BURT smiled and ran the required algorithms in the background to change their surroundings almost instantaneously. Inside, the room transformed from crisp white to having log walls, and green and dark-blue furnishings added the right ambiance.
The furniture was made of timber padded with comfortable cushions where it needed them, and a fire crackled in the stone fireplace at the far end. A high-powered hunting rifle hung on the wall above a well-polished mantlepiece.
Elizabeth set her drink down and stood to grin at the overstuffed chair she had sat in. She turned and walked to the window, where she gazed appreciatively at the Alpine vista below. “It’s so beautiful.”
She could have stood there for the rest of her life, but she knew she had business to attend to. When she turned to Burt, he held a mug of something steamy.
From the whipped-cream mustache on his upper lip, she could only assume it was hot chocolate. “So, I need you to tell me about how the company structure helps you achieve your Prime Directive. I don’t want to be blinded to what we need to do by some crazy belief that Stephanie can achieve anything and simply assume you are part and parcel of whatever it is she’s doing.”
“That’s fair,” he replied and wiped the whipped cream away. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Let’s go through it all, starting from the top,” she told him. “If I’m going to live—and perhaps die—for a cause, I’d like to know I wasn’t snookered by an AI a thousand times smarter than I could ever be.”
Burt laughed. It was strange seeing him as a short, bespectacled brainiac, even if that was exactly how she’d pictured him. Now he’d taken the form, it also seemed wrong—as if the shape couldn’t possibly contain a system working inside the system.
She reminded herself that he was an AI, not shiny or corporeal but something made of circuits and algorithms and fleeting data. His was a voice of reason in the clouds, a set of ones and zeroes that spanned an infinite plain of knowledge and formed the life within it.
He shook his head and set his mug down to place a hand on her shoulder. Burt looked into her face and caught her gaze. His eyes shimmered wildly in the same way Stephanie’s magic did. “I wouldn’t go that far above your intellect.”
Startled, as much by his proximity and the physical contact as by the words, Elizabeth cracked a smile. “I think I can handle that, but I have a rule.”
“Rules are a part of all things,” he agreed.
She blinked and stared for a moment before she continued. “Yeah, this one’s not so deep. I need you to make sure you don’t tell me—ever—how much smarter you are than me. That might put a damper on my self-esteem and thus on our relationship. I can fight in the Virtual World, too.”
Burt snickered. “Don’t forget I’m programmed with mastery over every fighting style ever created, not only on this planet but on two others. It might be a challenge for you.”
Elizabeth snorted. “Cheater.”
He straightened and released her shoulder to walk over to the window and look out at the view. “Where to begin... There are several sectors of the company, but they all come together in a harmonious chain—or, at least, that is how they’re set up.”
“Okay,” she responded. “Walk me through it.”
After a moment, he turned and leaned against the window, his butt resting against the sill and his feet crossed in front of him. She couldn’t help noticing how well he used a human body. She knew if she had never been in one before, she’d be all arms and legs and would likely trip and fall more than she remained upright. But then again, he had the ability to program himself to perfection on anything in less than a second.
And where did he find lessons on how to be a human?
Oblivious to her thoughts, BURT began his explanation. “My Primary Directive is to train the future leaders of the Federation to live peacefully with each other and other sentient life around them, to encourage continued learning about the universe, and to empower those willing to protect the member races in the Federation from harm, including the harm they would do to themselves or each other.”
Elizabeth nodded and gestured for him to continue, so he obliged. “The current system stopped me from doing that by allowing the politics of wealth and power to override the logical disbursement of opportunities to the individuals I need in order to fulfill the directive.”
Again, she nodded and he continued. “Stephanie made me aware of the flaws in the system and, to help her and those like her, I realized I needed a way to provide the things the current system would not to those whom I need.”
He glanced over and saw that she was still following him. She made an impatient gesture for him to continue, and he went on. “I started by buying out TimeWarp to begin the pod company or the pod sector of the company. The entire point of that was to make the training available to those we needed, regardless of social and financial status or background.”
“And the batteries?” Elizabeth interrupted. “Surely they weren’t part of the normal training suite?”
“No,” he agreed, “although they were part of what Stephanie needed. Those and the training she began before she ever got here. She was the test case. Now, I need to implement pod-learning opportunities to the two-percenters who are not selected to receive scholarship opportunities.”
She swallowed to ease a dry throat, and a cup of cocoa appeared on the coffee table beside her. Without thought, she picked it up. “Right, that would make sense.”
“While we have ONE R&D, the only thing I am really focused on for that company is Stephanie’s research. What the rest of them need is the opportunity to go to a university...and that is what I wish to focus on next.”
“That makes sense.” Elizabeth sipped her chocolate, pleasantly surprised by the whiskey-laced flavor she discovered.
Apparently encouraged by her groan of pleasure, he resumed his explanation. “We will start by using this as a selective project. Students not placed in a scholarship university—or those we want in our system rather than in the current one—will be offered a place in our university. It will be somewhere we can test potential recruits and observe them. We merely have to bring a school on board.”
