by Brian Lewis
“Coercion. Ha! I wish it were that simple.” Khalil walks around the room, studying the expressions of each council member. “As many of you are aware, the Ark was attacked. The Class Three D.C.I. android in interrogation had a quantum vacuum detonation device hidden inside its metallic body. It escaped our sensors. The good news is none are dead. The room was empty when the bomb exploded. The explosion injured several dozen, but we’ve flown them to the DuBois Medical Hospital. The early indication is they’re expected to pull through.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Councilwoman Ashanti Adams exhales.
Natia steps forward. “I want it known, I am not in favor of weaponizing my research and the work of my team.” She turns her head toward Khalil, “but I believe New Manden needs protection no matter what it takes.”
Khalil smiles.
“The only way I will support Project Farima is through a re-framing of the Project Maximus referendum. I can restructure it faster than you all can blink.”
“So what’s the problem then?” Councilman Aloomis asks.
Khalil clears his throat, “This endeavor requires a certain touch that only I can offer.”
Natia laughs. “No, it requires detachment from the past. It requires a fresh perspective.”
“Now I can agree with that.” Councilwoman Adams smiles at Natia.
The group of council members argue back and forth with Natia and Khalil for minutes on end over who will be the final decision-maker. Natia debates that it’s her time and that what she and her team have built will protect the country. Khalil charges that she is overzealous and too naïve of the realities of the world.
Acacia Reed, with her finger in her ear, runs up to Khalil and whispers something to him. Khalil’s eyes widen and dart back and forth in shock and disbelief. If thoughts were objects, Natia would see the gears shifting above his head. Something has gone wrong.
Khalil lowers his head and begins rubbing his twitching eyes. “Acacia has informed me that another bomb has exploded, not in the Ark, but in Building Two. Five confirmed dead so far.”
He presses a button on his Orunmila and projectors hanging on the ceiling of the solarium depict the scene of the crime. The sight of Mandenites running in every direction away from smoke and fire brings back painful memories. A blaze rages on the lower levels of Building Two controlled by Node Two. She sees the bodies of the dead, not an android this time, and her eyes swell. The sounds of emergency vehicles and screaming echo throughout the room. The council members shake in disbelief and they all look towards Natia.
Councilman Olina, the representative of Node Two, collapses into his virtual chair. “I cannot believe what’s happening! In all my years as a Mandenite. We have to get to the bottom of this. Now!”
“Panic will soon spread throughout the AugNet. Bombs in the heart of the Isle of Manden! It’s packed on the island today. What if there are more?” Another Councilwoman cries out.
“This is a travesty. Someone is sending a message they want us to hear. By not preparing ourselves for the worst potential outcome, we are not ensuring the safety of our people. The Collective needs to vote to authorize the activation of the Farima project.” Councilman Aloomis says with an intense militancy in his voice.
Councilwoman Ashanti Adams lets out a heavy sigh and looks at Natia with a pained expression on her face. “You know I’ve always been a supporter of your work, Dr. Greenheart. At least with Project Farima, your Maximus project will continue. I move to allow Natia to seek solidarity with the voters right away.”
The council members agree and begin breaking off the meeting abruptly to attend to their Nodes. Everyone will soon be on high alert across the Jena’s in New Manden.
Natia plops into a chair and lifts her Orunmila to her face. Before beginning, she realizes she doesn’t even know what to say. There is no preparation for terrorist attacks. She calms her mind and body as she’s learned to do from training and looks up at Khalil. He nods at her with a serious look on his face.
“To the people of New Manden, today we mourn the lives of those lost during tonight’s attack. Rest assured, many people are working to figure out who is attacking us. Until then, we need to take direct action to protect our people.”
She looks at Khalil and continues, “Today I received your support and you showed solidarity with me. I am forever thankful. Now I need you to show that same solidarity with Councilman Buhari who has been working on a private project to protect us.”
