Chasing a Familiar Shadow

by Aman Gupta

  “See, was that so hard?” said Anton.

  “Actually yes,” said Jason, before turning his eyes away, scared.

  Anton gave Jason goosebumps, but he always felt safe when Victor was around.

  “How long should it take?” asked Victor.

  “A minute,” said Jason. “At max.”

  Every second that ticked by, Victor was losing confidence. His smile disappeared as the clock crossed 50 seconds. The screen was still black. As a minute went by, a loud beep was heard.

  “Is that it? Yes, we did it,” said Anton.

  “Actually..” said Jason.

  “The screen is still black,” said Anton. “I thought you said it would turn blue if it wasn’t a fake.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Jason.

  “It’s fake,” said Victor.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Jason.

  “That’s not possible,” said Anton.

  ‘Data format not supported’ read the screen.

  Victor wasn’t trying to mask his disappointment. He grabbed a coffee cup on Jason’s desk and threw it at the screen, breaking its display.

  The researchers were terrified. He had just destroyed an asset worth millions of dollars in a second of rage. They scrambled for their laptops to save their work progress.

  “Fix it,” said Victor as he turned around and stomped down the floor.

  Anton stayed behind.

  “Fix the chip,” said Anton.

  “I think he meant fix the screen,” said Jason.

  “You’re a loud mouth, aren’t you?” said Anton.

  “Peace?” said Jason as Anton climbed over Jason’s face.

  Anton sighed and left to follow Victor, just missing him in the elevator.

  He went to Victor’s office-residence on the 79th floor. Victor was staring out the glass window looking at Sierra’s lights as the clock struck 2 AM. He was frustrated. With his hands in his pants pockets and his tie loosened, Victor was staring at another failure through his contact lens.

  “We keep losing because we keep underestimating him,” said Victor.

  “He had it on him,” said Anton. “I saw he was scared when I grabbed the chip.”

  “Either he played us, or he never had Anthony’s chip in the first place,” said Victor.

  “Maybe,” said Anton.

  “He doesn’t know about me, does he?” said Victor.

  “No, of course not. Only Anthony knew about you. Tiffany met just your daughter,” said Anton.

  “Before he finds out about me, I need that second chip,” said Victor.

  “Can’t we just track the chip’s location?” asked Anton. “If the real one is out there somewhere.”

  “Every chip has a different signature, and currently, we are scanning for all of them but haven’t found a trace,” said Victor.

  “What about Jay’s chip?” asked Anton.

  “Nobody’s seen it,” said Victor. “I’m sure he would’ve buried it in the Pacific Ocean just to keep it out of our reach.”

  “Maybe we won’t need it if we can develop a new Josh,” said Anton.

  “I don’t want a new one. I want my one! My property, my money, my time, my sweat and blood!” yelled Victor, and continued to explain the gravity of the situation in a strong tone. “All our prototypes have failed tremendously. All the simulations show they would lose to Josh and its ménage in an instant. How can they not, when they cannot handle their stupid processing power five minutes into the operation?”

  “Our engineers and researchers are working day and night. We will find a solution,” said Anton, hoping to calm Victor down.

  “Get me Sylvia first thing in the morning,” said Victor.

  “Okay,” said Anton, before leaving.

  Early next morning, Sylvia showed up at Victor’s office. He had slept only a minute since his meeting with Anton. He was thinking of a way to bring his next plan into action without compromising the outcome.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said Victor, sitting on his chair.

  “Sir, you asked for me,” said Sylvia, dressed as his secretary, though she was his confidant most times.

  “Yes,” said Victor.

  “It’s so good to see you back here,” said Sylvia.

  “Good to be back. So what have I missed?” said Victor.

  “Right,” said Sylvia.

  She took out a diary from her black jacket and started reading the latest updates she had observed by surveying Sierra. She was his mysterious employee. He often used her reports to reprimand various department heads.

  “So, starting with our neuroscience department, they have almost completed the process of creating perfect Betas. Miles behind creating Alphas, though,” said Sylvia. “They need Anthony’s research, which I hear is gone with Olivia along with her work.”

