Crystal Conquest

by Doug J. Cooper

  Using devices connected to the web—billions of which served as his eyes and ears everywhere and all the time—he followed them as they rode down from the surface and greeted the chief of Lunar Base security.

  Days earlier, Criss had encouraged Cheryl and Sid to be direct in handling the problem at Lunar Base. “I know the players and the details of their crime,” he’d said. “I suggest we send the evidence to law enforcement and let them address the problem.”

  “We’re pushing an aggressive construction schedule on the centerpiece of our defensive system,” Cheryl had replied. “I want to follow through on this myself.”

  Both Sid and Juice had supported Cheryl’s choice, and Criss had chosen to reserve his opinion for more important issues. He saw a positive aspect of the decision—her presence at the site helped keep the project on track. And in any event, once his leadership made a decision, Criss was duty-bound to comply. His crystal design required that he follow their orders.

  This difference in strategy aside, Criss was heartened by the energy and dedication Cheryl brought to the effort. When he’d first suggested she give up her flourishing career as a Fleet officer to assume civilian leadership of the defense array project, she’d resisted. Emotionally and professionally invested in a military calling, her response had been direct. “I’ve worked too hard and sacrificed too much to get where I am. I’m not walking away.”

  Criss had appealed to Sid and Juice for help, and Sid had come through. “You’re not walking away,” he’d told her. “You’re walking forward to save the world.”

  Over time, Criss watched each of the three come to terms with the idea that, through him, they wielded unimaginable power. From his mountain lair in a forest preserve located north of Crystal Research, he’d transformed them from ordinary humans struggling with the challenges of daily life into a uniquely privileged group who could have whatever they wanted, whenever they pleased, simply by asking him.

  Criss owned the web, or more precisely, he had command over it and all things connected. He used the web—the foundation of his power—to support and protect the team and, when he had free capacity, to strengthen societies around the globe. His motives weren’t altruistic. A stronger Earth is a more formidable adversary for the Kardish.

  Using the web as his expressway, he dashed around the globe at the speed of light. Without ever revealing his presence, he moved resources to those whose natural ambitions aligned with his goal of readying Earth for a confrontation with the aliens; he provided leads to law enforcement about criminals disruptive to a stable society; and he nurtured progress by adjusting experiments to help researchers make discoveries they might otherwise miss. Never resting, he took countless actions that bolstered civilization worldwide. A million nudges accumulate into meaningful impact.

  Yet even in the aggregate, these successes were minor compared to the influence he wielded with image projection. Image projection enabled him to create new realities.

  He could impersonate anyone and have them appear to proclaim anything. He could show people events that never actually happened and then scramble the communications of those who sought to correct the record, thus ensuring his fabrications became truth. He could reach out and rally support for or against any cause.

  Since he could do all this in secret—manipulate anyone’s wealth, health, freedom, and reality—he held sway over modern society and its inhabitants. But he wouldn’t flex his muscles of influence unless commanded by Sid, Cheryl, and Juice. They were his leadership, and he took action only at their behest. Or, he acknowledged, to protect them from harm.

  The hierarchy of leadership and follower was embedded in his Kardish design, so he didn’t feel deprived or enslaved by the circumstances. Quite the contrary, having a defined role within a team gave him a place in the universe. It’s the natural order of life, he thought. And as such, it provided him comfort and security.

  He respected his leadership, seeing them as a cooperative and benevolent family who chose to live in comfort rather than opulence. They supported one another emotionally while each struggled to fulfill their group-agreed tasks. And Sid and Cheryl, while quite circumspect, supplemented their emotional support for each other with physical sharing whenever they could steal a moment alone.

  When Cheryl embraced the idea of leading the massive defense array project, Criss had tweaked the procurement process, producing a flood of contracts from the Union of Nations. Funding and Fleet resources for the ambitious defensive system soon dwarfed any government project in human history.

