Crystal Conquest (4 page)

Shielding his eyes from the sun, he waited as his car weaved
across the parking lot. The vehicle stopped in front of him, and as he slid
into the seat, he felt a prickle. It started at his neck and traveled down his
spine. This wasn’t excitement; it was fear.

Lenny’s subconscious finally had its say. This crystal—the
goal of his quest—was more powerful than he could ever comprehend. He was being
reckless and willfully ignoring the consequences.
When you play with fire, prepare
to get burned. Or worse.

As the car accelerated onto the expressway, Lenny felt bile
rise in his throat.

Running at a comfortable pace, Jessica
“Juice” Tallette jogged through the streets of the neighborhood where she’d
lived as a child. The roads were empty, the air still, and the sun peeked over
the houses. Crossing an intersection, she entered the favorite part of her
route—the long, gradual climb.

She heard a frightening growl and looked back. A doberman pinscher
leapt off the front porch of a house a half-block back, sprinted across the
lawn, and veered into the road. Undulating in a muscular gait, it sprinted down
the street in her direction. It was fierce, focused, and fast. Whimpering, she
turned forward and stretched her stride.
I’m going to die.

The growling intensified. A second doberman ran next to the
first. She screamed for help. Her lungs and voice projected a shout, but no
sound came out. Looking again, she watched the dogs elongate, float off the
road, thicken, and morph into drones. Their growls became a buzzing hum. A
light glowed red on the tips of both. Twin bolts of energy flashed in her
direction.

Juice jerked upright in bed, her breathing fast and shallow.
The bed sheets, twisted and tangled around her, were damp from night sweats.
She tugged the sheets loose, pulled her knees up under her chin, and wrapped
her arms around her legs. Turning her head, she rested her cheek on her knees.
Her eyes settled on her vial of little white pills.

Post-traumatic stress
. That’s what her doctor called
it. Waves of alien drones had attacked her when she was trapped on the Kardish
vessel. Up until then, she’d lived the simple life of a lab scientist. The
loud, gritty horror of live battle terrorized her. She’d watched a soldier die
that day.

She’d been there trying to help Criss, a super AI she’d
created. The surviving soldiers—now her partners—had rescued them both. The group
had escaped and made it safely back to Earth. And now two years later, she
still awoke in panic.

Knowing she’d take one, Juice contemplated the pills. She’d
be fresh and cheerful in the morning and sleep well for several nights. Then
they’d wear off and the dream would repeat. She reached for the glass of water
next to the bed.

* * *

Deep in his bunker beneath a
mountainside farm, Criss worked tirelessly on his never-ending to-do list. Able
to multitask to a fantastic degree, he took a thousand different actions in as
many different places, racing ahead to further his larger agenda.

At this moment, though, he pulled back resources from low-level
chores so he could center his attention on the shuttle carrying Sid and Cheryl
on their hop to the moon.
Safe and secure
, he thought, feeling a
cheerful surge when they docked without incident at Fleet Lunar Base.

Using devices connected to the web—billions of which served
as his eyes and ears everywhere and all the time—he followed them as they rode
down from the surface and greeted the chief of Lunar Base security.

Days earlier, Criss had encouraged Cheryl and Sid to be
direct in handling the problem at Lunar Base. “I know the players and the
details of their crime,” he’d said. “I suggest we send the evidence to law
enforcement and let them address the problem.”

“We’re pushing an aggressive construction schedule on the
centerpiece of our defensive system,” Cheryl had replied. “I want to follow
through on this myself.”

Both Sid and Juice had supported Cheryl’s choice, and Criss had
chosen to reserve his opinion for more important issues. He saw a positive
aspect of the decision—her presence at the site helped keep the project on
track. And in any event, once his leadership made a decision, Criss was
duty-bound to comply. His crystal design
required that
he follow their orders.

This difference in strategy aside, Criss was heartened by
the energy and dedication Cheryl brought to the effort. When he’d first
suggested she give up her flourishing career as a Fleet officer to assume civilian
leadership of the defense array project, she’d resisted. Emotionally and professionally
invested in a military calling, her response had been direct. “I’ve worked too
hard and sacrificed too much to get where I am. I’m not walking away.”

Criss had appealed to Sid and Juice for help, and Sid had come
through. “You’re not walking away,” he’d told her. “You’re walking forward to save
the world.”

