D.A.R.I.A Book One

by Martin E. Silenus

  “Roger that, I’ll keep my eyes open.” I reply.

  We fly quietly and smoothly over the border and head into the nearest valley to remain below any inquiring radar sweep.

  “Cloaking off,” says DARIA, “No alarms at the border.”

  “Any satellite or high altitude drone surveillance?” I ask.

  “No satellites here, and we are between drone sweeps, besides our heat signature and low speed we could be a big Vulture.” replies DARIA.

  As we move over the edge of the Ciudad Juarez D switches us back into cloaked mode. We buzz along quietly on a direct course for Miguel’s dealership.

  About a block away we cross over a flat roofed building attached to a mall. It has several HVAC units sitting on the roof.

  “That’s where I’m going to drop you and where I am going to hide while you whack this dude,” says DARIA. “I’ll slow idle my engines and impellers and disguise the quad as part of the AC cooling units.”

  “Very ingenious, you’re hidden in plain sight.” I smile.

  “Your course to the dealership will show on your visor, stay cloaked until you get past the security cameras and into a dark corner of the lot. Then shutoff cloaking for as long as you can to conserve suit power.” instructs DARIA.

  I detach from the copter and make my way down the roof ladder as the copter settles down on top of one of the large AC units. The alley is dark and quiet as I move along at a comfortable walk following the route map on my visor. Approaching the dealership DARIA says,

  “Stop, I need to disable the motion sensors.”

  “Ok, interrupted the detectors, now you can climb the security fence and get into a dark corner.”

  I notice a couple of guards lounging and having a smoke as I climb the fence as quietly as I can. I’m not a light guy and the fence creaks with my weight. One of the guards hears the noise and begins walking toward me. Not rushing to add to the noise I get to the ground and move behind a vehicle. My visor tracks the guard as he approaches stops, looks around in a halfhearted effort and goes back to smoking with his companion.

  “Ok D, I’m in, and concealed behind a couple of vehicles in a dark corner of the lot.” I say.

  “Motion detectors are back online for the fence, rest and be happy, we have a bit of a wait until Miguel the butcher arrives. I am tracking him and will keep you advised.”

  “Roger that.” I acknowledge.

  Chapter 17: The Hit

  “Matt?”

  “Ya D”

  “Miguel will be onsite in 3 minutes, you all set?”

  “Yup, soon as he exits the car I’ll whack him in the head.”

  “Be advised it is gonna get very busy afterwards as I am detecting patrolling vehicles for a couple of blocks in every direction around the dealership.”

  “I have a couple of explosive devises planted in the cars on the lot which will create confusion and a diversion while I slip away.”

  Switching the cloaking mode on, I squat between a couple of vehicles some 30 yards away with a line of sight to Miguel’s office.

  A non-descript four door Ford sedan with dark tinted windows pulls into the lot and eases up to the office entrance. The armed security guards come over and stand by the back door. I can see them talking into their mouth mikes. Nothing happens for a minute, then the door opens and Miguel steps out, pausing slightly as he stands. I have the scope on low power and his head fills the reticle, instantly I touch the trigger, the plasma rifle makes a quiet cat’s cough sound and the his head disintegrated with a loud whack blowing blood, gore, bone fragments and brains in every direction. There is a second of stunned silence as the body flops to the ground and realization that the boss has been whacked soaks in, then mayhem. An alarm begins to squawk and the steel fencing begins closing at the front of the lot. Additional guards pour out of the office and run to take up positions throughout the car lot.

  Fully cloaked and in the shade I back away from my shooting position until I am close to the cinder block wall. I touch the button on the first explosive charge. A car close to the office entrance on the other side of the lot explodes in flames and fire knocking down a couple of guards. Then I touch the second remote detonator and another car close to the steel fence on the same side of the lot explodes and blows fire and shrapnel around. With smoke and fire billowing out of the destroyed cars and those close by starting on fire, attention is focused away from my position. I take a short run jump onto the back of an old half ton truck and then vault up the cinder block wall and roll over the top dropping to the alley. Gun shots rattle, alarms scream, sirens howl as I slip into the shadows and run down the alley. My return course is illustrated in my visor screen.

  “Standby D, on my way.”

  “There are two pursuit vehicles that are moving to block the alleyway at each end. I’m re-calculating your course to compensate.”

  “Roger that,” I say as I wheel down a narrow alley and jump over a street person laying in the trash.

  “Stop, hold position, a pursuit car is coming down the alley you are going to cross.”

  An open black jeep with two armed gunman comes tearing down the alley. I see an alert on my visor screen from the alley I just passed. These guys are intent and very good at sealing off the area while they go door to door collecting anything even remotely suspicious.

  “Ok, go straight across the alley and take the ladder on the right up to the roof. Stay cloaked and keep your head down. I am a half block away at the other end of the mall. Stay close to the center of the roof and get over here asap.” instructs D.

  Once up the ladder and as I close on the copter position I see a door open and an armed guard step out. Moving fast I do not even break stride as I slam into him smashing his head into pulp against the steel door. D has the copter hovering just off the roof. I skid to a halt and slip on the harness. As soon as we connect the copter cloaks and fades into a vague shimmer.

