by C J Klinger
The senator turned and walked out of the meeting room leaving his aides to collect his paperwork.
George looked at his colleague and said with a wry smile, “You were right, Cathy, you would win.”
“That wasn’t even a fair fight, George, but I have to admit, it was fun.”
George just shook his head and wondered what else his adversarial co-worker was good at.
In the hall, Captain Broker, decked out in dress blues with all his combat experiences displayed in his cabbage patch saluted them smartly, which was against protocol, but required in his estimation after watching the diminutive doctor take on one of the meanest politicians in Washington. “Well done, Ma’am. With the General’s compliments, I have a car ready to take you back to Andrews to catch your plane.”
Within an hour they were back in the air, headed west. Cathy felt a sense of relief as they cleared Washington air space. She made a silent vow to do her best to never return.
Chapter 18
Raymond Washington followed the senate aide back to Senator Webber’s offices. It was his third week as an intern and he was still uncertain of the layout of the senate office building. From the senator’s home state of Maryland, Raymond had been selected in a statewide essay contest of high school juniors to spend the summer in Washington as a student intern. He was understandably proud at winning the spot as was his mother, a single, working mom. He planned to attend the University of Maryland after he graduated and hoped this summer assignment would help him get a scholarship to ease the burden on his mother who was the sole support for the family. His dad had not been a part of the family for many years and after his older brother, Marshall had been convicted of a robbery and sentenced to prison, Raymond had become the senior male in the Washington family.
When he had written to his brother in prison telling him the news, Marshall had surprised him with a rare phone call from prison congratulating his younger brother. “I’m proud of you Little Bro,” he had said in his deep voice. “Tell Momma I’ll be getting out in a couple of weeks for good behavior. Maybe I can take your room for the summer while I get back on my feet and get a job.”
Raymond had been thrilled at the news. He idolized his older brother who had taken his father’s place when the senior Washington had decided he was tired of being a responsible parent. He knew that Marshall had gotten into trouble trying to help out his mother financially, but the jury had not been sympathetic and sentenced him to prison instead of probation as his public defender had expected. Marshall promised his mother he would go to school in prison and learn a trade. Raymond fervently prayed he had kept his promise.
Toward the end of the day, the senator’s senior aide spent a few moments with the three interns assigned to Senator Webber. The aide, Mark Synkowski enjoyed this part of the political process. After five years in Washington he still retained a sense of idealism about the American political system. He was well aware that his boss was considered an asshole by most of his colleagues, but he subscribed to the theory that democracy is a messy process, but far better than the alternative. He understood that most of the elected officials in Washington were not the best men for the job, but they were the ones who had chosen to run and make their way through the difficult and often embarrassing selection process. They were the ones the party bosses had supported in their rise through the political hierarchy and who were considered to be accessible by the special interest groups who wrote the checks.
“What’s a Mecrat?” Raymond had asked when Mark had asked him what he thought of the senate subcommittee hearing.
Mark smiled at the bright youngster from his home state. It had been his idea to run the school sponsored contest to select an income-challenged young person to learn how the nation’s political system operated. “It’s a secret program and you have to remember that, Raymond,” Mark said with a serious smile.
“I know that,” Ray responded with an explanatory shrug. “I was just curious why the senator got all huffy when that lady doctor got on his case about keeping her from her job of saving soldiers.”
Another summer aide, Melony Brewer, a junior at Auburn shook her head in disagreement. “I don’t think the doctor’s real job was saving soldiers, but it did seem odd that seven senators would take the time to attend a meeting that didn’t seem to have a clear agenda.”
Mark knew it would be a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of these summer interns. They were here because they were smart and motivated. It had probably been a mistake on his part to include them in the meeting of such a sensitive program as the Mecrats Project, but he had and now he had to put a lid on their curiosity.
“I’ll remind you of the papers you signed when you joined this program,” he said to the three young people sitting around the table in his office. “The doctor you spoke of was not the kind of medical doctor you would normally see in a hospital. She is a neurological scientist who is helping seriously wounded soldiers become the most efficient fighting machines on the planet. I suggest you just forget about what you heard this afternoon.”
Raymond was smart enough to let the subject drop. The most important thing he wanted out of this summer was a letter of commendation from the senator to attach to his application for a grant to attend the University of Maryland next year. He decided that being overly curious about what when on behind closed doors was not the way to get that letter of commendation. He recalled his mother’s advice, “You can’t learn a thing when your mouth is open and your tongue is wagging, but you can learn a lot when your mouth is shut and your ears are open.” He would listen and learn. If his curiosity got the better of him, there was always the web.
