[I don't own Digimon]
The Silent Project
A Travesty of Fiction
By Jared Head
Chapter 0
The Silent Project
It silently orbited above the Earth, reaching ever higher. Nearly a fifth of the way to the Moon, the open-secret continued its journey around the world uninhibited in the vacuum, the mesh collection antenna that dominated its structure exceeding a football field in size. Swallowing an entire hemisphere's signals for intelligence gathering purposes, the downlink to a secure satellite constellation in geosynchronous orbit eventually led to a further downlink to the secure headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia. After a quick verification that the signal and data received from it were on the planet, delivered somewhere in the vast network of data centers operated on behalf of the United States Government.
The retrieval of that data for analysis within the signals intelligence [SIGINT] occurred several hours after it's capture, as was per the standard timetable. The assigned intelligence worker was making very little of it, it was something far beyond the usual deciphering, it was beautiful, though, enough so to make him drop his jelly donut and coffee to the floor, much to the dismay of the IT department.
Flagged for extra analysis, it went to the best brains the NRO could throw at it. But even then, the bits just couldn't be surmised. Their origin seemed...otherworldly. The best technical experts that could be found within the country were immediately called upon. Those who did analyze the data found themselves astonished with their findings, which the Director of National Intelligence received an invitation to come to a meeting about.
Lt. Gen. Sigmund "Sig" Aiden, USAF, walked down the clean hallway in the NRO's headquarters flanked on either side by staff, one of them talking to him directly in trying to explain that the meeting he was about to attend could change everything. The other walked with just as much confidence, only she was silent, the assuring sound of her shoes, along with Aiden's continued down the corridor.
Armed guards stood at a door, and as Aiden and his staff turned the corner, the guards immediately moved to the sides to allow access. One of them saluted, "Good morning Lt. Gen. Aiden."
"Good morning," he replied, pulling two keycards out, while his two staff pulled out their own personal keycard. Approaching the reader, Aiden dropped the one held in his left hand first, blood-red in color, the reader beeping to indicate the card accepted. Now the personnel's turn, a blue card dropped in, with the reader indicating acceptance.
The door opened to a well-equipped conference room bustling full of aides and well-to-do government officials. Aiden, used to being given unusual assignments, worked his way among the chaos of the presentation being set up to a table where donuts and coffee were. It was early and caffeine was needed, even for a man of his standing.
"If everyone could please take a seat or get themselves settled in somewhere," the main presenter had to nearly yell above the commotion in the room, "Thank you all for coming here today and allowing yourself subjection to more security protocols above and beyond what we're accustom to. This is an unprecedented move because we have an unprecedented incident to discuss."
"Unprecedented?" Aiden skeptically said before taking a sip of his coffee, "What're we talking about here? New code from the Russians or Iranians?"
"No," Aiden's assistant handed him a folder, adjusting her glasses while opening her own folder, "A completely new kind of code altogether."
"We're not exactly sure what it builds, but every time we've attempted to crack it, it literally burns out the boards on the systems. Whatever it is requires computing power beyond what we're capable of delivering at the moment. We're hoping to have something in place sooner than later, but as you can imagine, our big issue now is the thermal loads."
"Hmmm," Aiden hummed, "I suppose this will need a few data centers?"
"We have enough out in Utah to make it happen," his assistant chimed in.
"Lt. Gen., it would be a fantastic waste of resources for us to just simply analyze and understand what we're looking at. We're suggesting that once that first round is complete, that we try to develop something out of it. We're not sure what exactly, but we have high confidence that sinking funding into this project will yield something helpful to us."
"Funding," Aiden pressed his hands together, knuckles popping loudly, "Funding funding funding. You do know that requires me to develop a line item. Line items are hard to keep under wraps. Impress me with what you know so far, and I'll see what I can do."
"Consider it a silent project," the presenter offered before turning back to begin, "the silent project."
It had been 6 years to the day since the signal arrived. After a grueling 27 months of analysis, it was finally cracked: an access signal to a world, a digital world. Understanding the ramifications of the Silent Project, the United States Government did something they usually didn't: worked quickly and efficiently
It was found that the world was with mostly benign beings, many of them eager to help out the new faces they found. Allies made agreed with the ideals being set out: this Digital World could act as a processing system, enhancing the United States to push to a promised "50 exabytes [over 52 million terabytes] daily intake...not that we'd need that much really, no, really...", far more than any other electronic intelligence gathering system could even begin to reach.
Those who viewed the new faces as invaders were swiftly disposed of, their data being used to help drive the machine learning systems that accelerated what was known as The Silent Project.
An old facility right along the shore where the desert met the sea was quiet for now.