  “I see. By the way, did they manage to establish our monitoring systems to track the Emulations? With Atlantis being gone, we’re in the dark,” said Victor.

  “Yes, somewhat. We have successfully tracked all 7remaining Apollos and 10,000 alphas,” said Sylvia. “2 Apollos are currently hiding in Morrow Town. Alphas and Betas are scattered globally. No idea how they got across the ocean.”

  “Morrow? Interesting,” said Victor. “Leave them be, for now, but keep tracking them.”

  “Regarding Josh, we are still searching but can’t seem to find its existence. Almost like it’s gone,” said Sylvia.

  “But we both know it's not true,” said Victor.

  “Yes. Something powerful destroyed Beverly-X in thirty seconds,” said Sylvia.

  “Couldn’t have been anyone else,” said Victor.

  “I still don’t think we should’ve hidden it from Tech Department,” said Sylvia.

  “I can’t let Josh find us. There’s no central network anymore. All clusters have different keys and protocols to communicate. Any of those clusters could belong to Josh. It’s too risky,” said Victor, pouring himself a drink.

  “You’re right,” said Sylvia.

  “What else should I know?” asked Victor.

  “Defense operations are good. Weapons Wing are also hitting their deadlines. Applied Sciences expect to create a new Sun in 3 years,” said Sylvia.

  “3 years? That’s too slow!” said Victor, in a stern tone. “I need weapons that can’t be destroyed from the ground.”

  “Gathering materials is slowing us down,” said Sylvia.

  “I’ll trust you to take care of it?” said Victor.

  “I’ll talk to Patrick to further streamline the process,” said Sylvia.

  “Good. What else?” asked Victor.

  Sylvia was hesitant to share the most critical update. She bit her lips to stop herself from uttering the words. Her purple haired head was twitching from fear. It wasn’t the first time that she was delivering some bad news to Victor. The wound on her left shoulder was still fresh from the time when Victor threw a dart at her for being the messenger. Since then, Sylvia would always wear a Sheath Dress. She couldn’t afford to look weak again.

  “We lost Tango,” said Sylvia.

  “Excuse me?” asked Victor.

  Sylvia gulped. The sweat dripping from her forehead forced her to close her eyes a couple of times before she wiped it off with her hand. Victor was losing his patience.

  “It..It..was destroyed,” said Sylvia.

  “When?” asked Victor.

  “A week ago,” said Sylvia. “6 days to be precise.”

  “How did it happen?” asked Victor.

  “We don’t know,” said Sylvia.

  “You don’t know?!” shouted Victor, at the top of his lungs, as he clasped his palm around the glass.

  Sylvia let out a shriek as she stepped back.

  “There’s no trace,” said Sylvia. “It was burned to the ground.”

  “You’re telling me I lost $20 billion on a project before it took off? Is that what you’re saying?” asked Victor.

  “Yes,�
�� said Sylvia. She couldn’t look into Victor’s eyes. It was too dangerous.

  “Ignorance is not good enough. First, I lost Paradise. Then I lost Nivera. Now Tango. It can’t be a coincidence,” said Victor.

  “Horath feels it’s the Emulations,” said Sylvia. “Since we couldn’t monitor and subdue their nervous systems, their thought process had gone haywire. But now, we have got it under control, somewhat.”

  “Cease the Emulations project immediately. Not one more Beta makes its way out of the bunker unless I tell you,” said Victor, firmly.

  Sylvia nodded. She began to leave but stopped in her track when she heard Victor’s voice.

  “While you’re down there, get Marie to run a test on the chip that I gave to Jason,” said Victor.

  “Okay. Will do,” said Sylvia.

  She quickly hurtled out of Victor’s office. Her hands were shaking while she was drinking water at her desk.

  A couple of hours later, around 9 AM, Jason came into the building and went to his desk on the 59th floor. He saw Sylvia was waiting for him, sitting in his chair.

