Supervirus

by Andrew W. Mitchell

  Preeti decided to attend. She told Kenny about it, and he didn't know quite what to think, but he could tell she had her mind made up. At the first meeting, she felt the power of the Divine Mother inside her. She committed to the work, earned the right to own a mesa, and enrolled in a training program.

  Now the time had come for an emergency meeting. The Earth was on the brink of extinction. Their chances of stopping it were slim, but they had to try to save the Divine Mother.

  ONE HOUR TO TORTUGA

  7 hr 50 min to Birth

  Willard was crossing a vast field of ice. He could see himself from above, as if filmed from a plane to emphasize his puny size and aloneness relative to the expanse of ice.

  He was dressed in a uniform that he didn't recognize, like a ranger or a military trooper. (Maybe this was the uniform of the President's Special Friends.) It was brisk and the scene had an austere beauty. But something was weighing on his mind. He was hiking stubbornly in the name of some greater, hopeless purpose.

  Where am I going?, he wondered, watching himself trudge along. What am I doing? Where is there this much ice? It didn't look like Antarctica — it was too smooth and unbroken. Or so he thought. Was it another planet?

  Flannigan's voice woke him.

  “We'll be landing on Fort Tortuga within the hour.”

  Willard slowly tore his eyelids into an open position.

  (Broken.)

  His hand. He had slept only by creating a near-lethal cocktail of painkillers. His head felt stuffed with cotton, his eyeballs wrapped with a thin layer of gauze.

  The team peered from the aircraft down at the glassy blue ocean, a mirror image of the grayed ice in his dream.

  “Ice?”

  Sam was standing next to him in the aisle, with a bucket of ice. With her spikey red hair and I'll-bite-your-face aura, she made an unlikely flight attendant.

  It took him a while to figure out what she was talking about. Wow, I'm totally messed up on these painkillers. He took the bucket with his left hand. “Thank you.”

  He needed something to wrap his hand in. He saw the geek reading a newspaper. He pointed. “Can I have a section?”

  Kenny nodded. He leaned over and handed Willard's left hand the business section. Willard saw that Kenny was holding an article about the Philadelphia Eagles. Willard remembered Preeti's Eagles sweatshirt. He wrapped his right hand in ice using the business section. The Eagles had plenty of talent but they never seemed to be able to win. Win for real. That was part of being a Philly fan, however. You loved your team. You hated them. It broke your heart when they lost. But you had to believe in the underdog.

  Flannigan was up the aisle, looking at her watch. She walked up to the cockpit and poked her head in.

  “Now?” the pilot asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It's about time.”

  Standard operating procedure required that they call Fort Tortuga to give notice of their arrival, but Flannigan had insisted on waiting. For all she knew, Nemo was intercepting the island's radio communications, and she didn't want to give him notice any more in advance than was necessary.

  She stood by, half in and half out of the cockpit, while the pilot tried to establish radio contact. The windshield over the pilot's controls gave her a broader and clearer view of the atmosphere and the ocean than anything she had ever seen with her naked eye. There was not a single cloud out there, from their altitude all the way down to the water. It was pure sunlight pouring into the cockpit, which was much warmer than the cabin.

  The pilot made contact. He was going through the script of who they were and why they were visiting the island. When he was done, Flannigan took the headset.

  “It's imperative,” she said into the mic, “that you don't let anyone off the island.”

  “That won't be a problem,” the voice on the radio said. “We're staffed at reduced levels for the holiday, so no one is permitted to leave.”

  “Holiday? You guys have holiday?” Since when does a base go on holiday? she wondered.

  The voice on the radio explained that they were a privately contracted military research facility, not a base, and that all of the research scientists were home for the holidays.

  “How many people are on the island right now?”

  “Five.”

  “There are no families?”

  “That is correct. Just security staff.”

  She walked back into the cabin. The view from the cockpit was erased from her mind: all she could picture was an empty military base.

  Gene was looking at her.

  “The island is practically empty,” she said. “There are only five people on the island. This kid is hiding in an empty military facility.”

  Simon held his hands to his face. “Great. So either he's not there at all, or he's going to hold us hostage on the island. Or kill us.”

  “We don't know that,” Flannigan responded.

  “I know one thing,” Simon declared. “Once we land on that island, we're at the mercy of whoever's in charge there. We'll be trapped.”

  THE LANDING STRIP

  6 hr 37 min to Birth

  No one said a word after Simon's last remark. When Flannigan returned to the cockpit, everyone strained to hear what was said up front.

  The pilot reestablished contact with the island. “We have clearance to land,” he said.

  She walked back to the cabin. Fort Tortuga was visible from the right side of the aircraft. Everyone moved to a window and looked out.