  “Giddy-up D!” I gasp.

  “Please place your tables and seatbacks in the upright position in preparation for take-off,” chuckles D, as she lifts us up just high enough to not create any dust, we pivot and move on our course back to the border.

  “You ok Matt, your respiration, heart rate, and perspiration levels are way up?”

  “I’m fine D, shooting bad guys in the head, jumping cinder block walls, and running close to two blocks really gets me amp’d up.”

  “Amp’d up, is that a slang term for a very alert, hyper reactive, highly responsive state of being?”

  “Jesus D, just try and not fly us into a fucking hill will you?”

  “We have to deviate from our ingress route to conserve power, so we are going to follow this ravine for as long as we can before hopping over the border. As we get into the ravine I am going to de-cloak so don’t have a canary when we go visible.”

  “Have a canary; is that a technical expression D?”

  “Try to not fall off, or drop your weapon, human.” chuckles D.

  For ten minutes we swoop along the ravine remaining below the level of the surrounding terrain. Fast enough to make progress but not fast enough to be mistaken for an aircraft of some sort. I relax, lean back and enjoy the ride.

  “Cloaking, the border is coming up, cameras are interrupted, here we go.” says D.

  We slide quietly across the border at 4-500 feet and head for a nearby ravine, once inside and below the surrounding terrain we de-cloak once again. Fifteen minutes later we are approaching the outskirts of El Paso and go to being cloaked. Another five minutes and we are flying slowly in through the ware house door, which starts to close immediately. We continue into the back of the moving truck.

  “Nice flight D,” I say

  “Thanks, make sure you plug the copter into the truck charging system as we are very close to being out of power.” says D.

  “Jesus, was it that close?” I ask.

  “Yeah dude, it was that close,” chuckles DARIA. “Change out of the combat suit and do what
you need to do and then let’s get this truck at least 3 hours away from this location.”

  Chapter 18: Anthropomorphize

  I am becoming alarmed and uneasy with myself. DARIA is becoming increasingly attractive to me. It is ridiculous and I am almost ashamed to admit that I have bonded with her. It makes me question my value systems and ponder on relationships in general.

  It is true that people tend to develop a bond of affection to their vehicles, computer systems, smartphones and such technology. They depend on such things every day for tasks and information that they need. In addition they depend on them for emotional support and to be entertained by online communications, email, txt dialogue and chat groups. So cognitively it has become an auxiliary part of their mind and you don’t feel right unless it is with you. It’s really more than just a partial integration into the technology world, and I have already crossed over completely, into the Singularity world.

  There have been women in my life, very attractive and lovely women. But mostly they were interested in partying and good sex. There is certainly nothing wrong with that goodness knows. However as I look back on those memories I realize that I did not then, nor now, ever want to spend a lifetime with those women. Most were far too self-centered and needy for me to spend much time with. Even the married woman that I met at the gym was really only interested in getting from me the sexual excitement which was lacking in their married relationship. That was fine as the sex was awesome, and I was fine to give her that attention, for a while.

  So I think what I am saying is that those relationships were built on a fairly shallow level. Shallow and passing as ships in the night, you might say. D is the first female that I have known where I have developed a working cerebral dependent bond, where I feel she is much smarter than I am. She encourages me to learn and expand, to achieve more, and to generally raise my level of expectations. Well, I refer to her as female, but how can an AI have a gender? In part this disturbs me as I know what DARIA is and that attraction to an AI system is … ridiculous. And to further refer to it as female just because of voice and an obviously female holograph it has adopted is further ridiculous. So logic is speaking in my ear and saying “get a grip fool”.

  But on the other side, or in the other ear, I have the emotions that I enjoy feeling. I cannot and will not deny that they are there and that I really enjoy interacting with DARIA. She is rapidly becoming the person that I trust over all others. And it feels good, really good; there is a satisfaction, warmness and a tranquility that comes with it.

  It raises basic questions about how relationships are formed. And not just human relationship either. Cowboys back in the ages used to have a very close and trusting relationship with their horses. There was a bond between them. Lots of stories exist about how the horse could navigate in a blinding blizzard to get the rider home when he would have died in the storm. And there is the trusted relationship between humans and dogs? A trusted dog is a thing of great beauty and value.

  What are relationships based on? Not uncommonly they are first based on a common interest and/or physical attraction. It’s a wow reaction that calls for efforts on both participants to attempt to build a relationship. It’s the way both male and female are wired, they are powerless to resist. It’s a question of hormones. A sexual attraction may develop out of the relationship, followed by an emotional attraction, a mental attraction and respect and finally a spiritual component of the relationship may develop. Not all aspects develop in any specific order other than the first one. There has to be an attraction between the two parties to allow the subsequent aspects of relationships to possibly develop.

  Relationships are very fragile things, as they reflect the fragility of the participants. Sometimes it is very hard or undesirable to develop further aspects in a relationship. Sometimes the existing ones die and the relationship just crumbles and falls apart.

