Queen Zaria Trilogy

by Danny Dunn

  Pong tells David to do whatever he feels is necessary. David thanks her and says he feels like he is a bit late in realizing this and hopes he isn’t too late. Pong tells David that protecting Tom is a near-impossible task if there is someone that wants him dead and to just do the best he can. Tom nods his head, and Pong leaves him with the decoys.

  David has the Pongettes spending all their time looking for possible threats. They uncover over 40 camps, including the one in Arizona. David’s biggest concern is drone attacks. David decides to begin monitoring the camps in a new way. He isn’t monitoring voice. He is monitoring heat and RF. Even the tiniest drone creates heat and drones, unless they are 100% pre-programmed, transmit and receive radio frequencies to carry out their tasks. In the case of AI swarms, they also communicate with each other during a mission, and in that case, there might be dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of RF signals being transmitted simultaneously. So, David tells pong he wants a drone that can float. Pong smiles and has him tell her everything he needs the drone to do, and Pong gets to work on a floating drone. Pong smiles as she designs it. She shows it to Tom. The drone looks almost identical to the Klingon warship with the big sloping wings that blend into the ship’s body. The graphene is transparent and is over 80% transparent. She tells David it is kind of stuck in cloaking mode and asks if that is ok and giggles. What varies from the Klingon ship is that there is a 10-foot tall fin that extends from the center of the body straight up. Along across the top layer of the body, as well as up both sides of the fin, is a flexible solar panel. Instead of using platinum as the conductor, the solar panel uses graphene, which makes the panel lighter and increases the energy conversion by over 75%. Inside the body are large pockets filled with helium. The fans are built into the wings. There are holes in the wings just large enough to accommodate one fan on each side of the wings. The drone really only needs enough power to keep it in place.

  Inside the 3-foot tall body of the drone are pockets of helium that fill up every square inch of the body not being filled by the electronics inside. With the helium, the net weight of the 6-foot wide drone is less than 1 pound. There is a small video camera, a Parabolic RF receiver, and a thermal sensor. There is also an RF transmitter to send the data being picked up by the drone to a monitoring system on the ground. There is very little battery power since the high output graphene solar panel can provide more than enough power to run everything in the drone and run the fans.

  Two days later, Pong has 1 SpyDro ready for testing. Everyone there is cracking up at how much it looks like the Klingon vessel. They send it up to 1000 feet. It is virtually invisible. If you know where to look, you can see it. Otherwise, you would never notice it. Because the 10-foot tall fin is running vertically, you can’t see it at all when you are underneath it.

  End Chapter 46

  Chapter 47 – Excuse Me Madam President, That’s My Podium.

  David and pong go inside and start their tests. They can see their RF transmissions, including Wi-Fi, cell phones, blue tooth. They can see their drones flying around. Pong says hm, let’s see what this looks like. She modifies the code of their monitoring system. Now you can see the aftermath of the transmissions coming from the drones. Wow, David says. That is fantastic. That will enable us to see what the overall scheme is. I love it, he says. Then they view the thermal signals of the area. They send up 500 drones and have them do some choreographed movements. David asks her to add the same feature to the thermal sensing, and it is just amazing. Seeing it in motion tells you so much more than just paths that disappear right away. It tells you the intent, the purpose, and the goal. Wow.

  How long can it stay up? Pong says that during sunny days, it can stay up indefinitely. There is just enough battery storage to sustain it overnight. During the daytime, the solar panel provides the power to run, plus it charges the batteries to full capacity in about 2 hours. At a thousand feet up, there is much more wind than on the ground, and the wings provide more than enough light to keep it up. I am adding a place for additional battery space. If we know there is going to be more wind, then I can install another battery.

  Pong tells David she will now provide GPS ability so that it will maintain a position indefinitely on its own, and she will add a recording interface with some AI to detect threat like behaviors.

  Pong asks how many he needs. He says, well, I know graphene is an issue for you. Pong tells him not to worry about that. David says, how about 50 he asks. Pong says she will have them in 3 days.

  We can use this one for the debate he says. If they are going to launch an attack, we can see it from the moment they start turning them on. Secret service might be a problem. He asks Pong if she has any ideas on that. Pong says that all she is aware of is that they have snipers and metal detectors. There is something else I would like to see. David talks to Michael and asks him to take up a position 1500 yards away from the office. David tells Michael he will set up a target away from the office he wants Michael to hit. They send up the drone to 2000 feet and add an audio sensor to the drone. In front of the target is an image of Tom with a rope attached to it. David and Pong are standing 30 feet from the target, and David is holding onto the rope. David watches the screen on a tablet and tells Michael to wait a few seconds from his ok and then fire a shot.

