by Frank Carey
"I'll take good care of her," Jenna reassured her.
Quint put Betsy and her ammo pack back in the case and locked it. Jacob thought he saw a tear as she followed them deeper into the complex.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The seven intrepid explorers continued deeper into the depot, passing military supplies of every description. Aircraft, field artillery, ships, small arms, portable radar installations, and weapons. Wheeled vehicles, tracked vehicles, trucks with repulsor lifts, even a massive hovercraft. "What the hell have we built our town on top of?" Jacob asked.
"Nothing. This depot extends under one quadrant of the city and no farther," Jenna explained. "I took the liberty of unleashing a crate of bug-bots and programmed them to survey the depot. The perimeter is contained within the confines of the city and its cloaking field."
"Good work, Jenna. It looks like they were using the city to hide the warehouse. That would explain its location."
"Hold up," Joshua said as they walked past a storeroom within a storeroom. They stopped in front of another pressure seal.
"I wonder what's in here," Bryntana asked as she reached for the lock pad on the jamb.
"Don't" Joshua said while gently grabbing her wrist.
"Ow! You brute!" she said.
"Sorry, I don't think you want to open that door."
"Why not, Joshua?" Tayla asked.
"The symbol indicates biowarfare storage. The red light above the panel indicates a containment breach inside. The symbol invokes a great deal of fear and trepidation. Boss, I think we should keep moving," he said as he stepped away from the seal.
"Copy that," Charlie said as he took Quint's hand and led her away storeroom.
They continued on their journey, stopping only when they reached still another seal. "BORIS is on the other side of this door," Tayla said.
"Joshua, any idea what that symbol stands for?"
"Master Control Center."
"And what's in the Master Control Center?" Bryntana asked.
"I don't have a freakin clue," Joshua replied as he pressed his hand on the symbol. "I don't get any negative feelings from this symbol, though, only neutral, as if I was looking at an empty conference room. We should be safe."
They raised their weapons to military patrol ready position as Joshua placed his hand on the lock pad. The doors quietly parted as lights came on inside.
"Damn," Jacob whispered as the others just stood and stared at a massive collection of equipment floating in the center of the room. Off to one side, standing on a platform lit by bright overhead lights, stood the BORIS unit.
"What the hell is that?" Quint asked as she panned her weapon around.
"I think it's the central computer responsible for maintaining this entire complex," Joshua said.
"Anybody home?" Bryntana asked as she tapped a piece of giant mechanism.
"You mean like an Alue?" Jacob asked as he stared at the vast mechanism.
"He means posers," Jenna replied.
"Posers?"
"Don't mind her," Tayla explained. "Jenna is a true non-corporeal life form that inhabits computer systems if the system is complex enough. The Alue are a race of beings from another universe who use computer networks to spawn. You probably know them as the tall white aliens," Tayla explained.
"The ones from the Orion star system? I thought they returned home in the late seventies."
"That was the story. They didn't leave, though. They were hiding out in Earth's global computer network. Ever hear of the multiverse?"
"The hypothesis that multiple universes coexist in eleven-dimensional space?"
"It's real and the Alues--the tall whites--live in one of them. They came to this universe in search of breeding grounds. For years, they fooled everyone into thinking they were true AIs."
"Posers!" Jenna added.
"Come on, Jenna, they apologized. Hell you worked with a group of them to prep Valera," Jacob moaned.
"Fine! But they're still posers."
"I am neither AI, nor am I a non-corporeal life form. I am Computer," a voice said from a hidden speaker.
"Well that answers everything,” Jacob said. "Computer, who built this place?"
"Unauthorized access attempt."
"Great. Now it decides to clam up. We can send back a team to deal with this," Jacob said as he and Tayla walked over to where the BORIS unit was standing.
"Bio-organic Rapid Response System," Tayla read off the robot's left pec. Now I get why you call it 'Boris.'"
