by Blade, CG
“I hate doing that!” Dreama yelled putting her top back on scolding him in the process. Drool was now coming out of the corner of his mouth as his open shirt revealed tattoos and a hairy, bulging belly. “Fucking gross, he smells like—man.”
“Don’t worry dear he wouldn’t have gotten very far” Emily laughingly replied, putting his tanned feet up on the couch and pricking a vein in his left forearm with another syringe. She watched the dark liquid and crystal microchips flow out of the capsule and up his arm to his stubbly neck and face. “He’ll be out for a while. Meanwhile I need you to go and fetch the doc. Think you can do that?”
“Of course I can—can we you know?” Dreama was twirling her hair again eyeing Emily with obvious lust, licking her lips.
“Not now. We need that doctor here before we can start. We’ve got to do this right!” Emily stroked Dreama’s silky auburn hair, kissing her on the nose. “Now go!” Emily slapped her hard on the behind as she walked away “And take that dammed realty sign with you when you leave!”
Dreama quickly walked down a flight of stairs rubbing the remnant of the red handprint. Returning minutes later wearing a yellow sundress with matching sandals, she grabbed Dean’s keys and sunglasses off the table and strolled out the front door humming a tune. She snatched the realty sign from the trashcan at the side of the house, got in the realtor’s cruiser and took off down the sunny street with the Vidscreen blaring music loud enough for the entire world to hear. The salty sea breeze blew her auburn hair back as she put the top down on the convertible Cruiser.
“Is that going to be a problem? We can’t have her going haywire on us,” The digitized voice asked, still on the Vidset waiting patiently on the kitchen counter.
“Nope, I have it under control. It’s like giving candy to a—well—psychopath I guess.”
“I hope you do. Our whole ideology is depending on this. The drone will be there by tomorrow morning. Did you receive the equipment?”
“Yes I received the crates and no it won’t be a problem. No problem at all it will be taken care of.”
“We ARE going to finish what we started. Our client has been patient so far. Make this happen. I cannot be a successful puppet master if everyone can see the STRINGS!”
“Yes I understand.” The Vidset communication ended and Emily sat and finished a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter in her jean shorts and tank top, staring at Dean snoring on the couch. She dumped the mug in the sink and opened the door leading to the garage just off the side of the kitchen. “Lights” The room began to illuminate from the fixtures above, first the initial warm orange glow and then slowly turning into a soft blue and eventually a brighter white. In the middle of the large room sat two cylindrical horizontal glass tanks half filled with a colorful gelatin substance well known to many as being between a beautiful Raspberry and Amaranth on the color spectrum. It was Crimson and it was alluring and enticing. Emily ran her hands over the warm tanks listening carefully as they emitted their white noise. The front of the garage and the tables throughout the huge concrete encased room were stacked with Vidscreens and electronic equipment. Large wooden packing crates and boxes stuffed with materials and fresh straw batting were lying all around the room waiting to be unpacked. Tubing, wiring and cabling ran to all sides of the tanks connected to all of the electronics that were humming as their processors and programs ran their computations through crimson colored tubing and circuitry. Emily hugged one of the warm tanks closing her eyes wrapping her arms around it squeezing it tightly.
“Everything we ever imagined is about to come true.” she lovingly told the body lying in the crimson get at the bottom of the pressurized opaque tank. She slowly licked the tank inhaling and tasting remnants of the sweet corrosive liquid wiping away some of the warm condensation in the process. She smiled and turned to look at the other tank in the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow sweetie” She kissed her two right forefingers and pressed them to the top of the warm glass. She said “good night” to the other body lying in the second crimson incubator. A sliced up blue washcloth lay in between sheets of plastic on a table between the tanks. Concealing the entire back of the garage door and windows were 333 cobalt blue twenty-dollar bills. Each one of them perfectly aligned corner to corner with no visible gaps showing through any of them, blocking out the mansion’s driveway and the outside world “Lights.”
Chapter 5
INFALLABLE
“It’s known as the ‘Uncanny Valley’ and to some people it even has a sense of creepiness to it. The term coined over a hundred years ago in 1970 by Masahiro Mori began to evolve quickly as the scientific community began to replicate humans to have more and more of our qualities. The term basically states that when a robot or a humanoid becomes more human-like over time we will have a positive or empathetic response and then quickly find them repulsive or eerie being too much like ourselves but not quite us. The peak wave will begin to dip back down into the valley when they once again are presented as non-human, shown as a corpse or even a prosthetic.” Ray said staring at Emily’s head propped up as Jerry sighed trying to slice into its encrypted programming.
“I’m sorry but I like my bots at the factories not by my side scaring the shit out of me all the time.” Jackie was jolted as a chill shivered up her spine staring at Pseudosynth Emily’s head staring back at her from a cold steel counter inside one of the Med Labs electronic testing rooms. The hair was standing up on the back of her neck as Ray Nelson tried to explain what she was feeling. Emily’s lower half lay on a stainless-steel table next to it. Jackie’s face was one of disgust aimed at the life-like face that had deceived all of them for so long. “Ray is there a way to tap into its Comset and find the source of the signal’s transmission?”
