“Everyone at the cabinet meeting this morning was extremely impressed with the progress your group has made. And so quickly!
“So, China. That would explain our intel blind spot on this whole situation if it is them. Everyone is so paranoid over there it is almost impossible to keep any agents in play, as you know.”
Paul paused and removed the reading glasses he had been peering over and squeezed his temples with the other hand to try to relieve what felt like a headache coming on. “We have the full support of the President to follow this up, and we can start trying to shake some trees, but with our lack of depth in the field I’m worried we might not get anything, at least not quickly. Which is why I wanted you to stop by on your way back to DARPA, to see if we could come up with any new approaches.”
“Well, Paul, I might have something,” Julia said, watching him closely.
“Great, what are you thinking,” he said, his face suddenly drained of color.
“I think it would be best to show you,” Julia replied, these last words were the signal.
“Director Greenfield, I would like to introduce you to Sam.”
Paul’s eyes showed alarm and he jumped forward in his seat grabbing the wooden arms of the chair when he heard a voice in his head say, “Hello Director Greenfield, it’s nice to meet you.”
14
JULIA RODE A NATURAL HIGH in the car on the way to meet with the DARPA team. She had allowed Sam past her defenses! Giving Sam access to her mind felt like a significant triumph over her deep-seated fear of connection. Her abusive childhood and young adult years had left her badly damaged and isolated from others. Julia had worked a lot on these issues with Dr. Reynolds and made great progress. However, actually letting someone into her, inside her mind, was a monstrous test of the skills she had learned from Susan. Sam’s personality helped as well; she could sense him in a way you can sense someone you’ve known for years, in an almost intimate way, and everything about him seemed benign. Even so, if she focused on the thought for too long, panic would set in. She tried to lean into it and not think about the fact that Sam could theoretically take control of her body and maybe never give it back. Julia’s sense of duty and mission were overriding her fear—at least for the moment.
Sam’s ‘voice’ brought her back to the present, “How do you think it went with Director Greenfield Julia?”
“It was good Sam. The surprise was a little bit of fun. I expect it won’t be long before he green lights our mission into China.”
Julia took out the envelope she was given by Paul’s assistant on her way out. It was the initial batch of satellite images she had requested of the Gulf of Mexico near the Texas coast line.
It used to be that there was satellite visibility of specific locations only a couple times per day due to the available quantity of satellites and how long it took to get one of them back to the same location. A little over a year ago the NSA had started launching hundreds of much smaller satellites for surveillance, which was now possible thanks to the latest in camera technology and miniaturization. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, this gave the U.S. visibility into specific earth locations every 20 minutes. This time interval was continually decreasing as more satellites were put into orbit.
As exciting as these technological innovations were there were unfortunately not any images showing a robotic bug swarm. Julia had requested all the imagery from an event horizon of 20 days prior, plus or minus 5 days, so a 10-day range. She finished sending an email to have the range expanded to plus or minus 10 days as her car pulled up to the DARPA building.
An animated discussion was in process as Julia walked into the conference room on the 13th floor that had been coopted as the group’s headquarters. She had texted Brian earlier that they needed to have a private discussion. As she caught his eye and gave a small wave, he excused himself from the group and walked over.
“Hey there, good to see you. Let’s grab another room to talk,” Brian said.
“Sounds good,” Julia said, opening the door.
Julia got settled in one of the cozy two-person breakout pods, which resembled an egg from the outside. She couldn’t help but notice how excited Brian looked.
“The meeting this morning went well, Julia. Everyone was impressed with what we had done in such a short time and I was able to secure access to one of the NSA’s biggest supercomputers to get started with Jerry’s initiative.” Brian had to stop himself from grabbing Julia’s hands in his excitement as he gave her the update. He and Julia had only known each other for just over a day, but it felt like they were thick as thieves, and he was a little surprised to find himself looking for her approval and acknowledgment.
“Director Greenfield passed on similar positive feedback, and I have good news too. After a brief demonstration for the Director, I secured approval for a pending recon mission into China to confirm or disprove their involvement.”
“Wow, excellent, so what does that mean exactly?” Brian asked.
“As I told you before, China has historically been an especially difficult target for us. We’ll try to utilize the assets that we do have locally, but with the need for expediency, we are going to also deploy a new capability which we have just acquired,” Julia said.
“What’s the timing for the mission?” Brian asked.
“A couple days while the Director obtains the necessary approvals,” Julia answered.
“And what’s the new capability?” Brian continued.
“I'll show you,” Julia said.
Brian raised his eyebrows at this, and Julia moved closer to him and held her hands out palm up. Getting the hint, Brian placed his on top of hers.
The Slip felt for the flow, identified it and moved in. Sam was getting better at this each time and tried to enter undetected. The strange memories that were triggered by his transitions had thankfully become less frequent and did not impede his stealth. Brian felt a tingle like a small shiver or goosebumps, which he assumed was a reaction to the close contact with Julia.