"Yeah. It took my team weeks to come up with that name. That has to tell you something."
She hugged him.
They walked around the unit. "Something isn't right here. There's no damage. The epidermis is pristine and all status lights are in the green. I can see the tentacles coiled inside the torso, and they look fine.”
Jenna raised her mobile's hand and ran a detailed scan of Boris' head. "That ain't right."
"What isn't right?" Jacob asked from across the room.
"Several things. First, the isotopic analysis suggests the unit was manufactured recently. Second, it was manufactured on Alyson, not Earth. Third, is the brain, the one you rode in on. The head construction matches the rest of the body, but the brain is way beyond anything I've ever encountered. I would say its sophistication matches anything being put out by Elven Industries. Joshua, which alien race helped build Boris?"
"I think it was the Nordicans."
"Who was on your team?"
"Falan, a Nordican female, and Trent."
"What was Trent's job?"
"Interfacing my systems with Boris' musculature."
"Was he human or Nordican?"
"You know, I'm not really sure. No one ever really said. Why?"
"Because the only records I have of the Nordicans are the Area 51 references. Nowhere else; not the League database, the Crystallanian database, nor any other race's database, do I find even a mention of a race of tall, blond aliens. Now, according to the Area 51 files, your Nordican friends took all your research, including the biocybernetics files, and disappeared the day after your funeral. They left without notice and without even a goodbye."
"Shit."
"Uh-oh."
"What's wrong, Jenna?" Tayla asked.
"Nanorobots, the unit's filled with them, and they're identical to the ones in Joshua's DNA. I don't think this is your BORIS, Josh. I think it's a copy."
"What? That's impossible!"
She blinked and the data came up on his datapad. "See for yourself."
"Dammit! How many copies of me are running around?"
"I hate to break this to you, kid, but you're the only one," Jenna said while continuing her exam of the Boris copy. "Look at me; I can spin off hundreds of mobiles, each one controlled by a subset of me. Not a copy, a subset. There is only one Jenna just like there is only one Joshua. Your anima, your soul for want of a better term, is a unique whole. Only one person in history ever got his soul cleaved and he was a different person afterward. Great guy, fantastic husband, and brilliant researcher, but he wasn't the same person as he was before the split. There is only one 'Joshua Gray' and you're him."
"Listen to her for she is wise," Tayla said.
"You're right; I'm just being silly," Joshua said with a chagrined smile.
"Josh, could you join us for a moment?" Jacob asked.
"Sure," he said as he walked over to where Jacob was standing with Bryntana. He saw Quint and Charlie exploring the rest of the room. "What's up?"
"We found a terminal, and we were hoping you can read it," Bryn said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"With seats and everything," Jacob added.
Tayla cuffed him while Joshua sat down at the terminal. In front of him were two blank gray panels, the closer one horizontal and the further one at an angle to the first. "OK, how is this a terminal?"
"Touch it," Bryntana said.
Joshua placed his hand on the horizontal one. It, and its companion,
lit up. In Standard.
"How the plark did you do that?" Bryntana asked as she tapped icons on the angled screen. A keyboard appeared under Joshua's hands.
"I bet it's the nanobots. The system is reacting to them," Jenna noted
"Jenna, I have a question," Joshua said.
"Shoot," she said as she walked over to stand behind him.
"How does this system know Standard?"
"Well, through you... Wait a minute!"
"Yeah, exactly. I didn't know spit about Standard before reviving, yet now I know it fluently and so does this alien system. Sweety, don't take this the wrong way, but how secure are your subsystems?"
"Subsystems?" Bryntana asked. "I thought you were an all-powerful artificial intelligence."
Jenna's mobile locked its optical inputs on the elf. "Your kind call me AI. In reality, I am much, much more. Your computer systems allow me to interact with more primitive life forms such as yourself. Those systems, though the most advanced your kind can create using current technology, have limitations. One of those limitations is a barrier against intrusion. It seems that this system has exploited that limitation."
