at the university. Not bad, especially for a girl from North America.

  Of the considerable faculty, she was the only one from across the pond, and the entire contingent of North Americans numbered fewer than twelve with the exception of the Canadian faculty and students. Many of the other faculty members of Cambridge referred to her as being from the “colonies,” which made her laugh on the outside and turned her stomach on the inside. A hundred years after the collapse of the United States of America, the rest of the world pretended it hadn’t existed and what had happened there had been a bad dream. Bennett’s own family had escaped to the Republic of California when her father was only six, more than forty years after the walls went up. Leaving Canada had been the family’s only choice. He’d only told her the story a year ago when she’d asked about it for a millionth—

  “Doctor Bennett?” A pudgy man with bright brown eyes stepped in front of her. Professor Higdon Jacks, holder of the Hawking Chair in Theoretical Physics and a fellow Terran Defense Force grantee, caught her arm. “You seemed deep in thought, my dear. Is everything all right?”

  Bennett smiled. “Of course, Higdon. What can I do for you?” She blinked twice rapidly. Information began to print on her retina, and she could read it without taking her eyes from his. Body temperature high, probably from walking fast enough to catch me. Four minutes to class. Higdon needs a checkup on that heart rate. Email his wife and recommend that she make the appointment. All noted before the professor managed to speak. Not bad, she told herself. The experimental neural connection worked almost as well as she wanted it to, but there was much work to do.

  “A call came for you. They were unable to connect to your neurals. I told them the campus had a policy…”

  Higdon kept talking, but she wasn’t listening. With a long blink, she opened her communication feed. A hacking program went through the university’s neural protocol block like a hot knife through butter. Almost immediately, a message-waiting icon blinked on her retina.

  “I’ll call them back after class.” Bennett smiled and made for the door of the lecture hall.

  Higdon called after her, “You don’t suppose it’s the big news?”

  “Not likely,” she called over her shoulder with a wink.

  A few more students hustled to the lecture-hall door in front of her. Unlike most days, she did not speed up to watch the first years fall all over themselves. Reaching the door at the same time as a wide-eyed Irish girl with bright-red hair, Bennett smiled and gestured the student inside before she entered. At the ornate lectern, she set down her material and tea before withdrawing twenty strips of paper then went back to the door and handed the strips to crestfallen students as they entered and met their fate. No big weekend plans for any of them.

  One student wiped a sweaty brow with a shaking hand and blurted, “I can’t prove that!”

  Bennett almost laughed. “Why not?”

  “Bending space and time is theoretical physics! I’m studying electromagnetic impulse communications, not relativity.”

  “A good student”—she turned to the seated students, who finished the quote in unison—“has a broad grasp of all possible insights.”

  With a satisfied smile, she closed the lecture-hall doors and noted that every seat was full for the eighteenth class period in a row.

  “Good morning, everyone.” She keyed her terminal into the projection system of the lecture hall and the individual desks of her students. They were bright, all of them, and despite what they thought of her methods, she loved them. “This morning, we’re going to continue on last period’s investigation of the blood-brain barrier and challenges to connectivity. For this period, I’m allowing you to utilize your neurals on local connection only. The first time I catch anyone playing Pac-Man, you’ll lose the privilege.” They laughed, but nostalgic eight-bit video games were making a comeback. Bennett didn’t mind except when the business of learning was at hand.

  “Who can tell me the five critical areas of cybernetic connectivity with the human brain?”

  Twenty minutes into the period, her students were nodding their heads and taking turns exploring the data pathways of their neurals when the call came and stopped her midsentence. “Just a moment.” She paused her lecture, spun away from the class, and activated the connection. She silently replied, “Bennett.”

  “Doctor Bennett, no-contact order lifted by order of the chancellor,” the artificial op
erator said. “Please remove yourself from the classroom to a private area and turn off audio inputs. Reception of call in two minutes.”