She monitors Acacia who has a smirk on her face, of all expressions. “So I am adding a simple extension to Project Maximus. Accomplishing this end could happen without a vote from the Collective, but the power over this project must be in balance. So I ask that you not only show solidarity with Khalil but make sure I am not supplanted. I pray for all of New Manden tonight.”
Natia ends the transmission and clenches her fist. She looks up and sees Khalil and Acacia staring at her on the opposite end of the solarium. She fights back the tears from creeping out of the corner of her eyes. The timing of this chaos is… peculiar. I’ll play along for now until I figure out who plots against the Collective.
“Give us a moment, Acacia.” Khalil motions for his head of intelligence to leave the room. Once they’re alone, Khalil says, “I’ve always looked out for you and now is no different. You’ll be safe where we’re headed. I will protect you like always and enjoy it.”
“Khalil, what in the world is Project Farima? No one knows but you! You’ve kept it hidden from even me! How am I supposed to trust you? I’ve lied to The Collective and made them believe I know more than I do. My reputation is on the line now.”
“You’re supposed to trust me because I made a commitment to your grandfather when he died after the Battle of Charlotte. He told me to look after his family no matter what, and that’s what I’ve done for decades. He’d be so proud to see the woman who carries his name, his legacy.” Khalil takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t like talking about politics or the Second Revolutionary War. Look at it like this, you’re helping to make New Manden not only the smartest nation on the planet, but the strongest too.”
“And where is this secret location you mentioned where my team and I will complete Homo Maximus?”
“It’s a private Jena miles to the east of the Isle of Manden in the Atlantic Ocean. Acacia is getting the air cruiser warmed up now.”
“What can’t she do, I wonder?” Natia inquires.
Khalil turns away and walks towards the door. He looks back, “I wouldn’t know of anything, yet. You may not like her, but I ask that you at least try to get along with her if that’s not too much to ask. She’s not your enemy.”
“Who is my enemy Khalil?” Natia asks her question before Khalil leaves.
He stumbles as if unprepared for the question. “If I were to wager a guess, I’d say the Knights of the White Rose. Same as it’s always been.”
The KWR, an acronym that’ll always bring out the hateful side of me. Natia places her hands on her hips and shakes her head.
“Collect your things. Whatever you think you’ll need, bring it. We won’t be coming back to the Ark. I’ll be on the rooftop awaiting your arrival.” Khalil exits the room. He leaves Natia alone by herself in the moonlight. Different from how he’d found her twenty years ago with her father’s dead body on the floor of a lost embassy.
As she followed in Khalil’s footsteps out of the solarium, countless buzzes and beeps rang from her device. With a rapid response, millions of Mandenite worker-citizens had responded in solidarity with Natia.
She’s still in control of Project Maximus, for now.
Chapter 5
The Man With No Nation
New American States—Texas, 2082—Taseti’s Laboratory
Taseti Enduri types away at his elevated workstation that looks out on a vast laboratory. The factory lab is automated and extensive, with Taseti acting as its coordinator. It is three hundred and sixty feet in width and twice the length o
f a football field. It’s tucked in an empty, shrub-filled plain eighty miles south-east of Dallas, Texas with no trace of civilization for miles.
Six screens, three on the bottom and three on top, stretch out in a semi-circle around him. Composed of a luminous elastic composite material that is not merely flexible but also unbreakable. Taseti can identify the essential information he requires whenever he wants. He roams the quantum internet often with his links to the AugNet. The AugNet assembles interactions in augmented reality and in real-time. Augmented social media, games, and a plethora of diverse schemes are ever accessible. Taseti is tracking the AugNet with an intense focus on this day.
He clicks a video and instead of playing, a beam of light reaches out of the computer screen. Taseti watches as everything in a one-hundred-foot radius reconstructs into the space outside the entrance to the Ark of Endonis. Through augmented reality technology, Taseti can be anywhere. Even in his enemy’s backyard. He can shift the translucency of the virtual image back and forth within a range so he won’t see his laboratory at all if he doesn’t need to. This was AR technology through computers, distinct from the AR technology of New Manden. There, AR tech relies on contact lenses and glasses, and even bionic eye implants.