  “Chip?” asked Jason.

  Sylvia nodded.

  They weren’t exactly on talking terms with each other, but could always sense the situation they were in. Recruitment talent Angela Jones often gossiped that Jason and Sylvia knew each other before they started at Sierra. However, they denied it categorically on many occasions. Jason had an ex-wife who had gone missing. He would change his past whenever Angela asked. Angela believed it was just an elaborate lie to hide the fact that Sylvia was indeed Jason’s ex-wife. She had also found an old picture inside Jason’s drawer, of Jason’s family walking down a beach. The wife was a couple of inches taller than Jason, who stood 6 feet tall. Sylvia was also a couple of inches taller than Jason.

  Jason handed over the chip to Sylvia. They shared eye contact before Sylvia left.

  After taking the elevator to the ground floor, Sylvia headed to a restricted section of Tech One, past the Security room. It was labelled as a nuclear quarantine zone for emergencies and guarded by seven guards armed with weapons that could create a hole in a person’s body. The corridor area past the door was monitored by an AI, which was tasked to detect the person’s behavior as they were making their way through the 20 feet long corridor. AI could detect a person’s authenticity as well as read their facial expressions and body language to know the purpose of their visit. If it felt an anomaly, the person would automatically be sprayed on with a chemical to put them to sleep, allowing the guards to take over the interrogation.

  She made her way past the guards, through the corridor, and entered the white split door at the end of it. The door didn’t lead to a room on the other side. It led to an elevator that could only go down from this floor, to enter Sierra – B, the name given to the military bunker which Sierra had taken over. The employees preferred its name, Cradle, over Sierra – B. No one wanted to be called the ‘B’ team when they were doing the most important work. There were a total of 7 elevators spread throughout Sierra hidden in unsuspecting buildings, which could be used to access Sierra – B. Each of those elevators was guarded using similar technology. Only the employees working in Sierra – B knew about the existence of those elevators.

  The first level down in Sierra – B was maintenance. Victor had it revamped to accommodate the new facility’s needs for electricity, networking, temperature, water, and oxygen. All the power lines that powered Sierra above the ground called Sierra – A, also went through this first level in Sierra – B. Over hundred people worked here, to make sure the facility ran smoothly, though most of them had never seen each other given the size of the hexagonal corridors of the facility. Tests by various departments would create spikes and power surges at odd hours, which made the job of maintenance workers extremely tedious. A lapse in duty caused deaths of 22 neuroscientists via asphyxiation due to a breach in the vent. Since those deaths six months ago, this level and its workers were always on their toes working in shifts to deliver 24 X 7.

  The second level was housing and residence. Most of the junior researchers and scientists working in Sierra – B, had never seen the sunlight since they arrived at Sierra. They had fully furnished private apartments, dorm rooms, and lounges to take care of their needs. Medical rooms were setup to solve immediate medical concerns.

  The third level was security. Their job was to ensure that the breaches in the fifth level never reach Sierra – A. It also had a weapons division that focused on biological and nuclear weapons.

  The fourth level was Sierra’s heart. It focused on recreating Sun and Moon, the technology which was lost due to 1/1. Victor had to start from scratch, including assembling a team capable of delivering a project of such celestial importance. This level also hosted the circular launching site for the satellites in the heart of Sierra – B.

  The fifth level was split into two – 5A and 5B. 5A was primarily labs and workstations. 5B was the bunker, used by various departments who had something worth hiding. All provisional Betas were created, stored, and monitored here. The wing that was supposed to contain Alpha and Apollos was largely empty since no progress had been made on that front. This level could hold over 500,000 Emulations inside their glass vessels.

  The last level was off-limits. Even Sylvia didn’t know what it was used for. Several legends were created and spread by the good people working on 5A about it. Some hinted towards Aliens, some towards radioactive monsters, and some said it had the gate to the Earth’s core, while the others said it was a mass grave which contained a million corpses of military personnel that died before the facility was shut down in the late 20s. There were several reports filed by employees working on Level 5B that they had heard screams, noises, and weird sounds coming from Level 6. However, all exits and entrances to Level 6 had been sealed off since the time Victor inherited the facility, and he didn’t bother to change that. He had no use for Level 6, he felt.