Ray rubbed his chin hard and looked over at his protégé Jerry who spun around in his chair to face them.
“Uh—well yes we might be able to tap into it but we are going to have to dissect the internal network first. This stuff—the circuitry is so new.”
“We understand Jerry just try your best. We’ve got some of the brightest minds here so whatever you need just ask” Jackie patted him reassuringly on the shoulder.
“Yes Dr. Siebert,” Jerry said smiling back at her.
“Call me Jackie, Jerry. I will send our network techs down to help you later when they are finished installing the new thermal camera system.”
“Thanks Jackie”
Jackie and Ray stood there in blue lab coats staring at a lifeless synthetic head propped up on a stainless-steel stick, trying to come up with a solution to a problem that evaded them for months now.
“Why are these Pseudosynths so good at stealth communication without us knowing anything about them?” Ray asked softly scratching his head. His hands were pulling back on his face plowing his long growing black and grey-specked hair through between his fingers.
“Ray, can I speak with you in private?”
“Sure Jackie.” Ray walked out of the lab and into the hallway with Jackie close behind him. The automatic door to the lab slid shut behind them.
“Ray I’m just going to come out and say what everyone is thinking—Dreama. Now I don’t want to diminish her superior intelligence or piss you off in the process but would she really have the knowhow, the capability and the funding to pull this off—this entire set of coincidences which have now turned into ongoing patterns and do all of this—to us—or the American people? What if there are alternative forms of communication or isolated satellites with electronics we don’t even know about up there similar to ours circling the earth that these Pseudosynths are using?” Jackie was pointing to the skies above. Her reading glasses hanging off the new chain around her neck were growing animated, swaying back and forth with each gesticulation. “What if there is some other form of hidden wavelength we don’t even know about? If Dreama is alive could she be in trouble or manipulated by someone or something to get to you or us here at the lab? Emily’s real body hasn’t even surface
d yet. I’m so confused right now Ray!” Jackie put her hands up in front of her face and pressed her fingertips to her temples covering her eyes in the process. Ray gently pulled her hands away from her face and watched the tears well up in her beautiful brown eyes.
“We’re not Jackie—not sure it’s Dreama or anything her or Emily have been planning. Beyond that, that is the question isn’t it. We are all assuming that Dreama is behind this just because she was a Pseudosynth and is now missing. Emily is also missing and she might as well be behind this. I think we all need a break. We are all human down here now as far as our intelligence shows and your girl has confirmed. Let’s take a step back and think about this for a minute. I used to take a walk by the ocean when I had a problem that was in front of me—when I was at an impasse. What do you do when you’re at a crossroad in your work or your life?”
“I don’t know Ray I’ve never been here before at the point where reality is becoming fantasy and it’s all just melding together. We are not inventing or improving something here, we’re trying to stop something now. Everything I know is explained by science and formulas not by speculation and spying.” Jackie lightly wiped her salty tears away with an old worn tissue from her lab coat pocket.
“People and science created this—these synthetic things Jackie and that’s just it. We have the capability and the resources to figure it out. We just have to point our assets in the right direction. Dreama thought once that I was the problem. I couldn’t save her mother from the worst manmade pandemic in human history the Circonic Plague. It was like a cancer that ate at your body and soul and every living thing that it touched. It was a hundred times worse than Ebola, AIDS, and DNP combined.”
“Yes I remember Ray. All of us were in fear and continuously getting tested.” Jackie blew her nose clearing her sinuses with the remnants of the wet wilted tissue.
“Dreama knew I was a scientist and an engineer and she thought that I had the capability to ‘magically’ make things happen and make her mother well again. She thought I should be in the room with her mother, sitting next to her in a hyperbaric tank, fixing her instead of making AA5C39 a reality. What was I supposed to do make myself sick and die to please and comfort her? It ripped my soul apart and my family along with it. There was nothing I could do I was not a medical doctor. I was and still am a man of science but a man who idolizes Tesla, Noyce, Bushnell, Ishiguro, and Yancy. I didn’t have any assets back then to help mankind as I do now. You and I have the opportunity to change this and in so doing change our future right here, right now. You and your staff gave me a second chance and now I need to repay you and the human race back for all you have done for me. Whoever is behind this has perverted my name and my work for their own evil agenda. Mark my words I will do whatever is necessary to right this wrong.”
Jackie watched a single solitary tear follow the curves on Ray Nelsons cheek from his right eye down past the corner of his nose to the his lip. He wiped the tear away with his right index finger. She handed him the remainder of the tissue. He was the smartest and most ingenious man she had ever known and she was proud to know the real man. Petra appeared from around the corner of the hallway approaching them. She was in her Army workout gear and her ponytail bobbed robotically to her gait.
“You two have been crying. Why?”
“Just some pent up problems Petra and the dam finally burst.”
“Petra I’m glad you are here,” Ray told her sniffling a bit, “Let me show you two something that will make you feel young again like when the world was new.”
“I am sorry Ray but I cannot become younger or older.”