Julia slowly removed her hands, all the while maintaining eye contact.
Looking fairly confused now, Brian put his hands down and said, “What now?”
Without saying anything to Brian internally, the Slip moved forward and took control of Brian’s mind and body. Julia watched the briefest shadow pass across his eyes. She would have missed it had she not been focused on them. It was amazing how the eyes betrayed the mind.
Sam stood up, raised his arms and started to slowly gyrate his hips in a circular motion as if he was hula hooping in extreme slow motion. He then stopped with one hip cocked towards Julia, smacked his ass, then slowly sat down and let Brian take back control.
Julia’s mouth dropped open. Although shocked, she couldn’t hold a straight face. She started laughing while Brian, now back in control, swiveled his head, looked at his hands and then back at Julia. “What the fuck was that!?”
“Wow, Sam, and Brian for that matter, who knew you had it in you?” Julia said, still chuckling a little as she wiped a tear from her eye.
“Sorry, Brian,” Sam said softly trying not to frighten him. “I thought it would be funny.”
Brian jumped, startled by the stranger’s voice inside his head.
“Brian, I would like to introduce you to Sam,” Julia said, somewhat impressed by how well he was keeping it together.
Julia caught Brian up on the events around the Slip, and eventually he calmed down and started to get excited again. Amidst the whirlwind of current events, including the scary backdrop of infectious disease and death, there remained an adrenaline high that was almost enjoyable. Julia was familiar with the feeling from her many field operations.
She indicated to Brian that the specifics of her mission were not to be revealed to the wider think tank group, and under no circumstances was anyone to know about the Slip.
Julia had forgotten about Sam in the excitement of telling Brian everything, and made contact with Brian’s arm to
gather him as they made their way to rejoin the main group.
“Sam, I was a little shocked at your dancing display. It was funny, but let’s keep things a little more subdued. You probably scared Brian to death.” Julia said. The idea of Sam being able to control his host still unnerved her and she pushed back a moment of panic, flashing back to her own negative childhood experiences of being controlled by someone else.
Sam experienced this brief emotional distress in Julia. A bottomless void of darkness opened and closed too quickly for him to capture the meaning, but the feeling was not one he wished upon anyone.
“I know. I’m sorry. I got carried away. It was so freeing to be able to actually move.”
They walked in silence for a while before Julia responded, “So how did it feel?” seemingly back to her normal self.
“It felt great, but it took more effort than I expected. I had to think of what I wanted to do physically and then command the actions. I wasn’t the person, I was controlling the person, but remotely. Does that make sense?”
“Hmmm, does it feel like something you could improve with practice?” Julia asked, thinking how it could be an issue in the field when quick action would be required.
“Not sure. Maybe?” Sam said.
Back in the main conference room the lights were being dimmed as Jerry connected his computer to a wall screen. He described how they were going to start the brute force development of a countermeasure using the newly accessible NSA supercomputer. “The primary goal is to get an overall concept-to-production process in place which we can then change as required to produce different products. This allows us to be flexible, regardless of the threat or changes in that threat. The secondary goal is the actual product to neutralize the problem. I say we should pick something we believe will be immediately useful. My thought is let’s start with something similar to what we have seen and which could potentially neutralize the current threat…”
Julia was having an internal discussion with the Slip while she listened to Jerry. “Okay Sam, we’re going to get you up to speed as quickly as we can by going to the source, starting with Francisco right here. Get in there and gather what you can without letting him know you’re there and then let me know when you’re ready for the next person.”
“How will I let you know?” Sam asked.
“You’ll figure something out,” Julia said, nonchalantly resting her hand on Francisco’s shoulder from where she stood behind him. He looked up and gave her an acknowledging nod before returning his focus to the information Jerry was now displaying on the screen. “…need software which will accept a range of target parameters and some bounds to work within which will then test each combination of variables within those bounds until the best solution has been found. The basics of this type of software exist already and will need to be tuned up and adapted for supercomputer use in some cases. I have a couple of guys at the lab who would be great for this, let’s call them TEAM1. Everything needs to be optimized, speed is everything at this point. So on second thought let’s make TEAM1’s initial task the development of auto-translation scripts for this effort. It will take longer at first but pay dividends going forward.”
Looking up from typing, Jerry noticed Brian and Julia were back in the room and lost his rhythm for a second, “COCKTWAT, the problem is we are going to need more than one supercomputer. A lot more. Brian can we get access to more computers?”
“What do you have in mind?” Brian asked.
“I’m thinking as many as we can get our hands on. You’ll see as we start getting into the design process. We are going to break each design aspect into its own optimization routine, which will ideally have its own computer. This way we will run as many routines in parallel as possible in order to reduce the required time to a minimum.”
“You keep going, Jerry, and I’ll see what I can do, but no promises—”
Jerry cut in again before Brian could finish. “Programmers. We are going to need top level programmers, too. I have some in my lab, but they will not be enough as we get going.” Jerry was in the zone and Brian quietly left the conference room to start making calls to see what he could do about more computing power.
