“They arrested you?” I asked.
“No, they gave me a job. I worked under probation at GCHQ for two years.” Her tone told me that she was not happy about this.
“GCHQ? British Intelligence? You’re basically James Bond! Why aren’t you glad about that, sounds like to landed a great job!” I exclaimed.
“Not quite.” Ava sighed. She had blushed slightly at being called James Bond, but I could tell that this was a difficult story for her to tell.
“It was two years of breaking into Government and corporate firewalls all in the name of ‘protection’.” Her voice becoming angrier at the memories.
“Sounds noble to me. You were saving the country from the bad guys!” I said, trying to change the mood of the conversation.
“You have no idea. Who do you think I was trying to protect? The people I grew up with. Everyday, normal folk? Don’t be naïve. All I did was ensure that the rich protected their assets and that their secrets never made it into public knowledge. That’s the only reason these places actually exist.”
I thought about this for a moment and I could see the logic. I could also see why, Ava, with her background, would not be happy cleaning up after rich people.
“I would spend my time looking for files, reports or anything that might cast someone in a bad light, then delete the evidence.”
“Wow. You must know a lot of dirt on people then?” I asked.
“Not really, it was all hidden in codes and secret files. I didn’t know why I was being asked to remove certain names off trade deals with Iran, or why a certain face needed removing from a picture. It was just easier that way, if I started to ask to many questions I would be out.”
“Sounds like a terrible place to work.”
“As soon as my probationary time finished, I left. After all, I had learnt that people were willing to go to extreme lengths to hide their past or uncover the past of someone else. I put my services out to hire, I can make your darkest secrets vanish forever, or hit the front pages tomorrow.”
“So how did you get into all of this?” I gestured around the basement and towards Sam who way playing with something on the holotable.
“Sam approached me after one of his business deals went wrong and he wanted to know why. A family feud resulted in the deaths of his clients and for the previous month he had been working with imposters. It was all a bit messy but I helped him get his own back and it sealed our friendship. When he mentioned his plans for a hideout, a safe place to lay low, I figured it might be a good idea, just in case.”
Ava leaned back on the bed.
“Tomorrow, however, we look through all the files and we will change the world. Lots of will secrets get released, and no-one will be able to cover it up! Not a bad day’s work.”
“Nope, not bad at all.” I agreed.
The days exhaustion overcame me then and I finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 11
My phone buzzed in my pocket to wake me up from the nightmare that I was having.
What if Lara had bought my fathers shares? What if she had managed to acquire the controlling stake in the company? She was already dangerous, but I had assumed she still answered to a board of shareholders and they would keep her in line. If she owned the controlling stake, she wouldn’t need to explain herself. She could slowly drip feed any technology to the public over decades, holding back anything that she wanted until she could maximise the revenues and earn as much money and power as possible.
This was unfortunately how a lot of companies operated. But VisionTech was supposed to be different, that was how they were able to attract the scientists and visionaries that they did.
Lara could singlehandedly hold humanity back from a century of advancement. She could cause millions, billions of people to die unnecessarily if she had cures for diseases but she put the price tag too high.
It was a horrible dream of a dystopian future controlled by an evil dictator and I was glad for the wakeup call.
Looking around I found a glass of water next to my bed, perfect. Noticing that everyone was awake and stood, gathered around the holotable I decided it was time to get up.
It was impossible to see what they were looking at from this distance, I would need to get much closer for the magic lasers to do their thing, but I could tell that they were engrossed by something.
Wandering over in my half sleepy state I didn’t even notice the lasers flicker my vision. Blinking from one moment to the next I could see object they were talking about, floating in three dimensions on the table.
“Well, what do you think?” Sam asked me as I stared in amazement back at the spinning model on the table.
“Is this one of Lara’s plans?” I asked, slightly worried about the answer.
“No!” Ava replied, laughing. “The only thing we have decrypted so far is a bunch of chemical formulas and equations. This is what Sam has designed!”
“You designed this?” I asked, looking at Sam. “It’s huge!”
Sam was grinning ear to ear. He didn’t want to hide the pride for his creation.
“Let me walk you through it.” Sam said and he zoomed out to show the entire structure, it could only be described as a battle station.
It was at least thirty metres tall and spherical in shape. As Sam rotated the model, waving his hands around like he was casting a spell, I was reminded of Spaceship Earth, the name of the huge gold ball at the Epcot Centre in Disney World. There were quite a few resemblances.
“It’s made from a geodesic lattice of super strong, metal girders. This should make construction easy as they are ‘off the shelf’ parts.” Sam explained as his hands gestured and the ball spun around accordingly. “You enter up the leg and into the hatchways placed on the second floor.”
The ball rested on three legs, one of which contained a staircase that led into a round hatch.
As Sam spun the ball around I could see windows dotted around the surface indicating that there were five floors inside.