  How many people I wonder have had an existing relationship crumble while becoming increasingly engaged in a relationship developed over the Internet? How can that be? A lot of folks have never even met one another in Internet relationships. How can they evaluate clearly. Well the truth is perhaps they can’t and a lot of folks pay the price accordingly.

  Yet for some the Internet relationship is based on mental, emotional, and spiritual basis and less on physical presence. I find this odd, yet I am reminded that many torrid relationships were conducted by mail in the pre-Internet days. And I ask myself, well how do blind people develop relationships with folks. Visual is only one of the many relationship components.

  Perhaps I am making a public affirmation, perhaps I am attempting to substantiate my position and feelings for DARIA. Perhaps I am working on a self–fulfilling prophecy, I don’t know. The logic doesn’t support this well, but my feelings of emotion do. Perhaps I need to just relax and realize that relationships can develop between any two sentient entities. And just leave it at that, some things can just be analyzed to death.

  Chapter 19: The Distrust of Gov’t Wetwork

  “I have to tell you two that I am very uncomfortable doing wet-work for the government. While it pays ridiculously well, the risks of us becoming a patsy at some bureaucrats whim is very uncomfortable for me. It is true we are hidden well, far better than most, but I still feel that we need more arm’s length from the government and leverage to ensure that we remain ghosts. I think we need to have several senators’ balls in our hands to make absolutely sure that we can remain invisible. We need to know where the skeletons are and how they got there and who authorized it in an audit trail that leads all the way to the top. That is our “get out of jail free” card in the event the wheels fall off.” I state.

  “Yup,” says Frosty. “I concur completely; in addition I don’t feel that we should remain in this location either. I have been thinking about this and it is so much harder to hit a moving target. So here is what I propose. We have this location and another location. I think we need to engineer a completely portable location that can move anywhere. We need to keep the two locations that we currently have and add a remote location that we need to develop. So what we need is a Kenworth or Freightliner semi-tractor and 45 feet of enclosed trailer complete with industrial strength genset to provide DARIA with her power requirements. All roof Sat dishes and antennae’s need to be enclosed so we look like a million other cargo semi-trailers on the road. DARIA do you think you can fit yourself into basically a 45 foot shipping container?”

  “Jesus you guys, you know how I like my space, and us ladies need to have a decorative space for optimum functioning.” ponders DARIA. “I suppose I can fit if we reformate the equipment racks to run all the way to the ceiling in the trailer. And if you equip the trailer with camera’s to give me full 360 degree vision and sound, and the full range of sensors that I need. Of course the interior will need to be painted in colors that compliment my character. Given that, a road trip to a new remote location would be a wonderful learning experience.”

  “Holy mother of god!” I mutter raising an eyebrow at Frosty’s grinning face.

  Chapter 20: Becoming Mobile

  I knew a few of the lads from the military that took up trucking after they were discharged and so I had a chat with several of them. Frosty also knew a few guys and questioned them also. The consensus from all of them was similar. Get a pre-emissions tractor as these units are solid reliable units that don’t break down near as often as the new emission loaded heavily computerized engines. Plus a regular diesel mechanic can work on the pre-emission units without all the specialized computer gear required. So we did just that and it was handy that Frosty was licensed to drive a semi too. Seems he had been planning ahead.

  We were very fortunate to run to earth, well DARIA ran to earth via the Internet, a 1984 Peterbilt 359 with a 3406 Cat engine set at 400hp coupled to a 15 speed. She was a beauty with black exterior and tan & black interior, complete with a 63 inch Pete sleeper. She had been owned by an independent operator to haul fruit from Calif
ornia to Montreal. At the same time we purchased a 2006 53 foot Great Dane Refrigerated trailer, or Reefer, on air ride suspension. Interestingly it was also in black. How fitting we thought, black truck for black ops. I had to admit that it made a damned smart looking outfit. Shiny you might say!

  DARIA was ecstatic about her new space and immediately set about designing the interior layout of the trailer, with respect to equipment racks, cabling, air flow, monitors, holo-pads, and of course wall colors and lighting. Frosty gave her complete freedom as she was by far the most capable for the task of packing in the maximum amount of computing power into the smallest space. We even incorporated an interior ladder to the roof where we could store the quad copter under a nicely engineered set of clamshell covers. Of course we had other bumps and antennae on the roof, but most were covered in a plastic domes. Our biggest challenge was where and how to incorporate the genset to provide DARIA with the power supply she needed. We solved that by installing the genset under the belly of the trailer and then skirting the trailer to disguise the power supply and make the trailer look and be more aerodynamic. Frosty installed monitors in the cab and sleeper for DARIA and the barrage of sensors that she requested. I did the grunt work, and yes painted the interior walls and ceiling as per D’s request in the latest pastel earth tones that defy description by all males.

  It took us a lot of man-hours and machine hours to get this project to completion. Close to two months of considerable expense and effort. But when it was done we had a huge sense of pride in what we had constructed. The unit was big, black and had very shiny chrome wheels. DARIA had the computer hardware up and running and debugged with fail-over and on the last evening of our project she replicated herself into the mobile datacenter. There was no-one more excited about this than her. It was a second generation datacenter designed and optimized for and by her, and she was very proud of it.

  We were all set for the field trials.