  “It is beautiful,” Simon admitted.

  Less than twenty miles in diameter, it was small and round and filled with trees up to its edges, with little beach. A thin road cut through the trees, from the east end of the island to the west. On either end of the road was a clearing with buildings.

  “The forests look considerably more lush than the Galapagos,” Gene said. “The Galapagos are dry.” The Galapagos, he explained, were home to a variety of rare species of plants and animals. They were considered the inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

  The pilot, unfamiliar with the island, was circling to get a good approach at the landing strip. The plane swung in a wide arc around the island.

  “Don't tell me that's the landing strip,” Simon remarked. The landing strip, near the beach at the east end of the island, was short.

  Below, a tiny-looking white van pulled up near the landing strip.

  “Fasten your seatbelts,” Sam said to the cabin. “We're beginning our descent to Tortuga.”

  The plane dropped quickly. Flannigan felt a wave of nausea. Landing is not a problem, she told herself. Pilots do these landings all the time.

  The plane set down, jostling on its wheels. The pilot braked hard and they all leaned forward in their seats. Flannigan looked out the window and tried to calculate the distance that was left on the runway.

  They pulled to a stop. Flannigan resumed breathing. Out the window, she could see the door of the white van open. A man got out. No weapon, she noticed. From what she could see, there was no one else in the van. Situation normal. They weren't hostages, yet.

  THE WELCOME CENTER

  Fort Tortuga

  6 hr 36 min to Birth

  The pilot opened the door of the aircraft. Flannigan and Sam disembarked by a little stairway into a bright, sunny, hot mid-afternoon in the Pacific south of the Equator.

  They met Raymond Carvell, a Flytech employee and facilities manager on the island. He received them warily. Flannigan and Carvell exchanged quiet words and came to a quick understanding about what was going on.

  Sam returned and announced, “Okay, everybody out.”

  They piled out of the aircraft and piled into Raymond's white van.

  “Fort Tortuga has a welcoming facility,” Flannigan said. “It's like a small hotel. We are going there first. Everyone not on this project team is strictly required to remain in the welcoming facility at all times. That means you, Preeti. Is that clear?”

 
“Yes,” Preeti said.

  “Sam and Willard will remain at the facility with you.” Looking at these two, she said, “You won't be part of the greeting party. I'll brief you upon our arrival.”

  They headed a short distance to the Welcome Center and pulled up on a circular driveway.

  As they walked in, Gene looked at the building, which resembled a hotel. The front doors appeared to open to a lobby. There were two floors of rooms. The only unusual thing was that the balconies off the rooms were enclosed. Gene would also notice that the pool was indoors — unusual for an island near the equator.

  In the lobby, Raymond processed their paperwork. Flannigan studied Willard. He exuded a certain contempt for what was going on around him. There it is again, she thought. He doesn't come off as a special ops guy.

  Gene sidled up to her. “Raymond's going to brief us now?” he asked quietly. She nodded. “I'm concerned about the potential for groupthink,” he noted. “We might want to leave one or two people out of the briefing to keep a fresh perspective.”

  As a psychologist, Flannigan was receptive to this suggestion. She had been planning on taking everyone into the briefing except for Sam, whom she would leave to babysit Preeti, who was certainly no part of this operation. “Who should sit out?” she asked.

  “Willard would be a logical choice,” Gene offered with a shrug.

  Indeed, she thought. Willard did not need a brief. He probably wouldn't pay attention anyway. Moreover, he was really here for backup support, and wouldn't be part of the greeting party to visit Nemo. If they needed his help later, then the plan had gone very wrong — and in that case, a fresh perspective would come in handy.

  They were all checked in.

  “We need to get down to business,” Flannigan said. “We have a briefing in five minutes — including Gene, Simon, Kenny, Raymond, Sam and myself. Preeti and Willard will remain in the visitor area.”

  FLYBOTS

  Fort Tortuga, Welcome Center Conference Room

  6 hr 25 min to Birth

  Gene, Simon, Kenny, Sam and Raymond sat at a conference table. With her spikey red hair and rugged look, Sam seemed out of place. There were a few computers in the room, a projector, and a conference phone.

  “Not exactly a SCIF,” Simon said, pronouncing the word skiff. The government rules for a SCIF, or classified working space, were strict.

  “It's not a SCIF,” Raymond said. “This facility is run by FlyTech, a private contractor of the government. FlyTech has been given some latitude to create an effective research center.”

  “We'll get to that in a minute,” Flannigan said, closing the door. She introduced Raymond. Raymond had years of experience as a lab technician. He made sure the labs on the island were up and running, as well as the security systems and basic facilities, such as electricity, plumbing, and the small road system.