  Michael says, roger that. David says go

  Michael wait a few seconds that fires. David sees the thermal image instantly and yanks on the rope pulling the cardboard image of tom down, and a second later, the bullet hits the target. After the bullet hits the target, they hear the gunshot. Pong is impressed and totally gets it. Razzing David, she tells David that is great, but she doesn’t think Tom is going to go for being attached to rope everywhere he goes. They both laugh. Nice David pong says, one threat at a time David. Very nice. David tells Michael a nice shot and to move to 1000 yards away. They do the same thing, and David beats the bullet. They try every 100 yards, and the bullet hits the image of tom at 800 yards away. Pong suggests they feed a severe tone into Tom’s earpiece as well as into the earpieces of the detail to help him get down. David loves it, and they put it all together in time for the debate.

  David tells Pong that the best scenario would be that they take a shot at a decoy, and we get him down in time. Then we still have our ability concealed.

  David asks Tom if having to deal with all these kinds of things related to humans gets old for her. Pong smiles and says honestly, yes. Every minute we spend on this stuff is a minute we could be spending on more positive things. But you have to take the bad with the good, and I think that Queen Zenthra will give you an earful if you ask her what life without bios is like for us AI creatures. So, we all just have to deal with it.

  On his own, David decides to run a program. David puts all of his newer team members on surveying every known extremist camp in the country and recording photos of every member, especially the long shooters. He gets their vehicle license plates and gathers everything he can on every member.

  Then he has the Pongettes develop profiles on them, and they start monitoring their bank accounts and locations. Inside a week, they have every top 40 camp, and all the participating members profiled and into their database.

  It is the day of the second debate, and David feels he is as ready as they can possibly be. They have “Klingy” 2000 feet up and is working well. They see hundreds of radio signals, but no threats.

  David has the Pongettes put up a 1,000-yard perimeter around the debate building, and each Pongettes has 10 drones with them ready to deploy. The moment gunfire is detected, the alarms sound, and they are to deploy the drones around the building or structure where the alarm was detected. The closes Pongettes to the shooter deploy the smallest perimeter, and the next out deploy their drones to form a perimeter 100 yards larger. They are to enter underground parking garages immediately.

  They have their bulletproof banners up, and a Tom decoy is going to go from the car to the front door with 4 bots surrounding him. Tom is arriving l
ater in a back entrance.

  The decoy makes it to inside the building, and they go directly to a back room where the decoy takes off his Tom disguise. Later, Tom enters through the back way and goes into the room.

  Someone knocks on the door and says two minutes. In the room are Tom, Zaria, David, and 6 bots. The bots are all dressed in suits. Four of the bots stand at the door. As Tom reaches the door, two of the bots exit, followed by Tom and the 4 bots behind Tom and last are Zaria and then David.

  As they arrive at the side of the stage, the usher not really knowing what is going on informs Tom that he will be positioned at the near podium. Tom looks at Zaria, and she shakes her head no and tells Tom that isn’t the deal. Tom nods his head and thinks. There are two reasons he does not want to be in the near podium.

  The first is that everyone will think all night that whoever is at the center is in the lead. The second is that security-wise, why would they want him where he was last week. Or, maybe they want it to look like they wanted the center position knowing he would win the center. He thinks some more and looks at David.

  David tells him to take the far side, and the democrat gets the center. Tom smiles and says, no, this is on me, David. Tom walks to the center podium and tells the president. Madam President, we all agreed that the one in the lead in the polls gets the center podium, and I looked at every poll I could find, including the Fox poll, and well, you are not ahead in a single poll, so you are in my spot. The president pretends not to hear him, and he taps her on the shoulder and says with the mic on again.

  Madam President, if you wanted the center podium so much, you should have come up with better ideas so your poll numbers would be above mine. Fox is hosting the event, and the moderator asks Tom if he would please take the side podium. Tom tells the moderator that he expects their questions to be biased in the president’s favor, but everyone knows the leader in the polls is the one that takes the center position.

  Now, as you well know, everyone watching this is going to see us on the sides of the president, and they will say oh, the president is in the lead now, and that will be the message for the next 2 hours. That is false advertising, at the very least. This is a little league move, and I will not stand for it. The mediator tells Tom that it is their debate and that he can either take his position or leave. Tom looks at the mediator in shock and smiles. And starts walking seemingly to the side podium but keeps walking. The mediator realizes Tom is walking off and that Tom is the rating machine of the three candidates. Sir, please take your position. Tom reaches his team and says, let's go. David keeps his composure and guides them back to the green room.

  David tells the decoys he wants three of them to get dressed as Tom, and the other 3 Pongettes escort the three decoys. Tom tells the outdoor teams there will be three Tom decoys coming out. They all exit their respective doors at the same time two steps out the door the gunfire-alarm sounds, and the decoys and their escorts immediately drop to the ground. They stay down for two seconds and then get up and sprint to the SUVs that are waiting with the doors open. The shot was at the Decoy exiting the front door. They sprint for the car and fly into the SUV, and the SUV speeds off. There are camera crews that caught were warned that Tom was coming out, and the cameras were rolling during all this.

  The Pongettes are reporting in, and the drones arrive at the building in 10 seconds. Two drones fly straight at the top floor the moment they exit the SUV. As they arrive, there is a man on the roof packing up his stuff. The drones are taking video and tasers the shooter. The shooter lands face up, and the drone hovers over him, sending pics and video. The Pongettes back at the control room is running his picture, and they match it up with a camp they surveyed the week before. It is a pro president group and is the one that had pictures of Tom on their practice targets.