  Bennett looked up into the amphitheater of students, most of whom sat with their mouths open. They’d be telling their friends that Doctor Bennett figured out a way to get past the university lockout systems. It was better than telling them the truth. “Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that good fortune is smiling upon you. I will post a follow-up to today’s lesson in your mails. Class dismissed.” She gathered her things and strode out of the room. Butterflies alit in her stomach. Only the Terran Defense Forces—the TDF—called with the expectation that she take the call immediately. A quick search told her the Nobel committee was not meeting for another week, and the odds were still woefully against her. It had to be the TDF.

  Her office, across the quadrangle, was out of the question as were the faculty lounges on every floor. She couldn’t get outside in less than two minutes, and with the cold autumn rain that was falling, she didn’t want that anyway. Privacy. Absolute privacy. Her connection and subvocalization would keep the conversation completely secret even if others came and went, but it would be best that no one see her. Nothing circulated a campus faster than a rumor. In the ladies’ restroom, she seated herself and her materials in a stall when the call connected.

  “Doctor Bennett?” The man’s voice was a smooth baritone and spoke in fluent, unaccented English.

  “Yes,” she subvocalized through her neural translator. “Can I help you?”

  “Livermore.”

  Her hands began to shake. “Can you repeat that, please?”

  “Livermore.”

  Sonofabitch! Three years ago, the Terran Defense Force had come to her, offering money for her research. After all that time and a Nobel nomination, she’d nearly forgotten the arrangement. Shaking her head, she thought, What arrangement would that be?

  “Affirmative. Subject has departed Integration. Is the package ready?”

  “Once I get back to the lab, it’ll take five minutes. Standard guidance?”

  The voice paused. “No. Series Three guidance protocol initiated.”

  Damn. That would complicate things. “How much time do we have?”

  “Three hundred and twenty days, give or take a few.”

  They’ve really done it. The limits on the program, from what she remembered, were finite by order of the Terran Council at the highest levels. There was not much time at all. “How soon will you want a connection?”

  The voice paused again. “Immediate background connection to establish telemetry. Be prepared for a physical connection.”

  Eyes closed, she waved her hands tightly together like an angry child playing in a box. This can’t be happening! Not now! Measuring her voice silently, she replied, “You are authorizing physical connection? How soon?”

  “Better telemetry will flesh that out, but right now, we’re tracking our subject in the Sydney area. Can you be ready in a few days?”

  Bennett replied. “It may not be easy. Exams are a couple of weeks away. I’ll have to ask the university if—”

  “We’ll handle that. If this is not handled with the utmost care, people will ask questions. We don’t want any more than are necessary.”

  Bennett paused. “I understand. I’ll have a background connection in the next thirty minutes. I’ll need updated telemetry by then.”

  “You’ll have it. Breaking down this connection.” The line went dead, leaving a slight ringing in her ears that cleared within a few heartbeats.

  We’re going to do it. Forehead in her hands, Bennett took a deep breath. As long as the TDF remained interested in her research, they would fund it, and it would be profitable for her. Maybe they’ll consider increasing my grants. She pushed the thought aside. Her father would have said something about looking gift horses in the mouth, and he would have been right. This required restraint and attention to detail. The other stuff could wait. She gave the unused toilet a cursory flush—somehow it felt wrong not to—and strode out of the restroom. Out into the cool Cambridge rain, she hardly felt the drops hitting her loose blond hair. With first-hour classes in full swing, and horrible fall weather, the quadrangles and gathering places were devoid of people, which served her mood. The forlorn feeling as she’d left Alexander Hall slowly faded with the rain, and her eyes narrowed in concentration. There was much to do.

  Connecting to the subject’s telemetry protocol required very little time, but the window was tight. In order to establish a solid connection using the passive communications devices around Sydney, she had to get the subject’s telemetry locked before he’d left a ten-kilometer circle around the Integration Center. If she could do this reliably, the TDF might not want her to physically meet the subject or engage them with her laser-communications array and accelerate integration. Pushing through her laboratory door, she startled two doctoral students from a game program.