  “We're here to meet with a child named Nemo, who claims to be somewhere on the island. I've personally made contact with Nemo over chat. To put it bluntly, he appears to be the smartest hacker that has ever touched a keyboard. Our objective is containment. Our mission is to make contact with Nemo and get him away from anything that can connect him to the web.”

  Simon looked around the table and snickered. “Looks like we're not doing it by force.”

  Flannigan nodded. “This is a diplomatic mission. Force should not be necessary.”

  “If he really is on this island,” Simon asked, “what the hell is he doing here?”

  “You yourself said he's here,” Flannigan said. “Someone here typed shutdown. Someone here had to hit the power button to turn that computer back on.” She glared at Simon. “Am I understanding that right?”

  He nodded.

  She continued. “The name of the game here is speed. Containment ASAP. So we are going forward with incomplete information. We'll be able to confirm the facts soon enough.”

  Gene turned to Raymond. “Is there anywhere on the island he could be hiding?”

  Raymond straightened. “Maybe this is a good time for me to tell you about our facility here on the island.” He got up and turned on the projector screen. He opened a slideshow — an introduction to the facility.

  “Please be aware,” he said, “the research we do here is Top Secret. Even the existence of this facility is Top Secret.”

  “Our location is not quite in the Galapagos Archipelago, is it?” Gene asked.

  “No, not quite. This island was chosen in part for its secrecy.”

  Raymond clicked and a map of the island appeared on the screen. “This building on the west side of the island, the far side of the island, is the main laboratory. The lab building has two wings,” Raymond said. “As you can see, it's shaped like a butterfly in honor of the flybot. One wing contains the indoor testing facility. The other wing contains the laboratory and the Assembly Area, where prototypes are made.”

  He pointed to the right side of the slide. “We're here, on the east side of the island, in the Welcome Center. Within the Welcome Center, this room is the only point of Internet connectivity.”

  “What type of connection?” Simon said.

  “The island gets connectivity from an underseas cable.”

  Simon whistled. “What do you guys do here?”

  “FlyTech builds miniature military robots. Our primary model, the Flybot12, has surveillance and attack capabilities.”

  “Attack?”

  “The Flybot12 is modeled on the properties of insects. It uses solar power to power its motion and generate a small quantity of drug...”

  “It bites people.”

  “Correct. It delivers a sedative or some other substance.”

  “So why do you need a massive direct Internet connection?”

  “The flybots are designed to perform their surveillance and attack as swarms. In other words, they communicate with each other, using simple signals. For example, if the flybots are attacking a target, they communicate with each other to circle around the target and coordinate their attack. Also, when a swarm of flybots is looking for something specific, an individual flybot can tip off the swarm if it finds a clue or something promising.”

  “Like bees or ants.”

  “Exactly. So, to answer your question, this swarm behavior is complex. To understand it and to test it without actually using robots, we use computer simulations of the swarms.”

  “And you're borrowing the computing power from military computers elsewhere.”

  “That's correct. We have actually recently completed building our own computing grid on the island. It adds substantially to the computing power. This, here, is the computing building,” he said, pointing to a square on the western half of the island, “right next to our main laboratory.”

  “What's in the middle of the island?” Simon asked.

  “These are our testing areas,” he said. “They simulate a jungle environment. We run tests with the flybots in these areas.”

  “You attack people?!”

  “We test on gorillas in this area here on the north side of the main road, and also in this area on the south side. The tests do not usually lead to the death of the animals. In most of our tests, the flybots bite them and inject them with a drug that creates an unpleasant feeling. This way, we train the animals to remember and fight the flybots. We also use the flybots to practice locating the animals and attacking their food.”

  “They are open areas?”

  “They are enclosed by walls.”

  “But the top is open. That's why we're on an island. If any of these flybots go crazy and fly away, they are in the middle of the ocean and become fish food.”

  “I guess you could put it that way.”

  Simon mused while the others watched. “Do they look like insects?”

  “Yes, they look like mosquitoes, but shiny, because they are covered with little solar panels. They have wings and legs and the ability to bite much like mosquitoes.”

  “But they are solar-powered, actually,
so theoretically they could continue to fly. Do they ever die?”

  “We run extensive computer simulations before ever running live tests,” Raymond responded. “We've never had an episode of runaway flybots. Moreover, they are designed with a short battery life — just over an hour or so. Even if they did run away, they wouldn't last through the night — and, as you said, they would fall into the ocean.”

  “Can we see one?”

  Raymond opened a video file on the screen. It showed a rainforest. Gorillas, four or five, were sitting around and grooming each other. The creatures had massive torsos like inverted triangles, and beady, expressive eyes set into cubist heads. One of them walked off of the screen slowly, placing his hands forward on the ground and swinging through on the knuckles.