Taseti scoffs at the prospect of New Manden’s technology spreading around the world. Anger and hatred consume his mind as he watches a report from earlier in the day. “We are being informed from sources inside the ECIC that they have not yet figured out the source of these new attacks. They have a shortlist of potential threats that they are looking into. The death toll of the second bombing has now risen to eight. I repeat, we have now lost eight people because of the second explosion, not the first according to the spokesperson for the ECIC.”
Taseti cuts off the video and steps to the edge of the second floor platform that his workstation is on. He grasps the railing and gazes out into the expanse of moving parts that is his android army. Androids run the factory lab and build better self-replicating androids of many types. For fighting, for working or for testing… androids don’t argue and never grow fatigued.
They are the ideal tools to be used. The perfect weapons of war. Who cares about human evolution when the future is robotics and trans-organic life. Life beyond flesh and bones. Taseti thinks as he watches an android place synthetic, lifelike tissue over a nano-metallic android skull. They stretch it out on a factory table on the first floor beneath him. You’re not the only one working on cheating death Khalil Buhari and pretty soon New Manden won’t be able to protect you from me.
Taseti turns a corner and begins descending a series of steps that lead to the first floor. He pauses at the floor. To his left, colossal self-flying airships are being built up that can carry dozens at a time. To his right, a small battalion of heavily armored Aren 7’s stand. Aren 7’s are so new, they haven’t seen the battlefield yet. Standing over nine feet tall, he designed the massive bipedal battle androids cause mass panic in any opposing force. To the casual observer, they stand mighty like giants of old fables. Yet underneath they have a rich metal alloy skeletal system. Taseti composed their skeletal structure of a titanium-carbyne composite material. It makes a single Aren 7, the most indestructible mobile war machine ever built. Aren 7’s carry high-velocity auto-cannons with interchangeable weapons settings. Their four-hundred-pound weight makes them impossible to lift by actual humans.
In front of Taseti stands his primary weapon of choice. The state-of-the-art class three Deep Cover Infiltrator androids. Many call them ‘Trojans’ as an epithet, he hails them as his equalizers.
There is a metallic thickness to the air, the stink of burning metal and, something else. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he can smell the smokey fumes smoldering at the Endonis Collective Industrial Complex right now.
Taseti smiles.
He wears a black visor that covers his eyes, his once soft brown eyes that were destroyed with half his face. He was left disfigured during the tragic days of the Battle of Charlotte. From within his visor, Taseti can see it’s eleven at night… his expected guest is late.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, one of his security androids comes to him with a message. “Taseti, your guest Marko Callistan has arrived.”
“Finally. Let him in.” Taseti nods at the android. Marko Callistan is one of the highest-ranking members of the plutarchy that runs the New American States. The NAS is a collection of states west of the Missouri River. After signing the detente with what became New Manden, the NAS split from ‘Old America.’ One nation is now three, with the NAS facing the Pacific Ocean and New Manden in the Atlantic. The original American states, East America, now sit as a buffer zone with its own government separating the other two.
Neutral ground in theory. Taseti doesn’t recognize this distinction and never will.
Callistan’s pockets are deep, one of the deepest in the world. Taseti knows he has something the plutarchy needs. Something of incredible value.
Marko walks in with his chin held high and his arms folded behind his back with the proud swagger of a Plutarch. He’s flanked by a squad of heavily armored soldiers clad in red and white armor, the colors of the Knights of the White Rose. Marko wears a service dress uniform worn by the militaristic nobility of the NAS. The uniform comprises a red dress shirt with golden buttons and a golden collar. Emblazoned on the right side of the shirt is a golden rose. One of many symbols of the Knights of the White Rose who serves as the militant arm of the NAS. His pants are white, with a thick red line going along the side. He also wears boots that add two inches to his six foot two frame.
The emissary of the plutarchy speaks in a deceptive tone. “Nice to see you again, Taseti. The billions in funding have gone a long way. I’ll never understand the appeal of being out in the middle of nowhere, though. I told you that the capitol is different.”