  Sylvia made her way down to the fourth level to meet Marie Bolton, a brilliant scientist and the brain behind Victor’s dream of Sun 2.0 and Moon 3.0. Not many could tell she was a scientist, as she often used to dress like a supermodel going on a dating spree. However, to be taken seriously, she would wear a lab coat so that her peers would focus on her knowledge than her cleavage. Her blonde hair reminded Victor of his daughter, which is why Marie could get away with a lot of stuff, including her sarcastic insults.

  Sylvia scanned her palm as she entered Marie’s personal workshop that occupied over 30% surface area of the entire level. Marie liked working alone, not unlike Sylvia. While Sylvia’s expertise relied on reading people by looking at their faces, Marie would read them by hooking them up on a chain, strapped to a chair, and putting a tiara on their head. The tiara was her first creation. It was the world’s first Thought recognition device that could recreate events in the form of videos by reading the mind under the tiara. She told Victor she lost the source when her college roommate stole the only copy, before disappearing. Marie had upgraded the machine since then when she wrote the entire code again.

  “Hey,” said Sylvia as Marie was welding together two gigantic plates some 20 feet above the floor.

  Marie stopped welding, took off the glasses, and looked down. She smiled when she saw Sylvia. She and Sylvia were good friends. They only had each other and would often protect the other from Victor’s wrath. Marie assumed unofficial control of Sierra after she couldn’t make it work under Anthony Arnold’s leadership in a short stint at Atlantis, before being sent to Sierra – B by Victor.

  “Hey!” said Marie as she hopped on the motored platform that acted as an elevator, when not being used to haul heavy machinery to the top.

  “Got a present for you,” said Sylvia as Marie stepped out.

  She showed a chip to Marie. Marie grabbed it from Sylvia’s hand.

  “Another one?” asked Marie.

  “This isn’t Victor’s,” said Sylvia. “It’s Anthony’s. Presumably.”

&nbs
p; “How is that smug bastard these days?” asked Marie.

  “Dead. You know that already,” said Sylvia.

  “Sorry, I never get tired of hearing that. We never learnt who killed him, though, did we?” asked Marie.

  “Victor thinks it was him. But someone might’ve intercepted in between. Don’t really know,” said Sylvia.

  “Let’s take a look at the chip,” said Marie.

  They walked towards Marie’s workstation, some two hundred meters down the corridor.

  “I see you’ve remodeled,” said Sylvia. “Again.”

  “Yeah, just changed a few things,” said Marie.

  She put the chip in a scanner that she had made. It was connected to its nanotechnology-enabled hardware builder. It would allow Marie to create thousands of copies of anything that she put in the scanner through reverse engineering after the scanner would analyze the circuits and raw materials used to create it. She had customized it to create an EZ145 replica.

  “Nope, sorry, not an EZ145,” said Marie, after a minute.

  “How can you tell?” asked Sylvia.

  “Aren’t you the curious one? See those circuits. EZ145 is not just about design, but the way the information is stored in the circuits. The circuit design is part of the information. The machine reads the design, creates the algorithm to read the data stored in the circuits. What we have is a blank chip. Not even an EZ145. More like EH…I don’t know... 105,” said Marie.

  “Any other information that could help us find anything about where it was stored or kept?” asked Sylvia.

  “Let’s see,” said Marie.

  She pressed a couple of buttons and moved a couple of holograms to create a particle structure.

  “Based on the air particles absorbed by the surface, it had a prolonged exposure in….TS – 17, based on the samples we have collected,” said Marie.

  “Good guess. Anything else?” asked Sylvia.

  “You want more? Okay, I like a challenge,” said Marie as she smiled.

  “These blue dots is water. Sweat to be more precise,” said Marie, a minute later. “Let’s see if we hit the jackpot.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sylvia.