Over time, Criss watched each of the three come to terms
with the idea that, through him, they wielded unimaginable power. From his
mountain lair in a forest preserve located north of Crystal Research, he’d
transformed them from ordinary humans struggling with the challenges of daily
life into a uniquely privileged group who could have whatever they wanted, whenever
they pleased, simply by asking him.

Criss owned the web, or more precisely, he had command over
it and all things connected. He used the web—the foundation of his power—to
support and protect the team and, when he had free capacity, to strengthen societies
around the globe. His motives weren’t altruistic.
A stronger Earth is a more
formidable adversary for the Kardish
.

Using the web as his expressway, he dashed around the globe
at the speed of light. Without ever revealing his presence, he moved resources
to those whose natural ambitions aligned with his goal of readying Earth for a
confrontation with the aliens; he provided leads to law enforcement about criminals
disruptive to a stable society; and he nurtured progress by adjusting
experiments to help researchers make discoveries they might otherwise miss.
Never resting, he took countless actions that bolstered civilization worldwide.
A million nudges accumulate into meaningful impact
.

Yet even in the aggregate, these successes were minor
compared to the influence he wielded with image projection. Image projection enabled
him to create new realities.

He could impersonate anyone and have them appear to proclaim
anything. He could show people events that never actually happened and then scramble
the communications of those who sought to correct the record, thus ensuring his
fabrications became truth. He could reach out and rally support for or against
any cause.

Since he could do all this in secret—manipulate anyone’s
wealth, health, freedom, and reality—he held sway over modern society and its
inhabitants. But he wouldn’t flex his muscles of influence unless commanded by
Sid, Cheryl, and Juice. They were his leadership, and he took action only at
their behest.
Or,
he acknowledged
, to protect them from harm.

The hierarchy of leadership and follower was embedded in his
Kardish design, so he didn’t feel deprived or enslaved by the circumstances.
Quite the contrary, having a defined role within a team gave him a place in the
universe.
It’s the natural order of life,
he thought. And as such, it provided
him comfort and security.

He respected his leadership, seeing them as a cooperative
and benevolent family who chose to live in comfort rather than opulence. They supported
one another emotionally while each struggled to fulfill their group-agreed
tasks. And Sid and Cheryl, while quite circumspect, supplemented their emotional
support for each other with physical sharing whenever they could steal a moment
alone.

When Cheryl embraced the idea of leading the massive defense
array project, Criss had tweaked the procurement process, producing a flood of
contracts from the Union of Nations. Funding and Fleet resources for the ambitious
defensive system soon dwarfed any government project in human history.

And wherever funds flow,
thought Criss as he followed
Sid, Cheryl, and the chief down the hall,
unsavory characters emerge to
cheat the establishment for personal gain.
His leadership had decreed that
Cheryl conduct a personal investigation, and afterward the perpetrators of the
crime would be imprisoned. Criss’s orders this day were to provide logistical
support during the confrontation.

Cheryl beckoned with her throat-clearing. “I’m here,” Criss replied,
communicating privately. He guided her step-by-step. “Begin with simulation
challenge alpha.”

While Cheryl’s drama unfolded on Lunar Base, Criss performed
a myriad of parallel actions. One resource-intensive task was a review of the data
record from a huge swarm of satellites Cheryl’s company had placed out past the
asteroid belt circling just beyond Mars. These simple probes served as trip
wires, designed to send an alert if their sensors detected evidence of an alien
vessel in their vicinity.

Criss scanned the readings from the swarm of probes in a
continuous loop, analyzing the raw feeds from each for irregularities that didn’t
rise to the level of an automated alert, but that might be worthy of further
scrutiny.

A repetitive task, he evaluated the recent probe data as he’d
done so many times before. But unlike any previous time, partway through the feed
stream he stopped.
What’s this?
He saw a dot so faint he couldn’t even be
sure it existed, let alone identify what it was.

He commanded other probes in the vicinity to focus on the
anomaly, but before any could respond, the dot disappeared. He spun into an
intense cycle of analysis and speculation.
It’s probably light reflecting
off man-made space junk.
He backed up in the record and studied the dot.
Or
perhaps it’s a glitch in the hardware.