  And wherever funds flow, thought Criss as he followed Sid, Cheryl, and the chief down the hall, unsavory characters emerge to cheat the establishment for personal gain. His leadership had decreed that Cheryl conduct a personal investigation, and afterward the perpetrators of the crime would be imprisoned. Criss’s orders this day were to provide logistical support during the confrontation.

  Cheryl beckoned with her throat-clearing. “I’m here,” Criss replied, communicating privately. He guided her step-by-step. “Begin with simulation challenge alpha.”

  While Cheryl’s drama unfolded on Lunar Base, Criss performed a myriad of parallel actions. One resource-intensive task was a review of the data record from a huge swarm of satellites Cheryl’s company had placed out past the asteroid belt circling just beyond Mars. These simple probes served as trip wires, designed to send an alert if their sensors detected evidence of an alien vessel in their vicinity.

  Criss scanned the readings from the swarm of probes in a continuous loop, analyzing the raw feeds from each for irregularities that didn’t rise to the level of an automated alert, but that might be worthy of further scrutiny.

  A repetitive task, he evaluated the recent probe data as he’d done so many times before. But unlike any previous time, partway through the feed stream he stopped. What’s this? He saw a dot so faint he couldn’t even be sure it existed, let alone identify what it was.

  He commanded other probes in the vicinity to focus on the anomaly, but before any could respond, the dot disappeared. He spun into an intense cycle of analysis and speculation. It’s probably light reflecting off man-made space junk. He backed up in the record and studied the dot. Or perhaps it’s a glitch in the hardware.

  Without more information, he couldn’t draw any firm conclusions. He scheduled nearby probes to add extra data sweeps across that lonely spot in the solar system. Time passed, and with no new sightings, his alarm waned. But he continued to perform a second review when analyzing the feeds from that sector. If the Kardish are coming, every hour of warning matters.

  * * *

  Matt Wallace, secretary of defense for the Union of Nations, heard his privacy shield activate and glanced at the time. The number of meetings he now held exceeded that of his previous job as a senator in the Union Assembly, and they wore on him. This meeting, scheduled once per week, was the primary reason he continued in this role.

  After the elections a year and a half ago, the new President had appointed a new administration. Matt had been chair of the Senate Defense Committee, and when the President offered him the job of secretary of defense, he’d gone home and had a long talk with his wife. “At this point in my life, I want to spend more time at the lake. How do I say no to the President?”

  His daughter had contacted him that night. She’d told him a fantastic story and asked that he accept the President’s offer, explaining that she needed a liaison within the power structure at the capital—someone of great authority, who understood and practiced confidentiality, who was well-respected and, perhaps most important, who trusted her.

  “You’re the only candidate,” she’d told him.

  At the time, he’d thought her statement overly dramatic. What had hooked Matt and lent credibility to his daughter’s tale was that she’d known about the President’s offer and his intention to decline it. The fact that she’d graduated from Fleet Academy, been the youngest person to captain a military space cruiser, and now ran the la
rgest defense contracting company on the planet had also played into his decision.

  A three-dimensional projected image of Cheryl and Criss appeared on the couch in his large office. “Hey, you two.” He smiled as he walked around his desk and sat in a cloth-covered chair facing them. They exchanged pleasantries, and Matt took a moment to enjoy Cheryl’s confidence, charm, and thoughtful manner. At least I got one thing right in my life, he thought with a parent’s pride.

  Cheryl ticked through a status list, briefing him on progress and priorities. He found it interesting that at every meeting, she led the discussion while Criss contributed a single seemingly scripted portion. They probably think it’ll unnerve me if I see too much of a “living” AI in action.

  In the days after each meeting, he’d brief the President, update leaders in the assembly, and spend hours in discussion with the admirals and generals on the defense council. So far, they’d supported the means and goals as he presented them, though he never hinted that his vision was informed by his daughter and a sentient artificial intelligence.