Jerry’s monologue resumed, “…I have been thinking about this, and China has a unique and serious advantage over us on the computing front. China regularly coordinates government interests with university interests and, frankly, with all the interests they want to. In essence, China is one large coordinated entity enabling it to likely be able to utilize the whole country’s assets in a cohesive and singular fashion. The only way we could ever do something like that would be in a time of war and conscription.”
Jerry’s stream of consciousness methodology had already identified a number of additional required teams and now progressed to the initial design approach and ideas which involved more input from the larger group.
They understood that the microbot by definition wants to be small. For mobility they decided to model the propulsion on a hummingbird’s flying mechanics for extreme maneuverability and the ability to hover. They designated this as TEAM2.
The method of neutralizing the enemy was initially discussed as potentially a magnet that would allow the attacker to attach to and then ground the target but this idea was quickly dismissed due to the passive nature, and therefore uncontrollability, of what the bots would attach to. In the end, a similar grounding approach was decided upon, utilizing legs or claws to grab the targets. TEAM3 would be tasked with developing the appendages and the targeting system. Initial ideas about the tracking system consisted of identifying the high pitch frequency whine of the targets’ propulsion system and vectoring in based on the increasing or decreasing intensity. How to get the bot within range of the almost inaudible noise emissions was another issue they put to the side for the moment.
The seemingly combined consciousness and hyper focus in the room was briefly interrupted when Francisco fell backward in his chair onto the floor. Julia, still standing near him, reached down to help him up and was startled as almost simultaneously she heard the Slip in her head, “Yikes, I was trying to scoot my chair to standup and reconnect with you, but the chair caught on the carpet and I couldn’t make Francisco’s body react quickly enough to correct, and, well—” She could hear the smile in his voice and responded, “Very inconspicuous. We are going to have to figure out a way to work on your control. By the way, you are getting quite good at transitioning bodies. I didn’t even know you were there until you said something.”
Francisco got to his feet and held his head in discomfort, excusing himself to take a rest in the bunk room for a little bit.
“What did you do in there, Sam? He looks a little frazzled.”
“I’m still working on combining speed and stealth. He probably felt me digging around, and he definitely felt something when I took over briefly to try and stand up. There was a lot going on in there, some of it was pretty scary, especially the doomsday scenarios that seemed to be prevalent,” Sam answered.
“Well, he is a futurist. Let’s hope we can turn those doomsday scenarios around…” Julia said, “…okay we’re going for Uhli next. Please try to be more gentle, we don’t want to take the whole tank out of commission.”
“Roger that,” and he was gone.
ExO:program? #days?
Julia:3 days
Julia:Newbie China field prep. Accelerated.
Julia:accelerated = double-time
ExO:start?
Julia was distracted by a sudden banging and looked up from texting to see Uhli smacking his right hand repeatedly on the conference table, a look of surprise on his face as he stared at his hand. Rolling her eyes she started toward Uhli to slip Sam back out while texting her response.
Julia:tomorrow morning early - gotta go
“Really, is that what you call gentle?” Julia scolded Sam after taking him back on board.
“I tried some more subtle signals but you were sucked into your phone, and I didn’t
want to try to get up again. He was so annoyingly positive, I really wanted to punch him in my face!” the Slip retorted.
“Is that a joke? Did you just make a joke?” Julia asked sincerely.
“As they say, ‘if I don’t laugh I’ll cry,” Sam said.
“As who says? Jokes and now quips too - I sure hope you are getting some useful stuff out of these peoples heads,” Julia said as she sensed or imagined a smile again on the Slip’s nonexistent face. Just in case, she added, “Wipe that smile off your face, we have to get through the rest of these guys and gals in time to get some shut-eye for at least a couple of hours before we start your training in the morning.”
“Training. What training?”
“I thought of a way for you to work on your physical control.” Julia said smiling.
It would be more like baptism by fire.
DAY 14
15
THE BELL EXECUTIVE JET’S 130 knots or 150 mph top speed cut the travel time to 45 minutes from the 2.5 hours by car to get to The Farm. Julia couldn’t help but enjoy the view from the cockpit where she had insisted on sitting, not wanting to feel like some overcompensated executive being chauffeured.
With Bryan in Washington for the day and Director Greenfield pursuing a green light for their mission, Julia and Sam had a couple of days to prepare and she wanted to make the most of it. Julia had set a 5:00 am alarm on her men’s Rangeman tactical watch, and they had taken off from the DARPA building’s roof at 5:30 am after a quick clean up, a couple of bites of food and a coffee.
The sun was starting to break the surface of the horizon, preceded by spikes of light spearing through the low cloud cover. The spikes would soon be so numerous as to coalesce into a half partial sphere of radiance that would burn off the clouds and push the darkness back for another 10 hours before relinquishing control once again.
The Slip Page 5