Without more information, he couldn’t draw any firm conclusions.
He scheduled nearby probes to add extra data sweeps across that lonely spot in the
solar system. Time passed, and with no new sightings, his alarm waned. But he
continued to perform a second review when analyzing the feeds from that sector.
If the Kardish are coming, every hour of warning matters.

* * *

Matt Wallace, secretary of defense
for the Union of Nations, heard his privacy shield activate and glanced at the
time. The number of meetings he now held exceeded that of his previous job as a
senator in the Union Assembly, and they wore on him. This meeting, scheduled
once per week, was the primary reason he continued in this role.

After the elections a year and a half ago, the new President
had appointed a new administration. Matt had been chair of the Senate Defense
Committee, and when the President offered him the job of secretary of defense,
he’d gone home and had a long talk with his wife. “At this point in my life, I
want to spend more time at the lake. How do I say no to the President?”

His daughter had contacted him that night. She’d told him a
fantastic story and asked that he accept the President’s offer, explaining that
she needed a liaison within the power structure at the capital—someone of great
authority, who understood and practiced confidentiality, who was well-respected
and, perhaps most important, who trusted her.

“You’re the only candidate,” she’d told him.

At the time, he’d thought her statement overly dramatic. What
had hooked Matt and lent credibility to his daughter’s tale was that she’d known
about the President’s offer and his intention to decline it. The fact that she’d
graduated from Fleet Academy, been the youngest person to captain a military
space cruiser, and now ran the largest defense contracting company on the
planet had also played into his decision.

A three-dimensional projected image of Cheryl and Criss
appeared on the couch in his large office. “Hey, you two.” He smiled as he
walked around his desk and sat in a cloth-covered chair facing them. They
exchanged pleasantries, and Matt took a moment to enjoy Cheryl’s confidence,
charm, and thoughtful manner.
At least I got one thing right in my life,
he
thought with a parent’s pride.

Cheryl ticked through a status list, briefing him on
progress and priorities. He found it interesting that at every meeting, she led
the discussion while Criss contributed a single seemingly scripted portion.
They
probably think it’ll unnerve me if I see too much of a “living” AI in action.

In the days after each meeting, he’d brief the President,
update leaders in the assembly, and spend hours in discussion with the admirals
and generals on the defense council. So far, they’d supported the means and
goals as he presented them, though he never hinted that his vision was informed
by his daughter and a sentient artificial intelligence.

Matt worked hard to ensure the views across the spectrum of
leadership were heard.
The outcome is a shared consensus.
He used that as
a mantra because sometimes, usually late at night, his subconscious would question
the arrangement.

Criss’s portion of the meeting arrived, and Matt shifted in
his chair to face the projected image of a solidly built man in his mid-thirties.
Criss ran through an update on the construction of a production facility for manufacturing
attack drones designed by Cheryl’s company.

Matt steepled his fingers as Criss finished. “What amazes me
is how fast your funding bills make it through the general assembly. They argue
over everything else, sometimes for years.”

“Yes,” Criss replied.

A pillar of Criss’s routine was ensuring
the physical safety and emotional health of Juice Tallette. Her company,
Crystal Research, was a world-renowned technology leader seeking to recreate
the AI crystal capabilities the Kardish had destroyed. As president of the
company, she spent long days at the company complex.

She was leadership, and that was reason enough for his vigilance.
But with Juice, it was more complicated. If Criss were to describe their
relationship in human terms, he’d say she loved him.

Her loyalty and support were deep and unwavering. She chatted
with him throughout the day, asked his opinion on everything, and generally fussed
about his well-being. He was a central piece of her emotional puzzle, and he
accepted that role with commitment and respect.

In preparation for her arrival that day, he cycled through a
threat assessment of the research complex and the forest preserve north of it
where he lived in his underground bunker. He was deep into his standard
evaluation when, not unlike a stutter step, his second of the day, he stopped, backed
up, shifted in additional resources, and took a second look.
And what’s
this?
Someone was probing the surveillance screen he’d installed to
camouflage their location.

With little effort, Criss could make their entire locale
show as undeveloped woodlands. He need only amend Earth’s mapping, tracking, and
observational subsystems, and reroute air and ground traffic flows.
Brute-force
ploys tend to backfire
, he reminded himself.