“It’s just a phrase Petra—we know.” Jackie laughed clearing her sinuses interlocking her hand through Ray’s arm as they proceeded down the hallway towards the elevator. The doors slid open and closed behind them. They began riding it down to the ‘new’ level in the facility after Ray stared into a hidden thermal camera and spoke a code word into a mic disguised as an emergency intercom, “Cobalt”.
“Catchy Ray, real catchy.” Petra told him.
“Is that—?”
“Yes Ray ‘The Girl from Ipanema’.” Petra told him while Jackie chuckled to herself.
The soft instrumental music played in the background as the elevator descended finally stopping at a level that did not register on any blueprints or construction schematics in the world.
“Here we are ladies!” Ray held his hands up in the air, “Lights!”
“SURPRISE!”
Jackie’s mouth dropped open. The overhead lights came on revealing over 200 of the facility’s employees. They were standing in front of her wearing party attire with drinks and food in hand cheering and whistling loudly. They congratulated Jackie for her work and for holding down the fort during trying times earlier in the year. Dr. Norman Sanders was the first to hug her and many people followed in the huge line that had formed. Jackie began sobbing and thanking them personally one by one. Ray handed her soaking wet torn tissue back to her. Fluted champagne glasses were clinking and echoing throughout the stainless-steel encased room that resembled a massive underground bunker.
“I told you that you needed a break, here it is.” Ray whispered into her ear.
“Thank you.” She told him softly sobbing and wiping the tears away again. The floodgates had opened wide now and all of the pressure in her head had all released at once. Now this had forced her to stop thinking for a while.
“You are human—after all.” Ray handed her a glass of pink sparkling champagne in a tall fluted gold-rimmed etched champagne glass and they toasted to a better world. The glass had a date inscribed in it: October 10th, 2076. The day Ray Nelson and his new staff completed the project he was about to reveal to the Med Lab.
“Wow this is good stuff thanks Ray.” the sweet fruity bubbles were tickling her throat but it tasted smooth and cold and she needed the distraction “What did we build this room for again, it’s massive? I know you’ve been working hard down here Ray but what is this room for?”
“It’s Petra’s new proving ground!”
“It’s what?”
Petra was scanning the area while removing a fresh Twinkie from its plastic sheathing. She forced the yellow sponge cake down her esophagus while she listened to Nelson begin talking.
“Ladies and Gentleman may I please have your attention for a moment?” Ray’s hands were gesturing for everyone to quiet down a little “Everyone this is not only a celebration for one of my newest and dearest friends,” he nodded and bowed at the waist in front of Jackie “but also a new dawn in the annals of science and history. I give you the latest in quantum fusion technology. This is several years of hard work by many great people and many brains, a melding of Rayson Industries AA5C39 and your Cobalt technology with RQMC programming! I give you—COZAP!”
“What’s COZAP?” Jackie asked him sipping her bubbly.
“What did you think we’ve been doing down here for the past six months?” He bent over and whispered laughing in Jackie’s ear again.
“Jerry will you please do the honors?”
“Yes sir!” Jerry said proudly as he walked from the elevator over to a steel table stacked full of buffet food next to the wall. He pulled a steel black case out from under the table opening it. A Vidscreen began rising from the top, swiveling to face him. It began running RQMC code with a lot of ones and zeroes streaming across the blue screen.
“Petra, will you please link with the network?” Ray asked her smiling proudly.
Everyone in the room began lowering their voices to a dull murmur now and started to turn towards Petra who seemed lifeless with her arms hanging at her side. Her irises began to light up and pulse a ring of beautiful cobalt blue every couple of seconds. The plastic Twinkie wrapper she was holding slowly descended to the floor from between her sticky fingers.
“What is she doing Ray?” Jackie was whispering into his ear now.
“You’ll see she’s syncing and uploading code right now. You kn
ow our propulsion tubes that Rayson produces?”
“Yes of course everyone does—it’s great technology.”
“Well then you’re gonna love this.”
Petra finished uploading and began moving through the crowd like she was Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone was giving her room as she mechanically walked towards the unlit back half of the massive cavernous room. The lights came on in succession with each of her steps revealing her eight bobbing, hovering friendly patriots. Patrick and the boys—
“Wow okay Ray now what?”
“You’ll see. Wait for it.”
Patrick and the other seven drones were beginning to violently shake and hover. Sliding down to the floor, they were gliding into and on top of each other deforming, melting, sizzling, and sparking right before everyone’s eyes. They were morphing, changing shapes, sizes, and colors. Petra closed her eyes then opened them.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me?” One of the Med Lab employees disguised as a drunken party guest said aloud. Everyone else in the room was wide-eyed and drooling. An empty glass of champagne shattered loudly on the concrete floor as it slipped out from someone’s grasp. Everyone jumped a little as it echoed throughout the room.
“You do know she is actually going to love this don’t you Ray?”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
Petra was standing in front of a Cobalt blue and silver swirled M1A1 Abrams Tank. Its ten-foot long main turret stuck out like a giant overpowering finger pointing directly at the crowd. She turned, looking at everyone staring back at her.
“This gives new meaning to the term you often use, ‘War Machine’, Petra.”