by Cole Anders
“How does she do that?” Asked Simon.
“Nerva runs several shell corporations that she can conduct her various in person tasks with. Handling money, delivering and receiving equipment, etc.” Explained Calvin.
“Does she know about that time I wrecked my first car in high school, but managed to find an exact duplicate that didn't work, so I pretended like my car wouldn't start so I could keep my parents from finding out I wrecked the original one they had bought me? Asked Simon.
“99 jeep wrangler, red, stock tires and suspension. You know that based on the reported damage to the original vehicle that there was a 79% percent likelihood that you suffered a concussion in that accident.” Interjected Nerva.
“Um, ya, that's possible, I had dizzy spells and vertigo for months after the accident.” Simon said sheepishly.
“I know that by piecing together a wide array of seemingly unrelated pieces of information. The people you sold the original too had it repaired, those repairs went into a database. Not to mention the police report you managed to have a friend of yours expunge from the system. He didn’t get rid of it, he just flagged it as sealed, but the information was still there for me to access. And all the typing input you produced after that for months had a much higher degree of error in it. I can bring all of that together and make predictions and judgment’s using my own expertise.” Said Nerva
“Let's wrap up, Simon; tomorrow you'll be passing through the flapjack for the first time and it can be a somewhat disorienting experience. It can also be very dangerous if you don't do it correctly.” David queued up what appeared to be a simple graphical representation on the table display.
“Let me explain, the flapjack is a sort of stationary porthole that cheats distances in three-dimensional space. You can input a direction and distant, then Nerva compensates for orbital movement and solar helical movement, and then the machine will compress the distance between the iris portal and the selected destination down to the smallest possible distance, a single Planck length, basically making the threshold of the iris and the destination behave as adjacent points in space-time. The intersecting distance isn't disrupted in anyway, since that folding accrues within higher order dimensions, there is no damage to local space-time along the trajectory either. When activated, you can look through the iris to where you'll be going. However, the connection is only one way, so from the receiving side, it doesn't look like anything changes, and nothing can pass through back to the iris. And believe me, it is extremely disorienting passing through a sheer one way opening like that. Also, and this is very important Simon, when you pass through the iris, do it quickly and in one smooth motion, many people prefer to jump through it. The reason being, while your body is bisected by the iris, nothing in or on you can pass back to the trailing side of your body. Blood, clothes, neuron firings, nothing. So, when you pass through, it's going to feel like your entire body goes numb in a wave at the point of the aperture. The flapjack does buffer your position but only for a fraction of a second, it takes way too much computational power to buffer a physical object for longer than a few milliseconds. So, like I said, if you just jump through, you'll be fine, but if you linger in the iris, you will instantly do massive sheering damage to any part of your body touching the aperture.” Explained David.
“That's incredible, and terrifying. What, I mean how exactly does it work?” said Simon.
Calvin and David Glanced at each other briefly before David spoke up, “It’s difficult to really explain, and to be quite honest we aren’t exactly sure what’s happening. It seems to be teetering the aperture of the iris with an equivalently sized area at another location, which is tunable to some degree. Then it briefly entangles both locations, making them adjacent in the same way locations in normal space-time are adjacent. You can walk around across a room and the space of the room is continuous, the flapjack can render seemingly unrelated locations as continuous in the same way. It’s done through a special emitter that; we honestly have to admit, it must be emitting something we don’t know how to detect because it looks like all it produces are high energy x-ray. But the emitter is in a sealed container above the flapjack’s main room. So, whatever is happening isn’t blocked or shielded by any amount of normal matter, even if transmitted right through the middle of the Earth. And that being said, the flapjack isn’t limitless. The farther away it sends something the more power it has to draw through the emitter to maintain the channel. The draw is exponential as well, so to send something to the other side of the planet isn’t very difficult, but we don’t have emitters that could handle the power needed to reach the moon, not to mention the power draw would be nearly 100 gigawatts’ in a burst and a constant draw of 10 gigawatts to keep it open. Not to mention the x-ray burst alone would be catastrophic.”