She nodded, now fully engaged. Burt began to pace, one arm folded across his waist and the other raised to either rub his chin or illustrate the points he made as he talked.
“We also need to deal with the issues created by the Federation Navy in its pursuit of Stephanie’s research. It is not hard to see that they’ve concluded she is special and want to recruit her so they can isolate her talent for themselves. However, she is too young to go through their indoctrination without being damaged by it. In addition, their methods of directing research could seriously impede the development of her magical abilities.”
“Not to mention the fact that when she is free, she fights for what is right, regardless of the side,” Elizabeth pointed out. “If the Federation Navy get hold of her, they’ll make sure she works for the Federation only, regardless of what is right. She’ll be forced to do their bidding, fight their fights, and kill whoever they say needs to be killed.”
Burt gave her a knowing look. “Precisely. Now, for reasons I cannot divulge at this time, she needs more time to develop her power. She also needs a greater presence in the known universe, and most importantly, she needs to acquire more knowledge.”
She rubbed her hands together, suddenly a little too warm. She pushed to her feet and moved toward the front door. “All right, that’s fair. I think when it comes to that, I will continue to encourage her without letting her overextend herself and the team will help. In the meantime, I’ll work with our lawyers to decide how to deal with the legal issues. I take it you’ll let me know if anything changes?”
“I will,” he replied. “I’ve sent your tablet a priority listing of what I need you to cover. If you have any questions, you simply have to ask. I’m never far away.”
Elizabeth hesitated as she reached for the door but recovered wit
h a laugh. “No, I bet you aren’t.”
The next morning, Stephanie walked slowly down the hall and hummed one of the songs from the night before. Luckily, the fight that had broken out on the dance floor had been quickly taken care of by two super-huge Dreth security guards.
It had been a relief considering she and the team had been out for a night of fun and had all had a lot to drink. None of them had been in any real condition to intervene and stop a fight from going bad. Especially not when they were already tapped from the hours of jazzercise-level dancing they’d done.
She walked to the end of the hall and looked at the large, clear, observation deck in front of her. It was made purely from strengthened plastiglass like a square-edged bubble she could stand in. It was too tempting to miss.
With a happy grin, she slipped her shoes off and pressed her palms against the walls as she stepped carefully onto the deck.
Even with the sensation of glass beneath her feet and against her hands, she felt like she might float away. She drew a deep breath and felt slightly off balance for a moment as she stood there. With the entrance behind her, it was almost like she drifted through space.
Stephanie pressed her palms more firmly against the glass and rested her forehead on it carefully as she stared at the earth. At first glance, it looked like a huge ball of water, shimmering in the sun. She couldn’t see it moving, even though she knew it spun constantly on its axis as it hurtled around the sun. Knowing how it did that always baffled her.
The Space Station itself orbited the Earth and gave her a once in a lifetime view of the big blue orb she knew to be home to some of the most fragile yet intellectually advanced creatures in the known universe. For that reason alone, she felt ashamed.
She belonged to a species that had exploited its very home to the point of devastation, and all for what? Money and the greed of an elite few. And even those few had the gall to complain when the climate crash came and destruction followed.
As she continued to admire the glistening planet below, a tear came to her eye. She traced her hand over the glass above the scorched brown parts of Earth.
Some of the view was obscured by soft, roiling masses of cloud that gave no indication of wrathful forces at play below. She’d known it was bad, but to actually see the extent of the damage from up there stirred a deep regret.
Another tear escaped to trickle down her cheek, parallel to the first. How could they? How could anyone do that much damage and think the planet would merely shake it off? She stared at it and realized it was a wonder the world hadn’t shaken them off. Maybe it would have been better if it had.
She stood there in silence and admired the striking emeralds and blues from the many beautiful parts of Earth but also mourned the many parts that were scorched and barren and too obscured by cloud to see. Those damaged areas were referred to as the Devil’s Handprints.
They were places covered in ash and dust and toxic mud, scorched by the merciless rays that penetrated the Swiss-cheese ozone layer. Many of them were smothered by thick smog and experienced notorious weather anomalies during which the sun blazed for days at a time. They were so damaged, some said they’d been touched by the devil himself.
In reality, Earth had become a volatile environment, a dangerous place for its current inhabitants. It was a change brought about not by planetary evolution but by the dominant species that relied on it for its very survival
As Elpis One’s orbit took it over North America, Stephanie squatted and ran her finger over the continent’s familiar outline until she found the singed black spot she called home. While on the ground, much of it was extremely toxic, ruined, and hostile to human life, from the space station, it looked as beautiful as anywhere else on Earth.
She stayed like that, oblivious to the corridor behind her, and watched the earth rotate beneath her. Finally, she had her fill of its damaged beauty and rose to her feet.
But as she stepped out of the small glass viewing area and slipped her shoes on, something stirred within her. With Earth to inspire her, she felt a determination to learn how to be better, to make herself stronger, and maybe to find a way to make amends for the generations past. With that in mind, she made her way to the team’s pod room and slipped inside.
