by Jon Land
But this would prove the exception.
Never before had live animals entered into the Disney mix, and their care, upkeep and the unexpected logistical problems all partially shared responsibility for an indefinite postponement of the opening. Partially because the final and arguably most stunning attraction in Safariland had turned into a nightmare:
Dinoworld.
It was meant to be a real Jurassic Park populated by robotic dinosaurs every bit as real as the ones from the hit movie. The problem was software. The programs written to control the dinosaurs’ movements were the most complicated in history and initially required a pair of supercomputers to handle. Even then the programs kept developing bugs, and mechanical breakdowns came with every change in the wind.
Since Safariland and Dinoworld weren’t going to be ready as planned, a compromise had been reached so that summertime patrons who’d made their plans long in advance wouldn’t be disappointed. The working robots of two favorites, Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus, would be on display and performing starting on the Fourth of July. Wills asked the Disney brass if they knew what that would do to crowd control. They told him that was his problem, the last he would face before officially stepping down. So, added to the hundred thousand people, parades and fireworks on the Fourth of July, Wills was going to have to deal with dinosaurs being proudly unveiled.
He got to the last candle on his cake and stopped. The single ornament in the center of the icing was a T. rex. Wills scowled. Everyone else laughed.
“Let’s see,” he started dramatically, “today being July third makes tomorrow my last day on the job. Then I’ll leave you assholes to all the new problems caused by—”
“Turk,” his assistant called from the doorway leading to the inner office.
“You’re interrupting my speech, son.”
“Sorry. Phone call.”
“Headquarters?”
“No, sir,” the young man replied, a dumbfounded expression on his face. “Washington.”
“You?” Haslanger raised incredulously.
Fuchs’s neck stiffened. “Can you think of anyone else capable of supervising this mission? Certainly not you, Doctor.”
“No, not me.”
“Of course not. To oversee recovery you would have to leave the confines of Group Six. Not very likely, is it?”
Haslanger said nothing.
“You would be well advised to keep that in mind while I am gone. Your performance as of late has been most disappointing, I’m afraid. The failures with GL-12 and then your blindness ray, followed by your bungling of CLAIR.”
“My bungling?”
“The boy was your creation. As such you should have been able to control him. Instead, by your own admission, he was calling every shot, captured only because he wanted to be, because we possessed the technology he required. It would be a terrible thing if he escaped Disney World with the only remaining portion of CLAIR, a terrible thing for both of us.”
“A terrible thing for the entire world, you mean.”
“Then you’d better hope my efforts are successful. And another thing, Doctor. If I am removed from Group Six, consider your own fate. You may find my successor to be far less sympathetic to your idiosyncrasies than I have been. But we should not stray from the matter at hand. Luckily, General Starr has supplied me with the manpower I need to accomplish what I must.” A slight smile stretched Fuchs’s lips. “I must tell you, I’m looking forward to the opportunity.”
Haslanger’s eyes urged caution, tentatively. “What of McCracken? He’ll be there, of course, certain to know everything we know.”
“No argument there, and for just that reason I would ask that you summon Krill. I think it best he accompany me south.”
“Disney World?” the man on the other end of the line asked incredulously through the staticky connection.
“General Starr has assembled an army to meet Fuchs there,” Thurman told him. Ordinarily use of a standard phone line in such a situation would have been avoided at all costs. In this case, though, he had no choice.
“But not you.”
“I’ve decided to take some time off.”
“Why call me?”
“I thought you should know. McCracken’s going to need help.”
“You think there’s anything I can do?”
“I knew you’d want to try.”
“You available?”
“Like I said, I’m taking some time off.”
“Doesn’t leave me with much.”
“More than McCracken’s got now.”
Haslanger faced Krill from across the desk in his darkened office.
“The colonel wishes you to join him in Disney World. He knows he will need you to finish this affair to everyone’s satisfaction.”
The dim light caught Krill’s catlike eyes, the room’s shadows further elongating his already out-of-proportion features.
“I need you there, too, for both our sakes,” Haslanger continued. “The colonel has made it his business to learn too much about me. I would venture he is the only man who knows everything, and when this ends badly—and, believe me, it will—I am the most likely candidate to become the scapegoat. I know that. It is the way the colonel works.” Haslanger stood up. “But he can be beaten. We can both be free of him, you and I, providing he does not return. Providing all traces of Joshua Wolfe and his fiendish concoction are wiped from existence.”
“He frightens you,” Krill said, in words that floated in the darkness like wisps of wind.
“The colonel? Hardly.”
“I was speaking of the boy. He frightens you because you know he is smarter than you are. You want me to kill him because he has become more than just a threat to Group Six. The creator, afraid of being destroyed by what he has fashioned.”