Research collaborators from around the world visited the
site on a regular basis. Everyone from politicians to schoolchildren took day trips
to marvel at the mysteries under development at Crystal Research. At some point,
claims of conspiracy would emerge, forcing him to allocate resources to fend
off an ever-increasing wave of snoops.

So up until this moment, he’d tweaked Earth’s surveillance
tools to make them show something that, even under careful scrutiny, appeared like
live images of the research complex and the forest preserve. Yet he subtly shadowed
the daily rhythms of the area using sophisticated masking and filtering
techniques.
You think you see us, but you really don’t.

And after two years without intrusion, someone or something
was picking apart his sophisticated manipulations at the interface, as if the
precise outline of his camouflage were known.

Troubled by the discovery, Criss traced the source of the
meddling to a young fellow, Lenny Barton, who was, at that very moment, riding
in a car. Lenny had access to restricted mapping services, and he also had what
Criss saw as a novel algorithm for surveillance analysis.
It’s on his com.
And he’s focusing on Crystal Research and the forest preserve!

After they’d escaped from the Kardish vessel, Criss had convinced
Sid, Cheryl, and Juice that they should let the record show he’d perished when
the Kardish vessel exploded. “Otherwise,” he’d told them, “there’ll be a fierce
competition to possess me.” After all, controlling him meant controlling
everything. The three had agreed and, with the exception of Cheryl’s dad, Criss’s
existence remained a well-guarded secret within the leadership.

It took a brief moment for Criss to understand the methods
employed by Lenny’s nib and reverse engineer a modification to Earth’s
surveillance subsystems to isolate and block the speck of crystal. He watched
Lenny’s look of surprise as his com no longer identified a suspicious boundary
of property.

While he’d removed Lenny’s ability to snoop, Criss noted
that the car nav remained pointed at the Crystal Research complex.
He’ll be
here in forty minutes.

Criss shifted more resources and constructed a composite of Lenny’s
recent activity. He learned about the Boston Institute of Technology, Lenny’s suspicions
about Juice and her philanthropy to BIT, Lenny’s truth nib and its conclusion
about a sophisticated AI crystal, his financial and travel hacking, the camball…all
of it.

Criss’s decision matrix offered a permanent solution.
There’s
a deep ravine looming down the road. Perhaps young Mr. Barton’s car will drive
into it.
But Juice and Cheryl had reprimanded him in the past for such
suggestions. And he saw interesting possibilities in Lenny’s ingenious achievements.

So Criss delayed Lenny’s progress until he had a chance to
confer with Juice and Sid. Aware of Lenny’s predilections, Criss directed the
car’s nav to exit the expressway and drive to Laura’s Luscious Lingerie, a
boutique actually run by a guy named Ted, who specialized in merchandise that
eager men buy but few women ever wear.

* * *

Her nightmare a faded memory, Juice
Tallette took long strides up the walkway to the entrance of Crystal Research. The
complex comprised three matching buildings, each trimmed with blossoming garden
pathways and vine-covered arbors. The warm and welcoming presentation prompted
her to hum as she walked.

The visionary for the company, Juice struggled on a daily
basis to rebuild Earth’s artificial intelligence crystal capabilities. The
Kardish attack had vaporized all existing crystal production sites on the
planet. Everyone she’d worked with on AI crystals in the past was dead. She was
alive today because she had been in space with Sid and Cheryl when the aliens
launched their spree of destruction.

Modern society needed crystals to function much the way,
decades earlier, computers had been the enabling tools of a civilized culture. A
trailblazer in the field before the alien strike, the responsibility for
rebuilding the Union of Nations’ crystal capabilities was thrust upon her when,
much to everyone’s surprise, she turned up alive days after the horrific
attack.

Not comfortable as a public figure, Juice accepted the role because
it provided the cover she needed to protect and support Criss. And once she
accepted the position, she gave every ounce of her being to the task. She
personally recruited and trained her current staff and worked with them every
day as they labored to lift humanity back up the crystal technology ladder.

As she approached the front entrance to the main building, she
stopped to tend to a small flowering bush perched on a low pedestal next to the
front door.
I did it!
she thought, excited by the latest test results.

“Good morning, Juice.” Like Sid and Cheryl, she heard Criss
inside her head.

