The Slip

by Tom C Willoughby

  Sam was finding that the amount of his hosts’ abilities he could retain once he left them depended on how long he resided in them. The language skills were more difficult to retain as a different language forced a different thinking process to some degree. It was initially a much smaller amount that he would retain but it consistently increased as he spent more time with the language. Sam also noticed that he felt “stickier” when he fully integrated - it was harder for him to detach from the host and he made a mental note to keep an eye on that.

  As their departure time neared they started to make their way to the helicopter to return to DARPA.

  Julia would never admit it, but Sam could feel that she was mentally exhausted, as much as, if not more than she was physically. He stayed barely integrated, giving her as much space as he could after the anguish he had caused with the full integrations.

  With the regular training complete Julia found herself anticipating the surprise beginning of the final test. It had been easy to focus on other things during the training. She now found her mind returning to thoughts of the final test. Julia switched to small talk to distract herself and hopefully keep the final test a surprise for Sam, at least as much as possible.

  “Okay, so now that you’re a badass let’s get back and see what the team is up to.” Julia said.

  “Sounds good, boss. You know, something I noticed which was a little strange was after fully integrating it was a little bit harder to pull out. I was stickier or something,” Sam said.

  “That’s disgusting, Sam, keep that nasty stuff to yourself and don’t get stuck inside ME,” Julia said, a bit of humor returning.

  “Hmmmm. Well, I will just have to be careful to not stay fully integrated with anyone for too long and test out just how long is too long,” Sam said as much to himself as Julia.

  Once the helicopter lifted off, Julia knew the final test would occur while they were in the air, en route to DARPA. She wanted to see how Sam could put the knowledge he had been mining from her brain, to work in another host’s body. In this scenario the pilot was the only other host available so Julia suggested Sam test out his new integration approach on the pilot. Julia wanted him integrated with the pilot when the test began.

  It was the same pilot who flew them to The Farm, so what the hell if he thinks she’s handsy, thought Julia. Sam was, of course, eager, and after transitioning quickly took active control of the pilot using his skills to continue flying the helicopter without so much as a shudder in the aircraft.

  “How high can this helicopter fly?” Julia asked the pilot, who was now the Slip. Julia didn’t want the actual pilot (who could still perceive everything even though pushed back out of control of his own body) to think that she was aware of what was happening to him, so she continued to pretend as if she was talking to the real pilot.

  “I think we should have a ceiling of about 15,000 feet, but that is probably a conservative manufacturer spec, I would guess we can do better - shall we find out?” Sam responded.

  “Sure, as long as it's safe.”

  Sam took them up quite skillfully, Julia thought to herself. Guess his new transition technique really did give him full range of his host’s skills in real time. The seamless transition into the actively flying pilot without displaying any outward sign of the change was almost scarily undetectable.

  “We are at 14,300 feet and our rate of climb has almost zeroed out with the reduced air density at this elevation. It’s a little better than specs indicate but I thought we would have been able to do better,” Sam said after about 5 minutes of climbing, giving Julia a nice toothy grin.

  A new voice suddenly broke through on their head sets, “Agent Cacerek, this is Field Commander Kenneth Burns. You have an emergency assignment beginning now. Take out the parachute underneath your seat and exit the helicopter within 30 seconds…”

  Sam looked at Julia wide eyed — guess the surprise was intact. This was the beginning of the final training test she had been waiting for, but she was going to make one unscripted change to the plan. She was going to substitute the pilot as Sam’s host instead of herself. She quickly reached over and pinched the vagus nerve on the side of the pilot’s neck, hard, a couple times in quick succession. He convulsed slightly and fainted. Julia purposely tried to use as light a touch as possible so the effects would be minimized. In extreme cases the recipient could awaken feeling nauseous with impaired motor skills which would definitely work against the rest of her plan. Julia took the controls and put the helicopter into a hover while she unbuckled the pilot’s safety harness and her own. She had to straddle the console between their seats as she removed his arms from the harness straps and put the parachute onto him cinching it tight. The craft swung side to side slightly as she had to jostle across the cockpit for this maneuver. Julia then squeezed between the pilot and the center console so they were sharing the same seat. She then put the safety harness from his seat around herself and buckled it snugly. Knowing she only had seconds, she quickly reached over him and unlocked the exterior door on his side of the cockpit letting it swing open. Julia then pushed on the pilot’s right shoulder until he was leaning over to his left side while she pulled back on his parachute harness bringing her own safety belt taut against her body and anchoring her to the seat. She let him continue to tip over until he was precariously balanced on the edge of the seat hanging partially out of the helicopter. Now the only thing keeping him from falling out was Julia’s grip on his parachute harness.

  Julia had secretly planned to incorporate the unknowing pilot into the training test all along. She needed Sam to be trialed in another host, under extreme conditions, without her as the safety net. The next part of the plan was going to be risky but she had resolved herself to the fact that the global situation was so precarious it was a risk that had to be taken. Even if the participants did not have a say in the matter.