"Your bravery to volunteer for this is noted."
"I understand what I'm up against," Flamedramon exhaled, "But you've taught me well, I intend to return with him."
"I hope you do," the Flamedramon's teacher said as he walked off, the main door to the interior of the empty hanger retracting. Four years ago, only a Veemon, he had lost everything. Found, saved, taken in, trained and now tasked with the beginning of something to change history, hopefully for the better.
Flame began running off to the nearby cave the portal to the Real World would be, knowing that this would be the test of all of his skills.
"Tally ho on a portal opening," one of the many Commandramon in the center of operations for the multiple military organizations exploiting the Digital World yelled, "Cindy, we've got a signature on it, it's some frequent troublemakers."
Cindy was the contractor, with an intimate knowledge of the Digital World, so much so that she is the prime asset to help quell most of the problems that came from within the society that needed to be kept in check.
"How quickly can you get out to it?" she asked.
"About 10 minutes."
"Have at it," she said, the Commandramon getting up from the station to exit the room and grab a squad.
Cindy grabbed at his arm before he made it through the doorway, "Captured alive, do you understand me? I want to know where these pests live."
"Understood!"
She sighed as he exited, good help was so hard to find.
The uneven surface of the sand dunes along the beach made for a slight challenge in maintaining the same pace, but Flame's lithe body was built for the long haul. He knew he wasn't too far away now, only a few more minutes. But his sensitive ears registered something, a slapping sound, the air being beaten.
It had to have been the military. Someone back at the base had opened the portal much too soon, and the military, with its excellent detection system, was now coming to investigate. A fight he did not want was likely to occur. The slapping faded away, and barely peeking over a sand dune, Flame recognized a helicopter hovering above...dropping several Commandramon right in front of the cave he needed to get into.
He brought a gauntleted claw up to his face, this was now harder than anticipated. The helicopter landed and powered down, everyone onboard exiting and heading quickly into the cave. The rummaging echo of equipment coming from inside the cave as Flame quietly approach down the last dune.
Carefully approaching the helicopter, intent clear, he moved to place himself flush against the side of the cave's opening, then picked up a rock and threw it into the cave.
"What was that!"
"Sounds like it came from the cave opening!"
Flame's focused moved to himself, heat building from his hands. Two Commandramon ran out of the cave's entrance.
"Knuckle fire!" he yelled, both hands sending out a blast of flame across the short distance to the two Commandramon. Spot on hitting them, they both had barely gotten half turned around before disappearing in a flash of heat and data.
Wasting no time, with some surprise still on his side, an aura of fire built up around Flame as he leaned into the vicious sprint, each step sliding along the loose rubble, "Flame Shield!"
The cave was completely consumed by fire, the interior lighting up as two surprised Commandramon attempted to run in the opposite direction only to have the fire burn them alive into data. A powerful wave of heat exited the front of the cave, simultaneously singeing the skin of the helicopter while blowing it over on its side.
Flame slowly walked back to the opening of the cave, just to assure himself that every Commandramon was gone. The helicopter had begun to burn, the smoke thickening. If there were any more forces in the area, they would notice, he needed to find that portal and sooner than later.
The soft glow rendered itself finally visible from the corner of his eyes, and just in time as the sounds of equipment clinking and clattering outside the cave began.
"Helicopter is out!" someone yelled, Flame doubling his efforts heading down a corridor, gaining brightness, losing room. The cave narrowing sharply, Flame's slim frame beginning to have to work against the natural surroundings to squeeze through. A particularly difficult arrangement of rock temporarily had him stuck.
"I've got him spotted!" he heard a voice, looking back over his shoulder to see the assault rifle of a Commandramon coming up, "M16 Assassin!"
Projectiles fired, cutting through the air, blasting the rock around Flame and barely missing him, sparks and hot rock flying into the dust it generated. He heard another voice with the sound of the assault rifle being jostled about, "Alive you idiot! Bring it back alive!"
"Alive?" Flame yelled.
"Alive!" the Commandramon yelled, approaching with the rifle up.
"Me or you?"
"You! Alive!" it yelled again.
"Flame Shield!" Flame yelled, fire once again engulfing the cave, the two Commandramon being ripped to data by the power of the fire, once again blowing a hot red plume out the front entrance of the cave. The rocks Flame was stuck between shattered from the heat, enough chunks leaving to allow him to finally fall through and to the portal, where some of the fire had accidentally made its way through.
"Alive," he yelled to the cave, "Me."
He took a deep breath and readied for his first time entering into the Real World, jumping into the portal with a sharp exhale.
Author's note: Here we go again y'all.