The floors looked around four metres tall, except the middle floor which was significantly taller and contained three huge doors around the equator.
Working our way up the sphere, Sam explained each floor.
“The first floor I have dedicated to living quarters.” Sam said as he gestured and the model exploded, showing just the floorplan of that level.
This was the smallest, at the base of the giant ball and was segregated into ten individual bedrooms with ensuite facilities. They resembled small hotel rooms and Sam had placed some simple renders of furniture around each room to display where beds, desks and wardrobes might be placed.
It made sense to put this floor at the bottom of the sphere. Below this floor the ball flattened out and it was a perfect place to put all the pipe work from the bathrooms.
“Look!” Derek nudged Hank excitedly. “No bunk beds!”
After looking at the rooms for a few moments I realised where I recognised them from. They reminded me of the rooms I had at university, similar layout, along a corridor with a spiral staircase at the end heading up to a kitchen and common room. I always enjoyed this type of living, a private room with shared living spaces, so this suited me perfectly.
Sam made some gestures and the model moved around, highlighting the spiral staircase and then second floor flew in and landed on top of the first. Sam had even bothered to put in a little animation of the model sinking as the second floor landed and dust flew out between the two floors.
“This is the main communal area. TV area with some nice sofas, computers desks, gaming accessories included, a few nooks where people could sit on their own. I have used bookcases as partition walls. A large dining table, big enough to host guests and my favourite, the kitchen, with walk-in fridge freezer.” Sam highlighted each section as he explained.
“It just wouldn’t feel right without a giant fridge-freezer!” Derek joked.
The whole area seemed very nice, all open plan but laid out so that pe
ople who were in the kitchen wouldn’t be distracted by those in the lounge area, with partition walls and windows looking out at key vantage points.
“Why is there a huge concrete pole running through the middle of the ship?” Ava asked, sounding bemused.
It was a fair question. A large section of the centre of the ship was blocked out with a concrete pillar. It helped to segment the room, but it meant you couldn’t see from one side to the other.
“Is that the lift shaft?” I asked timidly, not sure if this was the correct answer but wanting to look smart in front of Ava.
“Ha!” Sam scoffed. “I wish there was room for a lift shaft. This is where the core facilities will be.” Sam went on to explain.
“Obviously.” Ava nudged me, pointing out my flaw and smiling.
“We need somewhere to house Dom’s anti-gravity device but we are also going to need electricity, water and even oxygen if we plan to fly really high. The toilets also need to go somewhere. Then there is fire suppression…”
“Okay, we get it.” Ava said, cutting Sam off. “You’ve thought of everything, continue.”
“Well you asked.” Sam muttered.
He swung is hands around again and the third floor came flying in. It appeared from the middle of Derek’s body on the right side of the holotable causing him to check himself.
“You okay there Derek?” Hank asked. “The little hologram didn’t hurt you did it?”
“It’s not a hologram.” Derek said coldly, putting his arms back down and scolding Hank with a facial expression.
“Third floor is a dedicated hanger and weapons bay.” Sam explained.
This was the largest of the floors, sitting at the equator of the ball. It had three large, sliding doors equidistant from each other around the edge.
“Hanger bay?” Hank spoke up in an excited tone. “Are we getting planes?”
“Possibly.” Sam replied. “One step at a time but I thought I would make it as future proof as possible for a first draft design. It’s always good to have an escape plan too.”
There was little to see on this floor although Sam had loaded in a model of that strange, egg shaped plane that Ava had decoded on her laptop last night, and he had placed it near one the of large doors.
“Are we stealing VisionTechs planes too?” Ava asked, pointing at the model.
“I just added it for flair, but I can take it away if it offends you.” Sam replied.
“It’s fine, but it does look odd, like a snail with tiny wings.” Ava continued.
“I don’t understand the design either, it doesn’t seem to make any sense from a practical point of view.” Hank agreed.
“Anyway…” Sam interrupted. He swung his arms around and a mist grew out of the top of the model, when it had cleared the fourth floor was in place.
“You really went all out on the showmanship.” Ava laughed.
“I had the assets; it would be a shame not to use them.” Sam replied. “This is the command centre.”
We all looked in and Hank wafted his hand around trying to clear the virtual smoke.
“Is the hologrammatic smoke upsetting you?” Derek poked fun at Hank, getting him back for his previous comment.
The fourth floor was clearly focused on commend centre equipment. Several individual workstations. Large round desks designed for someone to sit in the middle of. Eight of them in total, and a few small rows of desks with chairs next to computers. All facing a huge bank of screens at the far wall which was flanked by two of the largest windows on the ship.
“I guess that’s your seat?” I asked, pointing towards one end of the model.
It was a large chair with a full height window behind it and a vast array of screens in front. It was raised higher than all the other desks which, to me, indicated it was for a captain.
“I don’t know.” Sam replied modestly. “We haven’t put it to the vote.”
