Never Forsaken

by Michael Anderle

  The three men that Todd had been watching were coming right at them, obviously looking to talk with them. She heard Todd adjust his chair on the floor, probably to get a better angle in case he had to get up quickly. Jean casually turned her chair around and rested her hands across her chest, one of them near the shoulder holster under her light jacket.

  The three men disregarded Jean, one of them paying attention to John who had stood up, the other two looking at Todd. Not a bad decision when you considered how big Todd was. The man in the middle, probably early middle-aged if Jean could judge, spoke to the three of them.

  “Are you three from the big yacht Polarus?”

  Todd didn’t like the sound of the question, or the look on their faces. Had it only been the three of them he probably would have tried to diffuse the situation by lying and just leave. However, Todd was aware there were going to be multiple parties coming onto the island and he needed to deal with this situation one time only. He spoke to the man in the middle while keeping the other two in his peripheral vision. “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “Because, we knew the previous owner and our boss would like to have a word with you.”

  Todd waved his hand at their table, “Not a problem, I was hired by the new owners and would be happy to talk with him. Or is it a her? Either way, invite them over.”

  The man just shook his head, “I don’t think so, our boss doesn’t visit dives like this.” He looked around at the somewhat seedy bar. He adjusted his coat with his right hand showing the butt of a pistol stuck in his waistband. “He would prefer the three of you come to him.”

  Todd just shook his head back and forth a smile starting to play on his face, “I don’t think we will be visiting him today, tomorrow, or anytime in the near future. In fact, I’m sure my boss would be very upset if we allowed anybody to force us to go somewhere she wouldn’t want us to go. She is very adamant about rudeness like that.”

  Jean had a hard time keeping the smile off of her face. She inched her hand a little closer to her pistol. Fortunately, it had nine shots and there were only three men. Jean was having a hard time not making a comment after being ignored as a second-class female citizen by these morons.

  “Your boss is a woman?” The man turned to the side and spit at Todd’s feet, “How do you pull your pants on each morning, allowing a woman to tell you what to do?” He nodded to the man on his left and then to the man on his right. Both moved their hands near their waist. He turned back to Todd, “Which is it going to be? Come with us willingly, or don’t leave this place at all?” Jean noticed a couple patrons had been quietly grabbing their beers and stepping away from her party.

  Jean turned her mouth slightly towards Todd, “Todd, are we going to dance soon or not? This conversation is pushing my patience.”

  Todd smiled and chuckled a little bit, “Jean, I would love to dance. You lead or me?”

  The man in the middle turned back to Jean and reared his right-hand back as if he was about to slap her. As she said, “Me”, she kicked out, breaking the kneecap of the guy on the left, he screamed as he reached for his shattered kneecap. Todd kicked back his chair and swung a hard left into the gut of the man on the right. Jean pulled her pistol and aimed at the middle guy, who had his own pistol out, Jean’s shot just beating his. Jean’s shot holed his forehead, splattering the back of his brains over patrons behind him. His shot missed, but she heard the sound of someone getting hit behind her. Todd had just finished cracking the man nearest him over the head and laying him out. Jean quickly went to the man grabbing his knee and stuck the pistol between his eyes, he stopped cussing and paid close attention. She muttered to herself, “Dammit, I’ve never studied their language.”

  The man’s eyes were crossed, staring at the barrel touching his forehead, “I speak English, I speak English! Just get me a doctor; you will not have any problem from me. This was his idea” he nodded his head in the now dead man’s direction. “We had friends on the boat, he lied, we don’t have any boss who wants to know anything about you.” Jean put her gun away, and made sure Todd was okay. That was when she heard John from behind her.

  “Can I get a little help here?” Jean turned around to find John Rodriguez falling off of his chair, his hands covered in blood trying to stop the blood flow.

  The blood drained from Jean’s face, pumped up on adrenaline she had forgotten about John behind her. Todd was already speaking into a phone, getting help. Jean reached across and grabbed a cloth napkin. Quickly going around the table, she tied a tourniquet as best she could. It didn’t look like the bullet had hit any major veins in his leg, which was a huge blessing. Well, she would quickly find out how her new boss reacted to violence.

  John had been moved back to the Polarus within twenty minutes.

  Jean stayed to speak with the police. Once she got back to the Polarus, Jean made sure John was going to be okay, then she went to Bethany Anne’s suite. She wouldn’t wait to be called on the carpet like her experience in the Navy. John and Eric both nodded to her and let her go in.

  Bethany Anne was working at the conference table writing. Bethany Anne looked up as Jean walked in and asked her Chief Gunnery Officer, “You wanted to talk with me?”

  Jean shook her head affirmative, “Yes ma’am, I wanted to give you my version of events for what happened this evening.”

  Bethany Anne’s face scrunched up, in concentration. “Didn’t Todd already provide the report to Dan? Did you have something to add to his comments? “

  Jean’s mouth opened up, shut for a second, and opened up again, “Yes ma’am, he did speak to Dan. However, I wanted to make sure you understood why I felt it was necessary to fire my weapon.”