  She needed to know how far Sam was willing to go.

  17

  BRIAN USED HIS SHOULDER TO hold the phone to his ear to free up both hands as he tapped, prodded and pushed Jerry away from the keyboard and mouse connected to the projector, trying to continue listening to the person on the other end at the same time.

  Jerry had been at the projector helm for the better part of the last 48 hours working furiously to get the programmer teams in place with each of their specific tasks. His nerves were worn thin from lack of sleep, but looking into Brian’s eyes he saw an alarm that muted his own annoyance and he silently vacated his seat for Brian to take over.

  “…similar symptoms…uh huh…email, okay…” everyone could hear Brian’s side of the conversation as he sat down and started to pull up his email.

  “Okay I have it, opening it now, let me know if anything else comes up. Bye.” Brian put his phone down and double clicked the email from jcullen@cdc.org.

  “We have new infections being reported in large quantities again,” Brian announced to the group as he opened the pdf attachment.

  A map of the U.S. came up with the same circles and virus initials as they saw on the other map a couple days prior. The slide was titled “New Infections” and dated 3 days ago.

  Brian clicked forward to a map of 2 days ago, 1 day ago and then the current day.

  Cycling through the slides showed a time lapse of new infections which identified blooms of dots growing in diameter and density all the way through to the last slide.

  The previous map had shown infections up the middle of the U.S. and then turning east along the bottom edge of the great lakes. These latest maps showed clusters up and down the West coast, in Nevada, Texas, around Chicago, and in overlapping blooms in the northeast.

  Someone had gone to wake those that were sleeping since Brian had accosted the computer, and everyone was now looking at the magnitude of the infections on the screen in shock.

  Francisco broke the silence, “Shit man, this is out of control.”

  Brian pushed a button on the conference table phone and asked his
assistant to prepare another conference room. Then he addressed the room, “Okay folks, we are just going to keep moving forward. Jerry, you take this computer back and this is going to be your command center. We need you to continue getting the programming teams in place. Everyone else come with me so we can brainstorm on these slides and see what we can figure out from the new pattern.”

  Within minutes it was clear that the infection clusters were all centered around major cities including:

  Honolulu

  San Jose

  San Francisco

  Los Angeles

  Seattle

  Las Vegas

  Chicago

  Houston

  Boston

  New York

  Washington

  Newark

  “Okay, with isolated landlocked infection sites, we can throw out another sea based point of origination for this round of…attacks,” Brian said. There was a pause after Brian’s use of the word attacks but no objections, and Komiko said, “Zoom in on one of the clusters, Brian.”

  Brian picked Chicago and as they zoomed in, it became obvious that there was a high level of detail as blobs clarified into individual circles even as they continued to zoom in to see the outlines of suburbs.

  “It looks like there is an eye to the storm centered around the airport, where there are no reported instances,” Komiko commented.

  Jim pointed out, “Except for the terminal building itself, an airport is really a large unpopulated area in a dense city.”

  “And the circles are all associated with hospitals since that is where the infections are recognized and recorded,” Susan continued.

  Uhli nodded. “So it would make sense that there would not be any infection markers in the airport where there are not any hospitals.”

  “But,” Komiko said, “If you zoom out slowly, Brian, the density or number of infections per hospital diminishes radially the farther away from the airport you go.”

  “You’re right, so that must mean the bots, assuming they are bots again, came in on planes and spread out from there after landing. Let’s check some of the other cities,” Brian said.

  After looking at most of the other cities on the map they identified the same density patterns centered around airports and thinning radially outwards.

  18

  THE SLIP AWAKENED FEELING A little groggy, and saw Julia looking at him very seriously. Her mouth was moving, but Sam couldn’t hear anything. There was air movement on the side of his face, and he slowly started to remember where he was as he brought the cockpit control panel into focus. With a sudden rush of volume, Julia’s voice broke through on the headset almost shouting as she relayed the rest of the transmission Sam hadn't heard…

  “…you have 2 hours to call me at a number ending in zero…”

  “…the rest of the number is the social security number of the sheriff’s daughter…”

  “…the sheriff serves the town of Nanjemoy northwest of here…”

  “…ARE YOU WITH ME, SAM!?…”

  Sam nodded, not quite able to get his mouth to work yet.

  “…2 hours, zero casualties…”

  “…agents have been alerted that an enemy combatant is in pursuit of the sheriff’s daughter…”

  “…they don’t know who you are…”

  “…give me a thumbs up if you understand the assignment…”

  Sam gave a thumbs up and almost simultaneously felt himself fall backward out of the helicopter. He was free-falling and tumbling uncontrollably. Unable to focus as he spun, a blur of green and blue flashed through his vision. Sam was terrified and had subconsciously relinquished control of his host. He watched as the pilot calmly reacted to the situation, his training guiding him. Forcing himself to relax, Sam recalled some of Julia’s sky diving knowledge. There were only snippets, but enough to regain his courage. He forced himself to fully integrate with the pilot again. Everything was there. He had full control of the pilots knowledge and abilities and the pilots instincts were now his. Sam stopped thinking and started reacting as one with the pilot. He put out his arms and legs like he was going to make a snow angel and with some minor adjustments broke the spin. Once steady he found he was on his back looking up towards the helicopter where he could see Julia’s face peering down at him from the open door he had just “fallen” out of.