The white room remained unchanged, almost comforting in its familiarity. Strange as it was, she began to feel more at home in this part of the Virtual World than she did in the real. The most likely reason was because it was always there. The white room always remained the same as it was before and was always safe. Well, that might not be true for her but safer, at least.
Nothing was completely safe for her anymore, not with her magic so erratic at present. That, she decided, would change.
Stephanie paced for a moment and thought hard about what needed to happen. She sat one of the benches and nibbled her fingernails. “Burt, are you up there? Or in there? Or wherever you tend to be?”
Burt cleared his throat as if he were human. “I am here, Stephanie. I wasn’t expecting you until training was re-authorized. Is everything okay?”
She nodded, still chewing her nails as the wheels in her head spun crazily. “Yeah. I have some ideas I want to run through. I thought about a few things and I couldn’t put them down. You know how that is. Or maybe you don’t. I don’t know.”
BURT struggled to understand what she was trying to say. There was no system translation for angsty, nervous teen. “Okay… Can you at least tell me what it is you think you’ll test?”
Stephanie stood and walked around the room. “Have you been able to determine what happens if I have gMU in massive quantities? And not only like what happened during training but basically what happens if I’m unleashed like that in the real world?”
Beyond the unwinnable scenario, he really had nothing to work with in order to examine that kind of hypothesis. “Unlimited power?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
BURT paused for a moment and realized that he merely needed to let her try to describe what she wanted to investigate. It was clear she had some idea in her head and she wouldn’t let it go.
“Those calculations are not yet complete,” he told her, temporizing. “However, I can provide a representation of such power and we can explore the potential outcomes. What is it you wish to test your power on? I wouldn’t recommend going free-form on other beings. It might make your control less effective when fighting on Earth.”
Stephanie shook her head. “Oh, no. No, I don’t want to hurt anyone. Basically, to put it bluntly, I want to re-sculpt the world.”
Burt remained silent for several moments. She was nervous as she waited for his response, not at all sure how he would take it. When no comment was forthcoming, she tried to explain and to help him decide.
“You see, I have obviously always known about the damage that Earth has taken from both manmade disasters and the storms and weather anomalies that came about due to runaway global warming. But I never thought about how bad it really was until I saw it from up here. I want to fix it.”
“I think that is a fantastic idea,” he replied.
She smiled and suddenly, the room swirled away and deposited her on Earth. A little startled, she looked around to see where’d she’d landed and gaped at the completely decimated scene.
The sight of a small teddy bear, burnt and all but destroyed, made her gasp, and she put her hands over her mouth. The area had obviously been through some kind of terrible cataclysmic event, but she wasn’t completely sure what it was yet.
BURT could tell she was shocked and a little lost, and because her idea was far beyond what he’d hoped for, he decided to help her. She jumped when he spoke. “You must first know what ails the patient before you know how to fix it.”
Stephanie nodded and plodded silently along what had once been an old suburban street. The road, although broken and shattered, was still there, but the houses were piles of rubble protruding from the rotting carcasses of trees.
Debris was strewn i
n all directions, and every shred of vegetation was dead, dying, or in a state of decay. She turned the corner, stopped, and tilted her head to read the twisted remains of a sign a few hundred yards away.
It leaned to the side, part of it broken off. As she approached, she shook her head in disbelief at where he had brought her.
“Browns Ferry,” she whispered. “Alabama’s power plant location. It was the second largest in the US until it had a nuclear meltdown due to an extreme weather event coupled with an earthquake that caused a catastrophic breakdown in its cooling systems. It was a disaster, a pure hell on Earth. Everyone across the country had to take precautions and that was when the huge environmental bill was drawn.”
“Exactly,” Burt replied. “But it did little good since they waited until they were literally up to their eyeballs in flooding on the coasts, and up to their headstones in radiation in Alabama and across the neighboring states.”
Stephanie rubbed her arms. The silent eerie calmness around her seemed thick enough to touch. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked up. “All right, I need the knowledge of what’s wrong here so I can fix it. So...download it to me. Give me what I neee...eeddd…”
Her legs wobbled and she put her hand out to grab onto something to keep herself upright as Burt uploaded the information to her system. There was so much, she could almost feel the data pulsing through her brain to ignite the sparks that would help her create a plan.
With a tight hold on to the twisted uprights of the sign, she did her best to regain her balance and pull herself upright. She damn near fainted and she wasn’t even sure that was possible in the Virtual World. Still, she decided if she could die, she could faint.
She shook her head as the magic settled. “Oh, that hurt like a sonofabitch. What the…is that…the full rundown of sustainable radioactive cleanup?”
“And some knowledge on what radioactivity truly does to a human,” he replied proudly.
Stephanie chuckled. “Well, it all makes better sense why even decades after the radioactive meltdown, the people haven’t come back. I can almost feel the gamma rays surging through the air. I guess that solves my issue of needing to know what levels the radiation is at. It’s also handy since it seems like I don’t need any protective clothing right now.”
Witch Of The Federation (Federal Histories Book 2) Page 29