Haslanger made himself stare across the desk through the darkness until the disfigured face and skull were plain to him. “Yes, I am afraid, and you should be, too. If Fuchs leaves Disney World with the boy’s remaining portion of CLAIR, I will have outlived my usefulness to him, and that means so will you. Don’t you see? They all must die, everyone in that park. Fuchs will be blamed for it, while we will be spared, as will Group Six. Another Pentagon administrator will take over who lacks the colonel’s intimate knowledge of the two of us. Tell me you see this just as I do. Tell me you share my vision.”
Krill’s massive head nodded.
“Very good,” Haslanger said, calmer. He stood up and approached the locked cabinet on the side wall that contained a gallery of his creations. “Now let me tell you how it must be done … .”
“Found out why you’ve been having trouble reaching that friend of yours,” a grim-faced Sal Belamo told Susan Lyle upon returning to the car that would handle the first leg of their journey to Florida. Belamo had already arranged for a private plane to cover the bulk of it, and if all went according to plan, they’d be getting into Orlando early Sunday morning.
“His name is Killebrew.”
“Was, Doc. He’s dead. Got himself toasted in a blast that took out the CDC’s entire containment facility inside Mount Jackson.”
Susan felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. “My God …”
“It gets worse. From what I just heard they’re trying to pin the blame for the whole mess on you. Say you went crazy. Calling you a renegade.”
“Welcome to the club,” McCracken said from next to her in the backseat.
“They can’t get away with that.”
“Yes, they can,” Blaine told her. “You made yourself a convenient target for everyone to cover their tracks. Got yourself linked up with the wrong people inside Group Six. Helped lay waste to that facility and then headed west.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell her, Sal,” Blaine said with his eyes locked on Susan.
“Story is you were just an accomplice. Boss, me and the Indian are getting most of the blame.”
“Meaning there’s nowhere any
of us can turn to for help in Disney World.”
Blaine nodded. “Something I’ve grown used to.”
“I haven’t. Look, this is still about finding Josh and his remaining sample of CLAIR, and Killebrew was running some crucial experiments on the organism. He would have tried to reach me any way possible.”
“Your voice mail’s probably been listened to by anyone who can handle a touchtone by now, Doc,” cautioned Sal Belamo.
Susan looked toward Blaine. “I set up that private electronic mailbox, just like you suggested, and gave Killebrew the number.”
“I don’t recall suggesting giving it to anyone but me.”
“You’re not the only one who can think for himself.”
Sal Belamo pulled out his cellular phone. “What the hell? Let’s give it a whack.”
Arkansas authorities had no choice but to let the fire that raged through the CDC’s Mount Jackson containment facility following the series of explosions burn itself out. It was twelve hours before rescue crews in helicopters could even venture close. Early reconnaissance of the site left little hope there’d be anyone to rescue, but until a closer inspection was made no one could say for sure. The containment facility maintained a number of samples from past investigations in ultrasecure isolation cases which might be salvaged, if nothing else.
The first rescue team arrived in helicopters that could land no closer than a mile from the remnants of the facility due to the still scorching heat. Ten men began the difficult trek through air choked with smoke, following its thickening clouds north toward the rubble.
Susan Lyle held the cellular phone blankly against her ear for several moments after Killebrew’s recorded voice had completed its message. She could have replayed it but there was no reason; she had heard his words clearly enough. She just didn’t want to believe them.
“You said someone blew up the containment facility,” she posed to Belamo.
“In a big way.”
“Was there … a fire?”
“Still burning, last I heard.”
Susan pressed a number of keys on the cellular and then handed it to McCracken. “You better listen to this.”
The rescue team was passing through a blanket of thick, coarse smoke within sight of the containment facility’s remnants when those in the lead suddenly clutched their throats. The men further back could barely even see them through the daytime darkness and didn’t realize anything was wrong until the first ones in their party dropped and began to roll downward, writhing and twitching.
The men bringing up the rear were the only ones to catch a glimpse of their friends’ bodies shriveling up in front of their very eyes before they turned and tried desperately to escape. One managed to yank his walkie-talkie free and was halfway through the word “Mayday” when he heard a sound like paper being crinkled. He realized with cold terror that it was coming from inside him. He started to scream but his mouth locked open in the middle of trying, and he dropped to the ground in spasm, tumbling to his death with the others.
“If Killebrew’s findings were correct, that fire will have brought CLAIR back to life,” Susan said, when the message he had left on her voice mail finished playing in McCracken’s ear. “Released it to spread unchecked.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“If we can find Joshua Wolfe, there’s a chance. He’s the only one who understands how CLAIR functions intimately enough to stop it.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if the kid mixes CLAIR with whatever he created in Group Six once he gets to Disney World,” Blaine concluded. “You’re saying the Fires of Midnight have already been released.”
“And right now that makes Joshua Wolfe the only one who can put them out.”
THIRTY-NINE
“Mister, I really wish somebody would tell me exactly what the hell is going on,” Turk Wills snapped. He was in the Magic Kingdom security office located above an old-fashioned ice cream shop on Main Street U.S.A. Six A.M. on the Fourth of July, Wills hadn’t been through his coffee yet, and here he was talking to a tense man in a crisply pressed business suit that looked all wrong for the day.