  “Doctor Bennett!”

  Shaking her head, Bennett pointed at the door. “You’ve got those simulations running?”

  The young Asian woman replied. “Yes, we’ve—”

  Bennett stopped her. “Not important. Go get a cup of coffee. Be back here in an hour.”

  Without a word, her students left the lab after collecting their jackets. An hour would give her enough time to prepare a full contingent of work for the two of them on signal degradation mitigation from the Pluto-Charon system Earthward. As she fingered a switch and changed her terminal over to a secured connection, Bennett immediately received updated geospatial location data on the subject. Utilizing a passive sensor along Circular Quay, she typed .

  After a two-second delay, the sensor responded accordingly.

  Reviewing the message, she entered the subject’s tracking code and tapped the submit button.

 

  The giddy feeling of a first-time successful experiment washed over her. Documenting her moves and instructions so she could replicate them later and prove it for her peers, Bennett smiled. “Now, let’s see what’s going on with you.”

  A few keystrokes later, she learned that the subject was moving along Circular Quay, facing east. The weather was pleasant, sunny with a high around twenty-five degrees Celsius. The subject was very clearly in Stage One integration, no real memory return but with an understanding of the world around him. He’d reach Stage Two in a few hours. From there, it would be up to her. Getting a sleeper to remember everything about himself was a far cry from the main thrust of her work, but the Terran Defense Force paid handsomely. All she had to do was figure out a way to integrate the sleeper, if the TDF actually produced one, and provide him a robust communications suite implanted in his head. Combined with whatever traits the TDF were looking for, instant tactical communications by thought could change the course of the war. There was much to do before then. Sleepers had the tactical skill necessary to fight a war toward victory. If the TDF could integrate a subject and test the system successfully, it could change how humans fought war. But making a sleeper remember his identity would be a far more delicate task.

  As long as the war stayed in the Outer Rim, there was time for research and development. Three hundred twenty days would provide some opportunity to test both the mental and physical connections of her experimental system. A guidance protocol was nothing more than a passive data source. If she could tap it, and maybe send commands or data to it, she could accelerate the process. She keyed up a secure message. “Livermore engaged. Standing by.”

  There wasn’t an immediate response, which didn’t surprise her. The Terran Defense Force technicians under Crawley’s eyes were likely watching the same data on their screens. The subject moved again, walking down toward the harbor with his heartbeat quickening in anticipation. Bennett left the secure terminal running as she dictated instructions to t
he two doctoral students about their experiments and teaching her courses, if monitoring the subject led to that. The Terran Defense Force retained her for any eventuality. For her, it was a small price to pay for her copious research funding.

  Rain pattering on the window caught her attention, reminding her of her childhood along the coast of Northern California. Cold winter rains were the same no matter the continent. Shivering at the memories of a warm fire in her father’s cabin, she touched up a fresh cup of tea with honey and forced herself to get back to work. There would be time in the future for dreaming.

  Chapter Four

  Dressed in a set of beige work coveralls and carrying a small rucksack holding an extra pair of shoes, another set of coveralls, some undergarments, and a ten-pound brick I learned was called a hexhab shelter, I shuffled across the wide, grassy lawn of the Botanical Gardens toward Circular Quay, aware of the eyes on me but meeting none. I had everything I needed, or so Garrett told me. In the chest pocket of the coveralls, I carried a thin metal card that provided information about me to specific terminals for travel anywhere in the world, much like a passport. In the event that something happened to me, the card could also be used to return me, or my remains, to the Integration Center from anywhere in the world. The thought of dying on walkabout didn’t sit well with me. What could possibly happen in this pristine, quiet world? Aircars swooped overhead, and there were people in all directions going through the course of their days, but all was quiet. Big cities were supposed to be full of noise—honking car horns and the scream of sirens. This new Sydney had none of that.

  Before I departed, Doctor Garrett stood in the atrium and watched me with a small smile on his face. “You ready for this?”

  “No.” I chuckled. “But I want to do this.”