“Hey, it’s your ship, your design, you should be the captain.” Ava said. Agreeing nods came from everyone else around the table.
Sam was a little embarrassed and his face blushed, so he quickly moved on to show us the top floor.
“This is the exercise and relaxation room.” He said, the floor flew in from the side and completed the stack. “It has treadmills, weight training, shooting practice even a sauna. My favourite piece is the skylight!”
Once again Sam flung his arms around and the outer casing of the battle station flew into place completing the look. A large glass panel slide over the top floor allowing views up into the sky.
“Well I am impressed!” I said after a few moments of silence while everyone took in what they had seen.
“How long will it take to build?” Derek asked eagerly.
“I don’t know.” Sam replied. “It shouldn’t take too long to get the basics working, after all its just a bunch of steel girders with metal sheets and glass laid on top. I could put a few worker robots on it and get it done in a few days possibly. I just need to find the resources. The difficulty is going to be decorating and furnishing the inside and bolting down all the furniture.”
Worker robots were easy to find around here. They were used a lot in construction but in this part of the country they could be found in the fields tending the crops.
Vast areas of land could now by farmed with minimal effort. It didn’t matter if a farmer wanted to plant crops or herd animals, the robots were equally efficient. They could also be easily be re-tasked into any other type of robot since they all learnt from a central bank of instructions.
You could take one of these robots, with their tank tracks and large, powerful arm, give them a set of building tools, a plough or even a milking machine and they would just get on with the task.
The power of these robots was not the tools that they used, but with the intelligence and their ability to work together to complete a task. If you assigned five robots a set of instructions and a pile of resources, the robots would figure out the best way to carry out the task with no human input whatsoever.
As soon as Sam told a set of robots to build this ship and pointed them at a pile of girders, it would be built in no time.
“What are you going to name her?” Hank asked.
Sam looked around, looked down and finally looked back at him before stating:
“The Armillary.”
We all stopped, puzzled as we looked at each other for clarification.
“The Armillary? What’s that?” Ava finally asked.
“It’s a device used by old astronomers. A set of rings around a central point designed to show the orbits of planets and stars. It was used as a navigation tool. I just thought that, given we were building a potential spaceship, is should have a name appropriate for discovery and adventure.” Sam informed us as he tapped at the air in front of him and a picture of an antique armillary popped up in front of us.
“That’s a cool name, I like it, the crew of the Armillary!” I exclaimed. “One question though, you have ten bedrooms built into the Armillary, who else are we inviting aboard?”
“Why do you ask?” Sam questioned. “Do you have someone in mind?”
I did have someone in mind. Someone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. Someone I knew would have the same goals as us because he had also worked at VisionTech and he too had left under very strange circumstances.
Chapter 12
The drive back to town was hard. The feeling that, around every corner someone was there, watching me, following me.
Sam had assured me that he had taken every step possible to hide our tracks and that there was no way that Lara knew the barn’s location, but it still worried me. She was capable of some extreme things and she had access to unknown technology. If she wanted something, I don’t know how anyone could stop her.
The worst feeling was the guilt I felt for involving more people. Now Lara was after five of us. They all knew what they were signing up for, and they all eagerly participated, but it still felt wrong.
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Now I was driving back into town to see if another, unsuspecting victim wanted to join my cause.
He owned a restaurant on the edge of the riverbank, overlooking the city. It was one of the most desirable locations in the area with amazing views, natural setting and good access to roads and rail that ensured people came from miles around.
Of course, the reason why people flocked to this spot in the city was not because of its location. The food was out of this world, in some cases, literally.
Gastrophysics, or molecular gastronomy, the process of breaking food into its raw elements and presenting it in a way that is not always recognisable was a niche idea and people seemed to love it.
Classic dishes from the restaurant included smoked beer lettuce, strawberry tomatoes and the now famous cod carrots.
I had never had the pleasure of dining here and biting into a carrot that tastes like fish was something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience.
The waiting list was longer than my mortgage anyway, and it had a price to match.
Tony answered my call this morning while he was at the docks admiring the catch of the day.
Desperately I explained how I needed to talk to him about Lara and VisionTech. At first, he threated to hang up when he heard Lara’s name but he could hear the panic in my voice so eventually he invited me to his restaurant.
Tony had worked for VisionTech for many years. When Lara took over as CEO he soon fell out of love for the company. He led the world in microbiology and cell repair and the things I remember seeing him create boggled the mind.
There were rumours that his research hit a dead end and Lara fired him. There were also rumours that he was developing something big, Nobel Prize worthy but Lara didn’t want him to publish his work, so he left the company. I never believed that Lara would want to hoard technology and stop people publishing, but that was last week, today I knew better.
Tony had also been a partner on some of my projects in the past and we were friends in the good old days. That said, I still wasn’t sure he was going to listen to what I had to say.
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