“It’s ‘Colonel,’ if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. I mind you army types coming down here and telling me how to do my job without telling me what you’re really here for.”
Fuchs rolled his neck, searching for comfort in civilian clothes. “You know what you need to know, Mr. Wills. I believe Washington was very clear on that point. Have you circulated the pictures?”
“Sure, of the kid and—”
“Stick with him first, please.”
“All my people in the Kingdom got the shots. Be nice if I knew why it was so important that we find him.”
“What’s important is that your people simply report in if they spot him. They are not to approach on their own. Is that clear?”
“Crystal. Now what about the other picture, the bearded guy?”
“Same rules apply.”
“If he represents some sort of danger to the park, I want to know about it.”
“What he represents is of no concern to you.”
And with that Fuchs turned away and took a long, slow look at the setup in the security center, getting his bearings. A bank of television monitors filled a large portion of the far wall. Manned by a single technician, the touch of a few computer keys could bring up any of nearly one hundred sweeping shots of the Magic Kingdom. The closed-circuit cameras broadcasting them were hidden atop buildings, trees, even rides, providing a complete view of what was happening outside.
“Somebody much higher ranking than colonel got me on the phone yesterday and told me you and the other suits would be coming down,” Wills persisted. “Most of them been in the park since last night and it’s pretty obvious they were looking for something they must not have found. Now, what I’d like to know is what it is and how it ties into this kid.”
Fuchs gave him a long, hard look and spoke in a tone so deliberate it sounded caustic. “Mr. Wills—”
“It’s ‘Chief,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Chief Wills, the Magic Kingdom’s scheduled to open in roughly three hours’ time. A hundred thousand people expected, I’m told. Your best bet to keep them all safe and sound, so they can leave with their thirty-five-millimeters, their kids and their wallets all fully exhausted, is to do just as I say.”
Wills glanced at one of the black and white pictures every on-duty Magic Kingdom staffer throughout the day would be given. “I got a grandson almost as old as this.”
“Congratulations,” Fuchs said, and then turned back to the action unfolding on the constantly shifting screens. “Just do your job, Chief Wil—” He cut himself off when his eyes reached a screen almost dead center on the bank, widening in disbelief. “Are those … dinosaurs?”
“Yeah,” said Wills, smirking. “We’re just full of surprises here at Disney World.”
“Looking good, Stace,” one of her coworkers complimented Stacy Eagers as she completed yet another test run of the Tyrannosaurus rex’s primary programming.
In addition to herself, there were four others working in the room they called Mission Control. Located beneath the Magic Kingdom along one of the sweeping corridors composing the tunnels, they had named the room for its resemblance on a smaller scale to the NASA version. Television monitors enclosed their every move, the dull glow off their screens capable of providing all the light they needed to perform the myriad of commands required to make the creatures come alive.
And that was what Stacy Eagers had come to think of them as: creatures, not robots, actual breathing monsters brought back from the world before man. And why not? So precise was their replication—every movement, gesture and mannerism—that they might as well have been real. Stacy Eagers was a thirty-year-old woman who had started out as a computer hacker at age twelve en route to becoming one of the country’s most talented programmers. She had never had a boyfriend, couldn’t remember if she’d enjoyed her last
date, and never even considered exchanging her thick Coke-bottle glasses for contact lenses.
The Disney people had come to her after three others had failed in their assignments to write programs to make dinosaurs come to life robotically. Forget animation. Disney had built dinosaurs to scale. Not puppets made from papier-mâché or plastic, but creatures with skeletons formed of steel beams six inches in diameter. State-of-the-art hydraulics allowed for full articulation of the joints, eyes, teeth, lips—everything. But Disney wanted to go beyond the animatronics that drove comparable beasts at a theme park in Osaka, Japan, and soon would at the rival Universal Studios in California and Orlando. The problem wasn’t in the hardware; the problem lay in developing software that could make these magnificent machines come alive.
And that’s where Stacy came in. Disney had built creatures capable of a complete range of motion. Stacy’s job was to give it to them. The dinosaurs couldn’t move, roar, walk or interact until a computer program told them to. But every separate action, every lift of a foot and flap of a reptilian eyelid, required thousands of bits of information and hundreds of commands carried out in a millisecond. Stacy estimated that it would take six programmers four years working twenty-four hours a day to write the necessary programs for a minimum of three multimillion-dollar supercomputers. Not exactly what Disney wanted to hear until she told them the alternative:
Artificial intelligence.
Program the creatures with a series of rudimentary commands from which they would develop their own evolving progressions of activity. Teach them to learn to do things on their own within prescribed parameters. Even program them to remember and repeat those sequences which generated the most positive responses from spectators. Disney liked that touch most of all. They would still need one supercomputer to manage the effort but, considering it could handle the entire planned thirty-creature population of Dinoworld alone, the investment was considered worth it.