Joshua giggled. "Jenna, you remind me of my Auntie. She could lay waste to a dojo full of twenty-something hot-heads, then bake them cookies."
Jenna turned toward him and said, "Why, aren't you sweet."
He laughed. "OK, it looks like your databases aren't the only thing this system copied. This desktop layout is identical to the one I had on my lab computers including the integrated development environment I used to program Boris."
"Where the hell did they get that, I wonder," Tayla said.
"Boris is equipped with a small computer I used to perform field programming chores. This is damn amazing; it's a perfect reproduction of my programming environment and operating system. Let's see what we can find."
Joshua started typing commands into the virtual keyboard at an impossible speed, commands interspersed with mutterings. With the fervor of a compulsive-obsessive madman, Joshua brought up window after window of information. "This is incredible. A twenty-third century computer emulating a twenty-first century network."
"What do you mean?"
"Somehow, the system figured out a way to present data in a way most familiar to a guy from the twenty-first century."
"And that is?" Jenna asked.
"The World Wide Web as seen through a web browser. That's how I'm able to bring up all this data. For those of you who are history buffs, this is how we did things back in the day."
They gathered around Joshua as Quint and Charlie joined them. By now, Joshua had activated several other screens and extended the desktop across them. Windows filled with pages from encyclopedias, news sources, and information aggregators filled the screens along with ads for hair care products, coffee drinks, and advanced weapons systems. "Just like home," Joshua said as he sorted and shuffled windows. "Except for the weapons systems, of course. It's going to take me..."
"Allow me," Jenna said. She placed her hand on the terminal and closed her optical sensors. The screens lit up as thousands of bytes of data poured across the screens. She stood there for all of five minutes before the screens returned to normal. Jenna opened her eyes and looked at her team. "Those bloody idiots. They killed themselves with their own toys," she said as she grabbed a chair and sat down.
"Hey, don't pass out on us," Jacob said. "Take deep breaths."
"I don't breathe, you idiot." She closed her eyes and took a deep non-breath. "The population of this planet, every man, woman, and child, were arms dealers for this sector of space, and they were good. No one could find their warehouse because they hid it under their damn city."
"So, this is the only city?"
"Yep. They lived a long time, and they had a naturally low birthrate, so they had the city to live in and the rest of the planet to play. Then they got stupid."
"How so?"
"They decided to try their hand at biowarfare, the damn greedy bastards."
"Let me guess, the storage area we passed?" Jacob said.
Jenna nodded. "It was something new, something they contracted out to have grown off planet. Something went wrong and it got out. The city died in minutes as its population was consumed by spontaneous combustion."
"My vision," Joshua whispered.
"Yes, your vision. Can you imagine a biowarfare agent that causes the victim to turn into a ball of flame? The mind boggles. Thank the gods the bio warfare storeroom is completely self-contained."
"What if the computer does fail? Would that be bad?"
"I don't know. I just didn't have time to check everything." She stopped and looked at Joshua. "I did find the answer to your existence, though."
Tayla took his arm as if to protect him. "He doesn't need to know."
He patted her hand and gave her a reassuring smile. "Yeah, I do. We all do. Lead on, Jenna."
The mobile got up and walked around the computer and stopped in front of a door. She placed her palm on the lock pad, opening the door and turning on the lights. There were dozens of human-sized containers, all open, dark, and dusty, except for one which looked like it was recently opened. Inside they could see a puddle of viscous liquid.
"Jenna, what the hell are we looking at?" Tayla asked as she dipped a finger in the puddle. She grimaced while quickly withdrawing it. "Yech."
"Careful, that used to be Joshua. You're looking at an ultra-advanced organic printer. From my examination of the records, this tank was filled with a dense solution of non-differentiated cells, each with fully programmable DNA--biogoop. Mixed into it are millions of nanorobots. The tank can replicate any living creature from plant to human and beyond. I've been around a long time, and I never saw anything this advanced."