“Oh, well so far this sounds like one of the most dangerous machines I’ve even heard of, I can’t wait to fall through it.” Simon said sarcastically.
“Well that's good, because Nerva has cleared you for active service, so tomorrow we'll start introducing you some of the equipment you'll be working closely with. And in another day or two, you’ll be in the pipe for your first live mission. After that, we'll need you to fill in certain skill gaps we have here, but once those are taken care of, what you master will be entirely up to you.” Calvin said, beginning to stand up.
Simon and the rest all stood up as well. “One more question Calvin, if I may. How on Earth am I qualified for any of this? I'm not that smart or athletic. At least not too a super spy covert operative level. Why me?” Asked Simon.
“You have all the mental and physical foundations needed to achieve anything we could possibly ask of you already; anyone can be trained to do anything or be anyone. Plus, my boy, you possess a uniquely armored mind, that's what protected you from the gorgon lamp during exposure. You have a major advantage over the rest of us. Go with Luke here, Nerva has assigned you to be his partner for the time being. He'll show you around, give you a more official tour of the complex and help you get your feet wet.” said Calvin.
The four of them stood up and left the conference room and headed back out into the central hex. Calvin and David continued to the laboratory and Luke and Simon angled off towards the armory.
“So ya, nice to finally meet you, we've shared a little small talk over the last few weeks, but I've found it's good to keep brand new agents at arm’s length until after Nerva gives them the final thumbs up for field work. We've had people ultimately fail to coop with all the changes even when they seemed to be able to make it past exposure.” Said Simon.
“Ya hey, I get that. Everyone seems like a tight knit family here. I can't believe this is some kind of covert high powered organization, when it feels more like a cigar club than a paramilitary group. I'm not even sure who's in charge around here, Calvin I'd guess.” Said Simon.
“Ha, see that's the thing. He does a lot of the talking and organizing, but he's not in charge, Nerva is really the one in charge here. But Calvin is great with people and has a good touch when it comes to leadership, so we all kind of just look to him for that stuff naturally.” said Luke.
“Makes sense, how long have you been an agent?”
“Coming up on twenty years, they pulled me out of graduate school when I was sixteen, I was going to be a theoretical physicist, actually I guess that's what I became after all, just outside of the academic circles I thought I’d be in!” said Luke .
“Theoretical physicist? You look like you can bench press 400 pounds! Really, everyone here looks like a professional athlete, you guys must train non-stop.” said Simon.
“Aww, it's actually 425, but that's all part of the technology we have available to us. We all take a specially formulated supplement that basically sculpts our bodies to their natural physical peak. It's not totally fool proof of course, you still should eat right and exercise, it's more like if a doctor prescribed you a personally designed steroid regimen, but then it had none of the negative side eff
ects. It doesn't affect your mood or personality; it just makes everything you do count for a factor of ten.” explained Luke.
They arrived at the armory just was TJ was re-raking a few of the rifles. He was tall man, with long shaggy hair. He looked more like a surfer than a gunsmith. Simon had already talked with him briefly when he had first arrived. To Simon, he seemed a jovial enough guy, and he never went out on mission as far as Simon had noticed.
“Hey Luke, Simon. It must be time to select your sidearm, congrats on getting promoted to active status. Come over here, I've got a nice selection of pistols and machine guns set out for you to look over, or if you want you can just pick something off the shelf!” exclaimed TJ.
“Hey TJ. Sounds good, I don't have much experience with guns really, what kind of criteria should I be selecting against?” Asked Simon.
“Well honestly, everything has its use in the field, agents get into a lot of close quarters combat and of course we interact with the civilian population often. I'd say start off with something you can conceal easily, and draw quickly. And as you have time, you can branch out to whatever you'll want.” said Luke.
“Follow me over here, I've got a few choices laid out with just that in mind, you can't go wrong with any of these.” said TJ.
The three of them crossed the room over to a chest high round table. On it, TJ had laid out four different firearms, only one of which Simon had ever seen in person before.