  Bethany Anne put down her pen, slowly stood up and walked around the table to stand in front of Jean. “Do you have your pistol on you?” John and Eric looked at each other; neither had considered the fact that Jean might bring a gun near Bethany Anne.

  Jean nodded that she did, and handed it over to Bethany Anne who had her hand out in a ‘give me’ gesture. Bethany Anne pushed down on the top bullet in the mag to see if went down, made sure the pistol was still on safety, and handed it back to Jean. Bethany Anne walked back around the table.

  Sitting down she grabbed her pen, and looked up at Jean. “I would have kicked your ass if you hadn’t reloaded. Is this understood Miss Dukes?”

  Jean smiled, and was just able to stop herself from saluting. “Yes ma’am! I completely understand and my powder will always be dry.” She turned to go, John winked at her. Jean’s smile was bright enough she might need shades, he thought.

  Bethany Anne spoke up, her head still looking down at her writing pad. “Boys, make sure you never take away Jeans guns for my sake, understand?” Both men told her they understood and went back to their jobs.

  Las Vegas, NV - USA

  Tom Billings watched as Jeffrey drove up in his car, and he and his two children got out. Jeffrey reached into the front seat and pulled out two sandwich bags and an iPad. Tom called out, “Is it national bring-your-children-to-work-day and I didn’t get the memo?”

  Jeffrey smiled, “I’m not sure if it had anything to do with it being a ‘national’ bring your children to work day, however, when my wife hands me an iPad and two already made up lunch bags? I got the memo. I am just going to put them into building three, make sure they’re okay, and we can discuss transferring the data. Give me ten minutes.” Tom waved at Jeffrey as he and the two kids went into building three.

  Closer to twenty minutes later Jeffrey caught up with Tom in building two, Tom was sipping his 2nd cup of coffee as Jeffrey grabbed his first cup. “So, have we confirmed how we are going to move the data?”

  Tom said, “Yes, I have installed three hot swappable arrays both in here and in building one for ADAM. We will be able to load up the hard drive, yank it out, sneakernet it over to building one and plug it in over there. It will not require any special mounting or drivers loading each time. The system automat
ically recognizes and connects. Hopefully, we will be able to do this as fast as we can load up each hard drive and transfer the data.”

  Tom marked a line across his paper pad crossing off one detail accomplished. “Okay, so what data will we start with?”

  Jeffrey set down across the table, “Do we have any ideas yet where to go? Do we start with history, science, ethics?”

  Tom scratched his head with his pencil, “I’m not really sure it matters, at least not at this stage. We need to get a good foundation of information such that when it wants to dive in deeper ADAM at least understands enough to classify what area of knowledge it needs more data for. So, I’m for giving it a foundational understanding of the cosmos at this time, and allowing selective uploads at a later date. Plus, we aren’t running the system right away anyhow, right?”

  Jeffrey scratched his chin in thought, “True, I don’t want the system trying to make heads or tails with a minimal data set. So, let’s load as much as we can equivalent to a college education before we go any further.”

  Tom looked it Jeffrey thinking back to what Jeffrey had mentioned a minute before, “Ethics?”

  Jeffrey nodded his head, “Sure, ethics is at the basis of all reasoning. It is the one area where artificial intelligence breaks when someone considers Asimov’s three laws. The three laws are too simplistic to truly work with artificial intelligence. For example, the first law states the robot should not hurt a human, or through inaction allow a human to be hurt. However, how do you tell the artificial intelligence what a human is? I suppose we could classify a human as Homo Sapiens, however, what would we do with edge cases? Even if we decided to classify humans related to our DNA, at what point is the DNA not human anymore.”

  Tom was a little surprised, “What do you mean at what point is DNA not human anymore? Like if someone is a mutation?”

  Jeffrey smiled, “No, I’m not thinking X-Men here. I’m asking what about a dead person? Their DNA is human; however, between helping a human who is alive with the right DNA, and a human who is now dead, I don’t want the artificial intelligence to get confused. Or, what happens if the human is recently dead and they could, through action, be revived?”

  Tom stood up, taking his empty cup over to the coffee mug and filling it back up. “This day hasn’t started and I’m already getting a headache.”

  Buenos Aries, Argentina

  “Come in.” Anton hated waiting for the knock on his door. He could hear anyone approach his office; he thought it was a waste of time to wait. His Butler, Jackson, stood there with a small envelope. Anton waved him over and Jackson approached the desk, and put the envelope on it. Turning around, Jackson left his office and closed the door behind him.

  Anton picked up the envelope and opened it, taking a few seconds to read, and then reread the information it held. He smiled; it seemed that there was a large yacht that had been seen with a Black Hawk helicopter on top. Up near Costa Rica. Perfect!

  Now, all he had to do is track down the name and he would have what he needed for the next part of his plan.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Queen Bitch’s Ship Ad Aeternitatem

  TOM, are we ready to do this?

  Well, I can’t answer for you; however, I’m certainly ready to crack open this thing and see what we created.

  I never realized you had a little bit of Dr. Frankenstein in you, TOM.

  Doctor Who?