"So, I'm a love child of a copying machine and a golem. Where did they get my DNA?"
"They didn't need a sample of your DNA. It's recorded in your soul. Don't you get it? They printed you from your original pattern. You're not a copy; you're you down to the cellular level."
"So, I'm human?"
"Yeah, with just a few minor extras," she said with a pointed look at Jacob and Bryntana.
"Point taken. Quint, Charlie, what did you two find?" Jacob asked.
"Doorways, pressure seals, spaceships, you know, the usual," Charlie replied
"We're going to need help," Jacob said. "Jenna, can you patch me through to Alex?"
"Yep." Within moments, Jacob’s comm beeped. He put it on the terminal and tapped the center of the device's screen. Alex's image appeared above the table. "Ah, Captain, team, you all look well. I got Jenna's data squirt. Joshua, I thank you from the bottom of both my hearts for your service to this mission. So, what have we missed since then?"
Jacob explained with help from Jenna. When they finished, Alex just stared at them for a few moments before asking, "Are you sure this fire plague is contained?"
Jenna nodded. "The vault's on its own power supply, so it should be fine. I have programmed some bugbots to keep an eye on it."
"Excellent. I must contact the other sites and fill them in, but I have one duty to perform first. Dr. Gray, I would like to offer you Alyson citizenship. It's only a formality, especially since you aren't a convicted felon, but it does help with the paperwork."
"I accept so I can be assigned farm duty when all this bullshit is over."
"You, one of the most brilliant minds of your time, want to raise crops and farm animals. Really?"
"Yes, call it a dream."
"Your wish is granted. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me..."
Joshua took the oath and swore his allegiance to the people of Alyson.
"Now that I'm a citizen, I assume I can marry anyone I want, assuming they're amicable to the idea."
"Why, yes, that would be wonderful. Do you have someone in mind?"
"Yes, I do."
"Good. Captain, I suggest you and your team get to work exploring this depot while I put together a seco
nd team. Any suggestions?"
"Mercs, trackers, and computer geeks. We need explorers. I'm putting Quint and Charlie in charge of the search and explore effort."
"Very good. Anything else?"
"Yeah, I want my other mobile," Jenna said. "The one with the pink camo."
"You are such a girl," Bryntana said.
"I shall see to it. Alex out."
They all turned to Joshua. "What was that all about?" Jacob asked.
"What was all what about?"
"Marriage."
"I was just asking. I like to plan ahead. You do know that this depot thing is just a blip on our time-line."
Jacob looked at Tayla who suddenly found the terminal the center of her attention. "Right. Okay, Jenna, you, Tayla, Joshua, and Bryntana are going to stay here and dig deeper into the data while Quint and Charlie head back to the truck to grab supplies while we wait for the second team. Any questions? No, then let's get this party started."
###
Fifteen screens, no waiting. Each screen filled with window after window of data. Thousands of years of information arrayed in an easy to read format.
Right.
Joshua sipped his coffee and continued to stare at the data displayed in all its glory. Finally, he sat back and rubbed his face. "Argggh!"
"Hey, what's going on?" Tayla asked as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She was wearing the cutest flannel night gown.
"Hmmm? Oh, nothing much. I've just reviewed a terabyte of data and found out their name was the Jarrion."
"Which you knew."
"They considered all other races to be beneath them, so they had no qualms about selling all sorts of death to their neighbors."
"Eww."
He nodded. "Then, one day, the bioweapon escaped, killing everyone on the planet. During the release, the computer system activated a dome over the city to keep people out. For the next ten thousand years, the computer monitored and maintained both the depot and the city, keeping both from discovery, that is until I was revived."
"Why keep it hidden?"
"They had a lot of customers, customers who didn't know the location of this city and its depot. My guess is they didn't want people to come looking for the weapons, so they hid everything. If I read these files correctly, all transactions took place off-world... Shit!"