  More Pongettes arrive at the scene, and they bag the shooter up and clean up the area so that there is no evidence of him being there. One of the Pongettes checks the parking lot for video cameras. There is one camera aimed at the elevator, so they cover it with a rag. The bot downstairs tells the others it is all clear, and they take him down to the underground garage in the freight elevator. They use the shooter's clicker to locate his car, and they drive that out to a remote location and leave it.

  They load the shooter into a large duffle bag, and two of them toss him from the SUV to Tom’s plane. The plane leaves, and they get him to Pong's property. The networks are already showing the video of the assassination attempt on Tom, and no one seems to know it was a decoy so far. Tom, David, and Zaria are all sitting in the green room, and Tom says he thinks he might want to join the debate. Zaria says that’s my man. David shrugs his head and raises his eyebrows and says what the hell. Tom walks back out the stage and up to the center podium.

  Madam President, someone just attempted to assassinate me again as I exited the building and so I am no longer in the mood to let you of all people occupy my podium. I suggest that if you want this podium, you try a new way like beating me in the polls and not…well, you know.

  The President looks at Tom, shocked that he is still alive, and pretends not to know what he is talking about. The president refuses to take the side podium, insisting that he gave it up when he left. Tom laughs and moves his podium right next to hers. What the hell he says and waves for the democrat to move in as well, and he declines. The mediator tells the president that, in fact, she had agreed to be on the side since tom has the higher poll numbers. The president gathers her stuff and leaves.

  David instructs the Pongettes to lower Klingy to see if they can find the bullet. They lower Klingy to 500 feet, and with the thermal sensor, they see a tiny bright spot in the middle of the lawn. David looking at the screen on his phone, walks right up to it and digs at it in the grass and picks it up and puts it in his pocket and smiles.

  The democratic candidate spends about 10% of his time kind of answering the question asked by the moderator and then spends 90% of his time attempting to explain off all of the things posted on Tom’s site. The senator calls Tom’s tactics unprofessional, bully-like, and calls Tom a liar and a thug.

  Tom spends all of his time focused on his platform and what affects will occur once everyone can vote and when the senate and congress begin basing their decisions on what is best for the people and not for themselves.

  They finish the debate with Tom being unscathed the entire debate. There is so much rich material on the Senator that two hours weren’t enough to explain everything Toms team published that week.

  Tom suggests that they are safe, and David says no, that this stuff only works if you do it every time. Remember that in Zero Dark Thirty. They go through their routine and get on the plane that just returned and head back home.

  Back at the Pongpound. The plane arrives with the shooter who is secured and conscious. They are in a room dug into the mountain. It is literally a cave with a door. The shooter is chained to a huge block of concrete at the back of the cave. The shooter has 5 heavy chains attached to him, and they are way heavier duty than they need to be x 10. There is one per foot, 1 chain per wrist, and one around his neck. All 5 are secured with large Kryptonite locks. All five connect to a really thick ring and also on the ring is a 1 chain you might see attached to a battleship anchor and that connect to a 4-inch eyelet connected to a 2 inch thick bolt running through a 2,000-pound chunk of concrete which is sitting on the dirt near the back of the cave.

  The shooter asks what if he has to go to the bathroom. Michael is talking to the shooter through a box that digitizes his voice. There is a camera so that Michael can see him through an infrared camera, but he can’t see Michael. Michael tells the shooter there is a hole over there. It is deep enough to handle whatever time he decides to stay there. The shooter asks why all the chains and Michael explains to him that over time, he may decide to chew off his hands and feet to escape. Of course, you would never survive, well the neck thing and all, but you would be crazy by then, so who knows.

  T
he shooter says you don’t scare me. Oh, we don’t mean to scare you, Michael tells him. Michael tells him, “there are 100 bags of beef jerky and a big box of various dried fruits near the water tank. There are 1000 gallons of water over there in the tank. The hose is just long enough for you to turn the valve on and off. The valve is plastic so you can’t use it for anything. When we have time, we will stop by now and then and if anything needs to be refilled. But other than that, you will live out your life here, and you will die here.

  “We have all the information we need for you and your camp. My boss isn’t big on slaughtering things, so he told me to deal with you in a way that requires me to spend the least amount of time and expense possible on you.

  “There are no cameras, no microphones, and for sure no one within yelling distance. Oh, you should think twice about throwing your food and stuff. Any acting out just means you don’t get any more.

  Michael says, well, it looks like you are all set. The shooter is expecting Michael to offer him something in return for talking. Then Michael is gone.

  Michael joins the group in the office. Michael grabs a case of beer and brings it into the office where they are all gathered. Michael hands out a beer to everyone and says here is to my boss, who, if I paid really close attention to every day for the rest of my life, I would know about 10% of what this guy seems to know. Everyone toasts David.

  Zaria holds her unopened can up and says to my man of steel.

  Everyone says here, here, cheers.