  Wrong character, although I can see a semblance between you and Doctor Who as well.

  Who the hell is Doctor Who? I’m asking about Dr. Frankenstein.

  Bethany Anne grinned; she loved it when she could confuse the alien. Mind you, since he understood so little of typical earth popular culture it wasn’t much of a challenge. She would take her little joys where she could.

  Never mind, let’s get this show on the road, tell me what I need to do to open this.

  Tom took her through the quick routine and Bethany Anne reached up and popped the lock manually to open the pod-doc. Tom had made sure the canine would be still asleep when the door opened. It took five minutes before the canine started to come around. Its big head lifted off of the bed and looked around until it spied Bethany Anne. It wagged its tail in recognition and took a couple of sniffs of the air. Bethany Anne talked quietly to the dog, grabbed it and quickly placed the animal on the floor. She wasn’t concerned that the dog could maim her; however, she had no desire to feel those claws scratching her skin.

  The dog got up, and up, and up. The top of the dog’s ears reached above her waist line. She mumbled under her breath, “I sure hope we got enough meat.”

  TOM, you are sure the dog shouldn’t affect my ability to translocate?

  No, I am not 100% sure. You have to give me points, I was right - we did make it to Miami and back.

  Yes, however, I had to drink five packets of blood when I got back. You know how much I hate that stuff? I about threw up on the fifth one, that shit is disgusting.

  Well, technically you didn’t have to drink all five. You only required one.

  Yeah, but if I hadn’t drunk the rest of them, my energy levels would have been too low to do anything in a pinch!

  Stop being a little baby, this is going to be okay, trust me.

  Bethany Anne shook her head reached down and grabbed Ashur by the scruff of the neck and trans-located to her bedroom on the Polarus. She didn’t feel any reduction in energy level at all; that was strange. She knew Ashur was supposed to have an affinity for the etheric, but this was beyond her expectations.

  Ashur started growling and looking around in confusion. “It’s going to be fine Ashur, you had better get used to this stuff.” Ashur stopped growling and walked over to a couple of her pairs of shoes and started sniffing. Her nose wrinkled, “Oh, that’s gross, Ashur! How can you smell that? God, you’re going to be as embarrassing as a guy. If you sniff any of my unmentionables your ass will be going topside.” Ashur stopped sniffing the shoes and looked at her, tilting his head as if he was considering what she had just told him.

  She went over to the door and unlocked it, opening it and waving Ashur to follow her. Ashur looked around one more time, as if he was confirming what he was seeing, and followed her out the door, head held high.

  Bethany Anne and Ashur walked over to the workout room. She hadn’t met anyone in the hallways, which was a little unique. Ashur was continuously sniffing everything. She told him to sit still while she went to go get a couple of towels. As she came back the door opened up and Gabrielle stepped in. Ashur started growling. “Stop that!” Ashur swung his head back to Bethany Anne, and continued the growling a little more forcefully this time. Bethany Anne dropped the towels, “No fucking way…” The closer she came to Ashur, the more he growled and showed his fangs.

  Gabrielle backed up, “You two have something to discuss?”

  Bethany Anne’s eyes turned red, her fangs elongating, “There is nothing to discuss! There is only one Alpha and this puppy is about to find out…” That was when Ashur drove his hind legs into the ground, catapulting himself at the woman in front of him who wouldn’t submit. He had been curious before and had tagged along, but when the second woman showed up, he wouldn’t allow any doubt as to who was the head of his pack.

  He was snatched out of the air, turned over and dropped hard on the ground, the breath in his lungs exploding out of his snout. He tried to turn over, to gain a grip with his strong legs but found himself up in the air, again. This time the woman was holding his back against her, his feet aimed away.

  Gabrielle stayed near the door, “Why are you holding him in the air like that?”

  “Because he has nails and teeth on the other side!” Bethany Anne casually tossed Ashur along the floor where he rolled and flipped until he hit the wall with a ‘thud’. Ashur took a second to get his bearings and started growling in Bethany Anne’s direction again.

  Scott’s head popped in by Gabrielle, “Who the fuck let Cujo on the ship?” Gabrielle just p
ointed her finger in Bethany Anne’s direction. He continued, “This is the German Shepherd from the park?”

  “Yup.”

  Scott shrugged, “Don’t pick up any cats, I’d hate to see what they become.” His head disappeared.

  Bethany Anne muttered under her breath, “Everyone’s a critic.”

  Ashur growled louder. Bethany Anne hissed and started walking in his direction. She stopped controlling the malevolence her body radiated when angry. Ashur backed up one step for every step Bethany Anne took towards him. Finally, his butt was against the wall. He got down, belly on the ground, but he still had the look of rebellion on his face. Bethany Anne moved into her fastest speed and got her face 6 inches in front of Ashur’s, daring him to try something.

  So he did. With his back haunches pressed against the wall he attacked, aiming to take a bite of her face. Bethany Anne casually slapped him upside the head and his whole body flipped ass over appetite three times. He was on his back with Bethany Anne holding him by the neck, her red eyes and fangs starring him in the eyes. He started whining, giving up trying to best her.