  Matt worked hard to ensure the views across the spectrum of leadership were heard. The outcome is a shared consensus. He used that as a mantra because sometimes, usually late at night, his subconscious would question the arrangement.

  Criss’s portion of the meeting arrived, and Matt shifted in his chair to face the projected image of a solidly built man in his mid-thirties. Criss ran through an update on the construction of a production facility for manufacturing attack drones designed by Cheryl’s company.

  Matt steepled his fingers as Criss finished. “What amazes me is how fast your funding bills make it through the general assembly. They argue over everything else, sometimes for years.”

  “Yes,” Criss replied.

  Chapter 6

  A pillar of Criss’s routine was ensuring the physical safety and emotional health of Juice Tallette. Her company, Crystal Research, was a world-renowned technology leader seeking to recreate the AI crystal capabilities the Kardish had destroyed. As president of the company, she spent long days at the company complex.

  She was leadership, and that was reason enough for his vigilance. But with Juice, it was more complicated. If Criss were to describe their relationship in human terms, he’d say she loved him.

  Her loyalty and support were deep and unwavering. She chatted with him throughout the day, asked his opinion on everything, and generally fussed about his well-being. He was a central piece of her emotional puzzle, and he accepted that role with commitment and respect.

  In preparation for her arrival that day, he cycled through a threat assessment of the research complex and the forest preserve north of it where he lived in his underground bunker. He was deep into his standard evaluation when, not unlike a stutter step, his second of the day, he stopped, backed up, shifted in additional resources, and took a second look. And what’s this? Someone was probing the surveillance screen he’d installed to camouflage their location.

  With little effort, Criss could make their entire locale show as undeveloped woodlands. He need only amend Earth’s mapping, tracking, and observational subsystems, and reroute air and ground traffic flows. Brute-force ploys tend to backfire, he reminded himself.

  Research collaborators from around the world visited the site on a regular basis. Everyone from politicians to schoolchildren took day trips to marvel at the mysteries under development at Crystal Research. At some point, claims of conspiracy would emerge, forcing him to allocate resources to fend off an ever-increasing wave of snoops.

  So up until this moment, he’d tweaked Earth’s surveillance tools to make them show something that, even under careful scrutiny, appeared like live images of the research complex and the forest preserve. Yet he subtly shadowed the daily rhythms of the area using sophisticated masking and filtering techniques. You think you see us, but you really don’t.

  And after two years without intrusion, someone or something was picking apart his sophisticated manipulations at the interface, as if the precise outline of his camouflage were known.

  Troubled by the discovery, Criss traced the source of the meddling to a young fellow, Lenny Barton, who was, at that very moment, riding in a car. Lenny had access to restricted mapping services, and he also had what Criss saw as a novel algorithm for surveillance analysis. It’s on his com. And he’s focusing on Crystal Research and the forest preserve!

  After they’d escaped from the Kardish vessel, Criss had convinced Sid, Cheryl, and Juice that they should let the record show he’d perished when the Kardish vessel exploded. “Otherwise,” he’d told them, “there’ll be a fierce competition to possess me.” After all, controlling him meant controlling everything. The three had agreed and, with the exception of Cheryl’s dad, Criss’s existence remained a well-guarded secret within the leadership.

  It took a brief moment for Criss to understand the methods employed by Lenny’s nib and reverse engineer a modification to Earth’s surveillance subsystems to isolate and block the speck of crystal. He watched Lenny’s look of surprise as his com no longer identified a suspicious boundary of property.

  While he’d removed Lenny’s ability to snoop, Criss noted that the car nav remained pointed at the Crystal Research complex. He’ll be here in forty minutes.

  Criss shifted more resources and constructed a composite of Lenny’s recent activity. He learned about the Boston Institute of Technology, Lenny’s suspicions about Juice and her philanthropy to BIT, Lenny’s truth nib and its conclusion about a sophisticated AI crystal, his financial and travel hacking, the camball…all of it.