“Yes, and I told you I like my solitude. There’s no reason to have to always look over my shoulders out here.” Taseti knows the hatred against foreign groups has intensified in the capitol. The city that became the capital of the NAS after losing Washington D.C. to the damned socialist rebels.
“You called me out here.” Marko leans against one of the work tables and motions to his soldiers to relax from their aggressive stances. “What does the scientist revolutionizing the NAS army need now?”
“I assume you’ve been monitoring the AugNet today?”
“Of course, Taseti. Magnificent work on the Isle of Manden.”
Taseti nods. “The destruction of New Manden is only beginning. I’m prepared to start the next phase of our agenda. Everything here is ready to go.” Marko turns his head to the side and folds his arms in front of his torso. “I’ve always wondered what motivates you and your hate for your people. I mean yes, the Battle of Charlotte, your injuries, bad and painful, I’m sure…”
“That traitorous bastard Khalil Buhari ruined everything. My family is gone, my friends are gone… he ruined my entire way of life. Oh, by the way, they’re not my people. Not anymore.”
“Well I’m not your people either Taseti and will never be. Your features alone make you impolite to be around in most cities in the NAS.”
“Let’s cut the irrelevant talk, Marko, you need something from me, and I need something from you. I can be a mercenary scientist for the rest of my life, I don’t care. Acceptance from the NAS is not important to me and I don’t need it from the traitors of New Manden either. I have an android army here that can topple entire governments… so protection is the least of my worries. If I’m going to crush the ECIC for you, then I need something more than money and protection that I already have.”
Marko rolls his eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want you to talk to the families of the plutarchy, all the oligarchs. Tell them to make me a Sector Chief.” Taseti speaks with a determination that goes unnoticed. A Sector Chief is a title given to those who are Governors in the old traditional sense before the war. Once a Sector Chief,
the person and their families are initiated into the plutarchy. They become the beneficiaries of billions in wealth by default.
A loud series of laughs ring out inside the factory. Marko Callistan can barely keep a straight face as his soldiers break all levels of decorum along with him. “A Sector Chief… you?!” Marko bends forward in laughter.
“I’d advise you not to mock me, Marko. There are eleven sectors in total in the NAS and from what I’ve heard and read, the plutarchy is finding it hard to keep Sector Chiefs onboard. You know it’s hard getting people to co-sign a military police state that starves half its population. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at them.”
“And you wouldn’t have a problem with that I’m assuming?” Marko Callistan still fights to depress the wide grin that stretches across half his face. His teeth are too pristine for a man with a soul as dark as hell itself.
“Not at all. They’re not my people.” Taseti chuckles. “Why should I care what you do to those who hate me, anyway?” Marko is no longer amused; he walks closer to Taseti and looks down on him with the indignant demeanor of a planter judging a slave that was too smart. “We don’t accept your kind in the plutarchy. We learned that lesson after the Second Revolutionary War and the detente. If you want inclusion, go to our neighbors next door in East America where your people are more welcomed… or… bite a bullet and go to New Manden.” Taseti stares at him in the eyes through his visor. “If I go, I’m taking my androids with me.”
“You aren’t that bold… or that stupid.”
The androids that are working stop what they are doing. Without warning, they walk towards the group with their sharp tools still in their hands. The completed androids come online with their eyes glowing and point their weapons at Marko and the KWR soldiers.
“And I didn’t think you were stupid enough to come into my domain and threaten me. I can see your blond hair and blue eyes don’t give you a higher I.Q. after all.” Taseti smiles with delight as the KWR soldiers panic as they point their weapons in each direction. Hundreds of androids now surround the small group of soldiers on all sides. They point weapons at them with snipers perched on the second floor above the group. Drones descend from the cover of darkness from the ceiling above. They hover low enough to shoot the KWR soldiers and Marko Callistan on sight. Such was life in the NAS for a scientist without a place to call home.