“This here is a basic Beretta 9mm. It's light, quick, and very effective. The ammunition is common so you can rely on finding more when you are out on mission. This here is a Glock 18, a machine pistol, also 9mm. This is a good suppression weapon if you need to keep someone from popping up out of cover or if you get surprised by a group of hostiles at close range. And this here is a Surbu Super Shorty 12 gauge, easy to conceal, with the power of a shotgun in the size of a pistol. And this last one here is a P90, it's a larger assault machine gun, not very concealable, but an excellent engagement weapon.” explained TJ.
“I'll take the machine pistol, the Glock, seems like a good mix of power and size, plus it looks supremely cool.” said Simon.
“That'll work, it's all yours, you can take the three loaded magazines here on the table too, and I'll also give you a cleaning kit for it. Come back when you're ready for more.” said TJ as he started to pick up the rest of the weapons.
Luke and TJ talked for a bit while Simon looked over his nice sidearm. Testing clip mechanism as well as getting a feel for the weight of the thing. After a few minutes, Luke gestured over at Simon and they made their way out of the armory.
“Come on Simon, I think it's finally time for you to do some real training.”
6. Mindscape
Luke and Simon made their way to one of the padded exercise rooms, bypassing the firing range which seemed rather odd to Simon. Once in the training room, Luke produced a small plastic container that held ten small orange gel caps.
“Alright Simon, this is going to be a little weird your first time, but you gotta trust me. I want you to clear your mind as much as you can, and take one of these. After you take it, just sit at the table over there and start cleaning your weapon.” Explained Luke.
“Ok but, I'm not even sure how to get the thing apart yet.” said Simon.
“That's alright, a Glock 18 isn't that difficult the break down. I just want you to sit and start exploring every inch of it. Feel the weight, imagine what the recoil will feel like when you fire it, picture yourself doing lots of bad ass stuff with it. Anything is fine, shot a bunch of imaginary bad guys, envision yourself doing a bunch of wild west target practice. Heck, imagine you have silver bullets and you’re fighting off a werewolf if you want. The point is to keep your mind focused on the weapon as much as possible. And once you start feeling sleepy, don't fight it, just drift off.” Explained Luke.
“So, what exactly is going to happen to me here?” Asked Simon, taking one of the small gel caps from the case Luke was holding out.
“This is how we pack several lifetimes worth of highly specialized training into just a few short months, that pill you are about to take is something we call clarity, it's another one of the curated technologies we have here. They induce a kind of hyper lucid dream state, one in which your subconscious mind will be focused on whatever it is you were doing right before you fall asleep. Of course, the details of what you dream about and what you are doing during your lucid state is going to be up you and your subconscious, but clarity causes you to put extreme emphasis onto a single subject, whatever you were concentrating on right before you fall asleep. Your perception of time within this dream state will also be changed. I'm sure that sometimes your dreams can seem to last much longer than the time it takes you to dream them am I right? Well that perception of slowed time is going to be expanded a hundred-fold or more. You could perceive weeks or even months of time during just a two-hour nap. You also will likely not be able to wake yourself up, so be careful what you have on your mind when you start to douse off, you could get yourself trapped in a nightmare, and it could take you days of perceived dream time before you can get yourself out of it.” Said Luke.
“So, I'm basically getting weeks of training in a single day?” Asked Simon
“Basically yes, it'll take you 3-4 separate sessions to completely master a skill, depending on its inherent difficulty in addition to how familiar you are with the task going in. But since you already have some basic firearms experience, all you need to do to start out is get to know exactly how this new weapon functions, the more basic real world understanding you have, to more clarity can multiply that knowledge in the dream training.” Said Luke.
“But what's to keep me from getting distracted while there, or going off to explore my own mind, weeks of constant weapons training sounds like it could very tedious.” Asked Simon.