Chapter 19
Cathy’s reputation for bluntness grew exponentially every time George retold the story of her head butting contest with Senator Webber. To hear him tell it, she had single handedly taken on the Washington establishment and defeated them with a string of sharp questions, the kind of questions her colleagues were all too familiar with. Doctor Benjamin Natinovich, the program director who rarely spoke to anyone outside of the weekly staff meetings, came to her labs and questioned her extensively about what had actually happened. Cathy quickly understood that the good doctor was concerned about losing their funding because she might have embarrassed or angered one of the people responsible for approving their project. She related the events without George’s embellishments and to her surprise the program director smiled, something she had rarely seen him do in the seven years she had known him.
He stood up and said, “I wished I could have been there to see it, Doctor Williamson. Well done, carry on.” Without another word, the tall, greying man turned and left the neurological labs.
Cathy sat back down with a sigh of relief, not fully understanding the enigmatic director’s reaction. Perhaps he too had been subjected to Senator Wheeler’s committee meetings in the past.
It was late when she arrived from Washington yesterday and most of the Mecrats had been out on maneuvers. This morning she had been occupied reviewing the readouts from their body monitors. It was afternoon before she had a chance to break away and visit her wards in their hanger hangout.
When she opened the door, the noise of a boisterous game of Mecrats table tennis washed over her. It thrilled her to know they had found something to brighten their day, something akin to a pure human activity they could enjoy with abandon. So much had been taken away from them that anything that restored part of what they had lost was a treasured gift.
Corporal Mary McKinsey, 8RAT noticed her first and yelled, “Ten Hut.”
All ten Rats stopped what they were doing and turned to see where 8Rat was looking. They immediately stood at rigid attention and gave Cathy a full military salute. After a second, they broke the salute, slapped their chest with the thunder clap of carbon steel hitting carbon steel and shouted in unison, “MomRat.”
Cathy was shocked, embarrassed and pleased beyond measure, all at the same time. The civilians and med staff w
atching the Mecrats game looked at her with a mixture of awe, curiosity and envy. No other person in Groom Lake commanded as much respect from the ten behemoths as the diminutive doctor from the neurological labs. The Mecrats gathered around her and squatted to reduce their nine foot height. Randy gently tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Hey Doc, I understand you’ve been doing your best Don Quixote imitation in Washington, D.C.”
Cathy laughed at his more or less accurate analogy and said, “Well it wasn’t exactly a windmill, but it blew a lot of air like one.”
The big Mecrats leaned closer to her and said in a low rumbling voice, “We want to talk to you later, Doctor W.” he made a motion to include all ten of the rats.
Cathy was instantly concerned. “Is everything alright,” she asked. Since she had provided them with communications cords, they had begun to act more as a unit with Randy as their official spokesperson. They had also become less communicative with the rest of the Mecrats Project team. Cathy was not sure why. Several of the science team members had complained to her about this new lack of communications and had started relaying questions to the rats through her.
Randy quickly reassured her. “We just want to share with you some of the things we have found out since we started using the cords.”
This was something she had been waiting for. From her previous conversation with Randy she knew the Rats were making great strides in integrating their neurological network with their mechanical bodies. They were developing a mental/mechanical reaction efficiency not anticipated by the engineers in the design process. She was curious to find out if their improved communication skills were also producing some similar, unexpected results.
Cathy looked at all of them in turn and said, “I’ll come back before you go out on maneuvers. Okay?”
Randy gave her a giant thumbs up and the rest of the team thumped their chest in agreement.
Cathy got up and said, “You better finish your game. You have a lot of interested fans waiting to watch you play.”
The ten Rats stood up and those who had been playing when she had come in resumed their game. Cathy watched their high speed game for a few minutes and then turned to go back to her lab. She wished she could stay, but she had too much to do to spend an idle hour watching nine hundred pound, mechanical goliaths bat a tennis ball back and forth.
Randy watched her leave and was tempted to switch to infrared for a more intimate view of the doctor’s backside, but decided to resist the temptation. Besides his need for that kind of stimulation was becoming less and less as time passed. “I really did lose the family jewels,” he thought in bittersweet amusement. It was more than a lack of hormonal urge that kept him from scanning her in infrared, it was out of respect for the one person he admired above all else in his new life as a mentally enhanced combat, recon, tactical soldier. He knew the other nine Rats felt the same. Doctor Cathy Williamson was one of the people who had saved their lives, but she was the only one who seemed to care about them as humans, if they could still be called that. Sometimes Randy found himself doubting he was still human. The complexity of his emotions and those of the other Rats is what they wanted to talk to Cathy about, privately. Fortunately, now that they had their interconnection communication cables that conversation would be private. What they had to say would greatly affect their future.
For Cathy, the drive back to her lab was a twirl of emotions. The last few days had rocked her normally calm world; first, the trip to the inner sanctum of Washington where she had discovered a hidden agenda among the politicians who controlled the purse strings to the Mecrats Project and now, this unabashed public show of admiration by the ten Rats. She had been careful all her life to keep her emotions in check and under control. She had learned early on that uncontrolled emotions were a tremendous road block to academic excellence and she had made the conscious choice not to endanger her opportunity to become the best at what she had chosen to pursue. Now this; if love was possible for her, she felt it from the ten men and women under her care. She discovered she loved them at a visceral level she couldn’t fully comprehend. It bothered her, because she had spent her life trying to understand all the puzzles in her fields of study.
