Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (3 page)

Chapter 4: Of One Mynd

Neal sat down in his own office, stretching his legs. He did not need to plug in; he was connected at all times via the inch-wide dome that was attached to the gelport at the back of his neck. It needed charging occasionally, but one of his many assistants saw to it he always had a fully charged node, and thus was always able to connect whenever he needed to.

Assistants. He had many assistants now. Still getting used to that. He contemplated the fact for a moment, then initiated his connection to the network.

Neal:
‘good morning, minnie.’

Minnie:

Neal:
‘no, minnie, i am fine. i have jim’s full briefing package here and he is on his way to give me my morning status update. ¿is there anything you particularly need my input on?’

Minnie:

Neal:
‘good, then can you connect me with district two, i want to talk with william and mynd.’

Minnie:

They did not say good-bye, she would be online throughout any conversation he had. The need to keep even Minnie in the dark during the Resonance Dome’s construction was past now, and as part of her daily routine she had one of her many subsidiary AIs monitoring any and all communications coming to and from Neal and the rest of his leadership team, if only to make sure she was up to date on their latest thoughts and decisions.

Far away to the south, another mind was alerted to his request for contact, a request only in the manner that it could be delayed for maybe a moment or two, and even then only if there was a very, very good reason. But there was no delay, and Mynd came online a second later.

Mynd:

Mynd was very different from Minnie, not only in terms of origin but also in terms of purpose. He was the child of Neal’s mind and that of another scientist who was even now finishing up another task so he could join them. That alone made him a very different being than Birgit and Amadeu’s free spirited AM child Minnie, but he was also far more focused in his purpose.

Where Minnie was everywhere and nowhere, her many minion AIs parsing vast volumes of data in their daily job of running the world-spanning enterprise Neal was at the head of, Mynd was, by comparison, singularly dedicated, his focus limited to one place, one island.

Neal:
‘¿is william available? i want to talk to him as well.’

Mynd:

Even as he asked the question a data packet was bobbing gently but persistently at the limit of Neal’s field of etheric vision. Its title was simply ‘EAHL.’

Neal smiled.

Neal:
‘yes, mynd, i would like to see that very much.’

The packet expanded suddenly and overwhelmed Neal, but he was ready for it, and even starting to enjoy the drug-like rush of Mynd’s ‘data packets.’ Suddenly he was above Deception Island once again.

Whereas before the island had been as clandestine as such a thing could be, the great harbor at its center was now a hub of activity. The USS
Truman
was even now pulling into the big bay to take its place as the center of operations for the district. But it was only one of seven big ships in the harbor. The rest were cargo ships, laden with raw materials to feed the gaping maw that dominated the small peninsula jutting into the several-mile-wide crater.

The first of the massive Dome’s creations was long since airborne, its first mission the stuff of future legend, its power providing the backbone to Neal’s newfound military body. But its second creation was coming online now, and it was, in many ways, even more impressive than the first. Less spectacular, perhaps, but still the stuff of dreams only a few years ago.

It was spiderlike, and it would be the first of four such behemoths. Whereas the Skalm had been singular in purpose, the EAHL would be versatile; where the Skalm had been a scythe, the EAHL would be a fist, as capable of thumping as it was of grasping. It would carry us back to the stars, and it would do so on six great plumes of fusion fire surrounding its central cargo arms.

It was not an attractive beast, indeed it was ugly at an instinctual level, making your skin crawl when viewed from a distance. The six great engines that surrounded its center could pretty much lift any weight that the team chose to laden it with. But the central mass of the ship had a network of spindly arms lining its underside, like so many insect-like claws and fangs, ready to grasp and hold whatever cargo it was tasked with delivering.

It was fully eighty meters across, a scale that was difficult to grasp as it was wheeled on a great gantry from the Dome’s open mouth. Had Neal wanted it to, it could have straddled one of the cargo ships in the bay, grasped it, and lifted it clean out of the water, such was its power.

But it had no such mission. Its first payload was already waiting for it, being unloaded from the hold of one such ship to be grasped in the EAHL’s claws and taken straight up, into space.

Neal:
‘i see the cable is ready. that is very good. very good indeed.’

He made a mental note to thank Madeline for her team’s hard work there, and without comment Minnie took the instruction, rippling it outward to Neal’s various assistants and secretaries to be added to his to-do list and then his schedule.

But his attention remained on the EAHL, and Mynd sensed this and took him inward, to its still dormant engines, waiting to be given life. This was not the unhinged and irrational Skalm, and it would not take Birgit’s level of technical genius to jumpstart this beast, but they were still waiting for their second stringer, as it were, to get up to speed before she attempted to turn the key on the EAHL.

Neal:
‘¿how is moira doing, is she feeling more comfortable now?’

Neal spoke of Moira Banks, the Canadian wunderkind they had found among Birgit’s graduate student roster. A protégé and a prodigy, even if she was yet to feel as comfortable with the second moniker as Neal and William were in applying it to her.

Mynd:

His acquiescence was unspoken, a permission given from directly within him, and in a moment he was at their virtual sides. William, embodied in the ether as he was now in life as well, in an avatar; and Moira, only twenty-seven but wise beyond her years, an old soul, her avatar imbued with all the reticence she felt toward the task she had found herself lumbered with.