“That is a remote possibility yes, but that's also one of the effects of clarity. It'll temporally turn you into a kind of autistic savant with severe OCD, centering your mind on whatever it is you are focused on. You'll want to stay on task, and you will feel a strong impulse to remain focused for the duration.” Said Luke was they both made their way over to one of the closer tables.
“I can see why this was curated, the entire concept of education could be unraveled by this.” mused Simon.
“Sort of, it's not perfect. It can be dangerous for people with unstable or repressive minds, people prone to cowardice, laziness, apathy, dishonesty, anger or any number of other destructive mental traits could be severely damaged mentally if they took this. You know that raw burst of anger you feel when someone pushes just the right buttons and you just want to explode? Imagine feeling like that for a month, no rest, no sleep, just white hot burning rage. When clarity was first invented, they thought it was only inducing a psychotic break in people, it took years for its original creators to realize what it was actually doing to people. And that was before it was combined with a sedative. Also, when you're in your mind-scape, you can't learn any new information, you can only train and hone the knowledge you already have. So, for example, if you wanted to teach yourself graduate level organic chemistry, you'd first have to read all about it. Then you could restudy the same material over and over for weeks with clarity, maybe have an epiphany about how the information is all interrelated, but you can't acquire new knowledge on its influence. Which is why skills that are mostly training based do the best. You know how to shot, and you'll soon figure out how to take your weapon apart, and clarity will hopefully provide you with a couple of weeks of intense practical training with it.” explained Luke.
“Ok so, I guess I'm ready for this, I suppose I'll just sit down and get started.” Said Simon.
“You can also go over to the shooting range we passed if you’d like to get a brief feel for the weapon as well. The sedative that’s combine with it won’t make your drop to the floor asleep without warning, so you can easily do a bit of walking around. I'll leave you here so you don't g
et distracted, see you in a few weeks.” Luke said, already heading back out the door.
Simon stood for a moment looking at his new pistol, turning it one way then the other. He decided he’d go back into the range and fire a clip before coming back in here too try taking the pistol apart. Stepping back out into the hall Simon didn’t see Luke in the hallway. Simon assumed he’d stepped into one of the doors nearby and but didn’t worry about trying to find him, he had other things on his mind.
The range was a mostly featureless long room with a waist high bar running its full width, it had a few ear covers sitting on it as well as a collect of sandbags and a few stools as well. Simon opened the bottle and shuck one of the pills into his mouth and swallowed hard. He shook his head vigorously and exhaled. Simon blinked a slow deliberate blink and unceremoniously aimed pistol down range and fired without bothering to use the ear protection. The first few rounds he fired one at a time, then after a moment of hesitation Simon fired the remaining rounds at full auto. Simon could feel a slight light headiness coming over him, and the edges of his vision became too fill with static. To Simon, it felt like heat exhaustion, as his body grew warm, and his mind clouded over making it difficult to think clearly. Simon left the range, and made his way back to the padded room.
Simon went over and sat down at the table he’d been standing at earlier. The floor had a soft padding, same as the walls. This make him wonder if he'd be sleepwalking during this process but he thoughts quickly shifted back to his still warm pistol. He looked down at his new sidearm, setting it down and then adjusting it so it was parallel with the table edge, a minor OCD tic, but something Simon was not prone to doing normally. He picked it back up and pointed it across the room, it felt heavier now, heavier than he thought it was just a few moments ago. He found the magazine release and popped it out. He charged the slide to check for a chambered round, something he realized he should have done before actually pointing it, he'd have to be more careful in the future. But there was no chambered round. The mechanism was smooth and clean; the pistol was in perfect condition. He charged the slide a few more times trying to see where its catch point was. He dry fired it, snapping the hammer back into place. He charged the slide back and forth again, getting himself familiar with the feel of the mechanical action. With the slide back, Simon was able to detach the upper from the lower and then take the barrel out from the upper without much trouble. This was either a branch new pistol, or it had been immaculately cleaned. Simon looked down into the lower, trying to absorb as many of the details about the mechanism as he could. Slowly, he could feel the static in his vision and mind creeping in higher and closer, washing away active thought.