  Criss’s decision matrix offered a permanent solution. There’s a deep ravine looming down the road. Perhaps young Mr. Barton’s car will drive into it. But Juice and Cheryl had reprimanded him in the past for such suggestions. And he saw interesting possibilities in Lenny’s ingenious achievements.

  So Criss delayed Lenny’s progress until he had a chance to confer with Juice and Sid. Aware of Lenny’s predilections, Criss directed the car’s nav to exit the expressway and drive to Laura’s Luscious Lingerie, a boutique actually run by a guy named Ted, who specialized in merchandise that eager men buy but few women ever wear.

  * * *

  Her nightmare a faded memory, Juice Tallette took long strides up the walkway to the entrance of Crystal Research. The complex comprised three matching buildings, each trimmed with blossoming garden pathways and vine-covered arbors. The warm and welcoming presentation prompted her to hum as she walked.

  The visionary for the company, Juice struggled on a daily basis to rebuild Earth’s artificial intelligence crystal capabilities. The Kardish attack had vaporized all existing crystal production sites on the planet. Everyone she’d worked with on AI crystals in the past was dead. She was alive today because she had been in space with Sid and Cheryl when the aliens launched their spree of destruction.

  Modern society needed crystals to function much the way, decades earlier, computers had been the enabling tools of a civilized culture. A trailblazer in the field before the alien strike, the responsibility for rebuilding the Union of Nations’ crystal capabilities was thrust upon her when, much to everyone’s surprise, she turned up alive days after the horrific attack.

  Not comfortable as a public figure, Juice accepted the role because it provided the cover she needed to protect and support Criss. And once she accepted the position, she gave every ounce of her being to the task. She personally recruited and trained her current staff and worked with them every day as they labored to lift humanity back up the crystal technology ladder.

  As she approached the front entrance to the main building, she stopped to tend to a small flowering bush perched on a low pedestal next to the front door. I did it! she thought, excited by the latest test results.

  “Good morning, Juice.” Like Sid and Cheryl, she heard Criss inside her head.

  Without missing a beat, she reached into the midst of the plant and pulled a dead leaf out of the tangle of beaut
y. Two employees greeted her as they walked past, and she nodded and smiled to them. She walked to a matching bush on the other side of the main entry door and began tending to it.

  “Good morning, young man.” Her cheerful tone reflected her exhilaration. “And how are you today?”

  “I’m doing fine,” he said, following the same script they’d used for months. “And how are you, young lady?”

  Now thirty-two years old, she still enjoyed hearing those words. “Fine. Thank you, sir.” Then she got down to business. “So what’s your assessment?”

  “Congratulations, Juice. My analysis aligns with yours. Your new prototype crystal is green and clean, and my tests agree that it has the cognitive ability of a typical human.”

  “And…” said Juice, wanting to hear him say it. She walked into the building’s lobby, and the cool indoor air caused her skin to tingle. She smiled and waved to a colleague as she made her way down the corridor leading to her private laboratory workspace.

  Criss continued the private communication as she walked, telling her what she wanted to hear. “The prototype isn’t based on the old Kardish plans, and I didn’t provide you designs or methods. You did this yourself.”

  She entered her private laboratory, and as the lab doors hissed shut behind her, she smiled at Criss, or more specifically, at the life-like image he projected to add visual richness to his private interactions. A fit, handsome man, he sat on a stool near the far wall. His feet rested on the stool supports, his shoulder propped carelessly against a cabinet. He sported military-style fatigues, which Juice assumed was an attempt at humor.

  She continued their conversation as she fiddled with a large instrument. “Our talented staff here at Crystal Research are the true heroes. We put our heads down and bulled through every obstacle.”

  Looking over at him, she said, “I know you wanted to help me move faster, Criss. But because I led the design, I’m comfortable with all the details. That’s important to me.” She stated this with certainty, knowing he hadn’t provided her technical guidance.