  With his wits back he put a big smile on his face and gave Julia the bird for a good 3 seconds before he did an expert somersault reversing his position so he was now looking at the quickly approaching ground and pulled his chute.

  Julia couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the digit as she closed the helicopter door. That was the most dangerous part of the final test as the agents Sam would encounter next had been directed not to use lethal force. Julia was flooded with relief that Sam and the pilot were going to make it safely to the ground. She was also excited that Sam had been able to use all his tools in such an extreme situation. The worst case outcome would have been very different. She pushed the thought out of her head and brought the helicopter’s nose down, exiting the hover and accelerating quickly away.

  19

  AFTER LOOKING AT MOST OF the other cities on the map they identified the same density patterns centered around the cities’ airports thinning radially outwards.

  “Okay, good job; we have a delivery method,” Brian said.

  “We should crunch the flight data and see if there is a unique origination point for this data set of airports,” Komiko said.

  A ping announced a new email window on Brian’s pc. Clicking on it brought up an email with a number of jpeg attachments. “Looks like we have some images of the recent attack bots,” Brian said absently.

  “Uhli, could you get with Jerry and see if he has a way to analyze the routes for a unique origination point? The rest of us will see what we can learn from these photos.”

  The first thing everyone noticed as they opened up the pictures was the scale that indicated these devices were much smaller than the previous bots. At half a centimeter or a little less than a 1/4 inch these 2nd gen bots were less than half the size of the 1st gen. Making things smaller at this scale was incredibly difficult and the team was at a loss at to how this was being accomplished.

  “Either both generations of bots were developed around the same time and there was a decision to use them separately like this for some reason. Or the developers have some incredible and novel method of developing new technology at a rate unimaginable previously,” Jim said to the group.

  Susan gave her analysis of those possibilities. “Psychologically there is some merit to the first explanation you describe, as striking fear in your enemy can be quite a debilitating tactic, and just looking around the room it is obvious to me the majority of us are having a visceral reaction to the potential of an enemy who can advance this quickly. So, if this speed of advancement is still not actually possible by our enemy, then maybe it is the ruse that they can do this which is their goal,” Susan said.

  Komiko said, “One thing that seems evident is a better ability to control their flight. The previous swarms appeared largely at the mercy of the primary winds. In each city of this latest attack, the thinning of the attack densities appear for the most part to be symmetrically radiating from the airports and then thinning equally as they get farther from the center.” Komiko pointed at the map. “Typically in nature, the smaller a flying insect is the less control they have over their flight path and insects are actually grounded by even slow moving winds. In this case we have much smaller insect bots with better ability to control their flight paths.”

  Brian nodded at his team. “It’s an interesting point, as we could assume that at least one, and likely more, of these locations had some type of wind that would have affected similar sized insects at the time of these swarm movements. Yet there is not a single city which has a non-symmetrical pattern of attacks.” Brian added as he was clicking back and forth through the pictures, “It also looks like some of th
e bots have a disk-like projection on their backs and some don’t. Other than that, they all appear to look the same,” he said as he cocked his head quizzically while comparing the images.

  After a moment, Komiko broke the room’s silence. “If they were able to fly close to the ground, they would largely be unaffected by all but the strongest of winds. It might be something as simple as that. Of course, none of this is simple but it would be a simple strategy versus even more technological prowess,” Komiko concluded appearing satisfied with her own explanation.

  “So what do we think the little discs on some of their backs are for?” Brian inquired.

  “Maybe…” Francisco’s unique voice and accent brought everyone’s eyes to him, “these are like the electric magnets you see picking up cars at the junkyard. Maybe this is how they came in on the airplanes. Actually ON the airplanes’ exterior.”

  “And maybe they would then disconnect from the magnetic disc once they arrived at their intended location, but some didn’t disconnect for some reason. Maybe they malfunctioned or were shaken loose from the airplane on landing or something.” Jim added, “This could be verified at the airports if we could find a bunch of the magnetic discs still attached to plane bodies or on the ground.”

  Brian was on his phone before Jim finished, asking for the airports and planes to be checked ASAP for the tiny discs that appeared in some of the pictures, indicating that there would likely be a lot of them if they were there at all.

  20

  USING THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL from his pilot host, Sam gave his chutes’ directional cords a pull to get a quick final deceleration as his feet touched the ground. He was in a small clearing where the tree canopy had given him a 20-foot diameter opening which he bulls-eyed and brought the parachute through to the ground without being snagged.