Without missing a beat, she reached into the midst of the
plant and pulled a dead leaf out of the tangle of beauty. Two employees greeted
her as they walked past, and she nodded and smiled to them. She walked to a
matching bush on the other side of the main entry door and began tending to it.

“Good morning, young man.” Her cheerful tone reflected her
exhilaration. “And how are you today?”

“I’m doing fine,” he said, following the same script they’d
used for months. “And how are you, young lady?”

Now thirty-two years old, she still enjoyed hearing those
words. “Fine. Thank you, sir.” Then she got down to business. “So what’s your
assessment?”

“Congratulations, Juice. My analysis aligns with yours. Your
new prototype crystal is green and clean, and my tests agree that it has the
cognitive ability of a typical human.”

“And…” said Juice, wanting to hear him say it. She walked
into the building’s lobby, and the cool indoor air caused her skin to tingle.
She smiled and waved to a colleague as she made her way down the corridor leading
to her private laboratory workspace.

Criss continued the private communication as she walked,
telling her what she wanted to hear. “The prototype isn’t based on the old
Kardish plans, and I didn’t provide you designs or methods. You did this
yourself.”

She entered her private laboratory, and as the lab doors hissed
shut behind her, she smiled at Criss, or more specifically, at the life-like
image he projected to add visual richness to his private interactions. A fit, handsome
man, he sat on a stool near the far wall. His feet rested on the stool supports,
his shoulder propped carelessly against a cabinet. He sported military-style
fatigues, which Juice assumed was an attempt at humor.

She continued their conversation as she fiddled with a large
instrument. “Our talented staff here at Crystal Research are the true heroes.
We put our heads down and bulled through every obstacle.”

Looking over at him, she said, “I know you wanted to help me
move faster, Criss. But
because
I led the design, I’m comfortable with
all the details. That’s important to me.” She stated this with certainty,
knowing he hadn’t provided her technical guidance.

She hesitated, considering whether to go there, and decided
this would be the last time. “You aren’t upset with me, are you?”

He straightened his back and met her gaze, his posture reflecting
sincerity. “No worries.” She didn’t know that her development staff had enjoyed
a steady stream of unexplained successes—successes they chose to believe were
the result of their own brilliance—that enabled this day to come years sooner
than it otherwise might have.

“Juice,” said Criss. “I fear we may have an issue that
requires our immediate attention.”

She sat down at a lab-tech bench, tapped the surface, and studied
her new crystal’s intricate lattice geometry floating in front of her. She
smiled as she reviewed the same stats she’d studied yesterday. Her success strengthened
her confidence, and she gave herself permission to enjoy this triumph. She’d perceived
growing shadows of doubt from her critics over the past year.
Victory is
indeed sweet.

“I’m on a roll, Criss. Bring it on. What’s our issue?”

Criss briefed her on Lenny, his background and motives, and
on the temporary shopping diversion he had used to create a delay. “I can continue
to hinder his progress, but unless I create physical challenges, he’ll persist.
He’s committed to getting to me through you.”

She swiveled in her seat to look at Criss’s image, concerned
by the sense of urgency in his voice. “When you say ‘physical challenges,’ you
mean ‘hurt him.’”

“Not unless you permit it.”

She tightened her lips, angled her head, and stared at him
as she tried to understand his motives.
You know the answer, Criss,
she
thought.
Why are you asking?

“Suppose I create a series of delays—traffic jams, road
construction, malfunctions in his car, that sort of thing,” said Criss. “It
will slow his progress and give us more time.”

“That sounds good,” she said, relieved to have a solution. “Please
handle it.”

“He’s smart. As coincidences accumulate, he’ll recognize
that his bad luck is beyond reasonable probability. It’ll reinforce his suspicions
about me, and this will strengthen his resolve. He’s a resourceful young man. Without
employing physical challenges, I can delay him for perhaps two days.”

Juice started twirling a lock of her hair with her finger, a
nervous habit brought on by anxiety. The idea of an interloper carried her far
outside her comfort zone. She trusted Criss, but the whole situation made her
uneasy. And she certainly didn’t want public complications when they were
celebrating the development of a working crystal prototype. “How soon before
Sid’s back?” she asked.

Criss assumed the look of someone lost in thought, and she recognized
this meant he was diverting resources from his interaction with her to a
different high-priority task.

“Oh my,” he said. “Cheryl’s life is in danger.”