Moira:
‘neal! wow! hi! still getting used to the whole ‘materializing out of nothing’ thing.’

Neal:
‘yes, it is strange, isn’t it. if it makes you feel any better, most people will not be able to creep up on you like i can in here. but membership has its
access
privileges, if you know what i mean.’

It was a geek joke, and it found its audience here, a virtual ripple of laughter following among the three lifelong academics.

William:
‘hello, neal.’

Neal:
‘william. ¿how goes it?’

William:
‘i think it is safe to say moira here is … and i hope you don’t mind me blowing your cover on this, moira … still a little freaked out.’

Moira did not mind at all. In fact, she wished everyone would say it, and that it would impact even a little the high expectations they all seemed to have for her. Neal was understanding, sympathetic even. That said, he was long past being willing to wait for anyone, no matter what their level of freakedoutedness, or whatever they chose to call the reticence of those who seemed to think any of this was an option.

He tempered whatever frustration he may have felt, however, recognizing that this young woman was not the real source of his anger, and instead answered calmly, if a little patronizingly.

Neal:
‘no, no. that is totally understandable, moira. and indeed even encouraged. i can tell you that birgit was equally nervous when she first initiated one of the fusion cores. but you have started small, just as she did. and i hear from madeline that she has reviewed the core turnover and tritium breeding rates and is very comfortable with your level of skill. high praise indeed, coming from her!’

Moira blushed, and her control over her virtual self was so embryonic that the emotion bled through. But it was an endearing sight and Neal’s mood softened a little to match his patrician tone.

Neal:
‘truth be told, i understand from birgit that she was not prepared for the sensation herself, even with her knowledge of the process.’

It was true, and Birgit had said as much in her conversations with Moira via their syrupy-slow laser link to Terminus Station.

Neal:
‘but she has also told me you are ready. as ready as anyone can be. and if there is anyone whose opinion i take seriously here it is hers. more even than your own sense of how prepared you are. now, william and mynd here assure me that you will be being actively monitored in real-time, and madeline will be online as well, with a team of control specialists back at District Three. they will get you through it, and help you should you get in trouble.’

Neal wished Madeline or one of her longer-term team members could handle this themselves, but Madeline had been clear that this was not a question of the broad scientific method she brought to her leadership role, but of a precise and detailed knowledge of the incredibly complex process in question. Whoever was in control needed to understand the forces at play at the muscle-memory level.

Moira managed a nod, and put on a simulacrum of a brave face, and Neal smiled in response.

Neal:
‘i am sure you will do fine, moira. i mean that. i would not give you charge of this if i did not believe in you, and if madeline and birgit did not believe in you as well.’

OK. Enough of this pandering, thought Neal, and his right brain filled with purpose once more and Mynd reacted, initiating systems and sending protocol starts out across the island and to TASC’s distant districts, like neurons pulsing around the globe-spanning enterprise.

William quickly sensed by the new flow of information starting to cloy at his senses that Neal was done here. William was being called elsewhere, called by the very man standing in front of him smiling.

William:
‘err, ok. Moira, we are going to pick this up again later. if you want to continue running simulations with mynd and madeline, i think neal wants me to quickly catch him up on some other tasks.’

Neal did. And with shared smiles and some final platitudes they left the woman and her slightly deer-in-the-headlights expression to her models.

Neal:
‘good. she will be fine. you are all going to see to that. and even if i don’t have total confidence in her yet, i do have it in you.’

It was a compliment and a threat in one, and it received only the quick mental acknowledgement it required. William knew what Neal wanted an update on, and he did not wait around.

William:
‘ok. let’s talk about our friend the bionic man!’

He said it with some relish, and Neal could not resist a grin to match William’s own. Mynd, watching and listening, was equally intrigued, if less boyishly enthused as they.

William:
‘the best way to explain is to show, as we always say. ¿so why don’t you just take a look? i’m bringing phase nine online now. i’ll meet you out there.’

And with that they were gone, through the ether and out the other side, back into reality once more. But this was an augmented reality, like the view from within a battleskin. But this was not a skin, it was an entire body.

Neal stood now in a broad aluminium shed, one of the many that dotted the bay at the center of Deception Island. He stood still, almost impossibly so, his lack of command signals leaving the body he was now possessing completely without movement.

Hand. He brought it up. It was not a hand as he knew it. It had only two fingers opposite a fat thumb. One finger looked like a black, pointed version of an index finger, the other was much thicker, matching the powerful looking thumb that faced it. He flexed his digits. They moved with a dexterity that was at once amazing and frankly disgusting. He could fold them back all the way, to touch his wrist, a wrist that could rotate 360 degrees.

He shivered at the sight, and the tremor ran up the spine of the machine body like it was mocking him.

Neal:
‘mynd, give me an outside view of the machine.’

But before he could answer another view was approaching. It was William, the paraplegic, crippled from the neck down, walking into the room on equally bionic limbs. Mynd co-opted the view from William’s suit as Neal had requested and now he saw both machines simultaneously as they approached each other.

William was a crumpled form wrapped and enveloped within a machine skeleton. It was akin to a battleskin, only to facilitate easy access it lacked the armor plating, and as such was able to remove itself at will from William’s body and then climb back on him again. He rarely took it off in the day, but he still slept in his natural form, his suit waiting next to the bed to take him up once more when he awoke.