An inner voice said, “Give it up, Girl. Don’t overthink what you don’t understand. Just let it develop on its own.”
Later, after a light meal at the commissary, where she endured more kidding about her DC battle and her personal army of Mecrats, she drove back to the Rat hanger with a combination of anxiety and anticipation. Hundreds of miles above her an Israeli satellite took pictures of the white van. A technician on the other side of the world tracked its direction of travel and typed an entry into his report. Cathy was completely unaware of his interest.
The hanger was quiet when she entered. The afternoon’s athletic events were over for the day. In another venue, the Rats could have charged admission to see the oversized game of table tennis. The benefit of having some of the best engineers in the world at their disposal made it possible to order oversized Ping-Pong balls and huge rackets to fit the Mecrats’ twelve inch wide palms. The net was a cut-down tennis net and the elevated table was made from twelve sheets of heavy duty plywood.
Doctors Alice Warton and Jack Hellerton, responsible for the Mecrats’ muscle systems had been the driving force behind getting the table built. It gave them an excellent opportunity to study the Rats reactions systems in action. Cathy would like to have believed it was out of concern for the ten men and women’s wellbeing, but knowing the two doctors, she was fairly sure that had been low on the doctors’ priority list. In spite of that, Cathy was grateful for the entertainment it bought to the Mecrats.
Ten, grey shapes were squatted in a circle at the far end of the hanger. Cathy could see the cords connecting them to each other. One of the technicians who maintained the cafeteria rack, as the Rats called their nutrient replenishment stand told her that they had begun spending most of their off time hooked up to each other. She had no opinion yet if this was good or bad, but she promised to find out. Interdependence, if carried to an extreme could be fatal in combat. Without saying a word they made room for her between Randy, 10Rat and John Stueben, 1Rat. She quickly surmised they were sitting in numerical order. Cathy donned her cranial head band and Randy took her offered cord and plugged it into his chest socket. A wave of thoughts and emotions rushed over Cathy and for a moment she thought she might have to disconnect. The thoughts and raw emotions quickly subsided as the Rats realized she had been unprepared for their group share.
Randy said aloud, “Sorry about that, Doc. We’ve gotten used to it, but it took us a while to adjust to the jumble of each other’s thoughts and feelings. We’ll go easy on you until you know what to expect.” The other nine rats nodded their massive helmet-like heads in unison.
Cathy settled down into a lotus-like position and said, “What did the group want to discuss with me, Randy?”
The big Mecrat was silent for a moment then said with surprising emotions, “Are we soldiers or systems, Cathy. Does the military consider us alive or dead?”
Cathy’s first reaction was to answer what she felt in her heart, that these were living human beings with all the privileges that go with being a human being, but then she realized they hadn’t asked what she thought, but what the military thought. That gave her pause. Because she was hooked up to them neurologically, the ten Mecrats were aware of the distinction she had just made in her mind. They waited, confident that she would be honest as she had always been with them even in their darkest hour. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “But it is something I will do everything in my power to find out.”
John Stueben, the oldest surviving Mecrats said, “If we’re soldiers, then I have seven years’ pay coming.”
That comment broke the somber mood among them. A wash of humor spread over Cathy and she joined in the laughter as Corporal Marty Welkins, 7Rat said, “What are you going to do with it, John, go to Las Vegas?”
John
joined in the laughter and said, “No, but I’ll know they’ll consider me a soldier if they pay me.”
“You got a point, John,” Private Jimmy Darblege, 9Rat said. “I’ve never seen the army give a paycheck to a tank or a Humvee.”
For the next hour, the eleven of them shared the Mecrats’ concerns and emotional progress as a result of the connecting cords. Cathy was extremely pleased with the stability that had settled over the more troubled member of the group. She came away from the meeting exhausted, but with a clear list of objectives from the ten men and women under her care. They trusted her to be their spokesperson with the biggest adversary they would ever face, their own military hierarchy.
Chapter 20
Captain Gregory Donavan stepped off the bottom step of the portable stairs butted up to the Boeing 737 that had ferried him from Las Vegas along with a hundred and fifty other military and civilian personnel who worked at Groom Lake. He looked around the secret base that was famous for its mysterious activities. It was bigger than he had imagined it would be. He continued in the direction the other passengers were taking toward the line of buses waiting on the tarmac. He was not expected, but that did not concern him. His orders were clear; he was to assume military command of the most unusual group of soldiers in the world, the 1st Mecrats Battalion. There were only ten of them, but from the reports he had read, they had the destructive capability of a battalion.