Chapter 1: Intern
A holographic bee crawled between Hiccup's grease-smudged fingers. Even though it was just projected light, he still felt a psychosomatic tickle as it wriggled onto the back of his hand.
"Hiccup Harlaus?" called a woman from outside his door.
Hiccup continued to watch the bee, daydreaming, until he remembered the fake name he was supposed to be responding to. He hurriedly disabled the hologram and set about shoving all his spare parts and tools under his bed. First impressions were everything after all, and he didn't want to look like the obsessive tinkerer he was.
"Ah… I'm here," he replied, eyes darting around for anything out of place.
Before he could do more than glance mournfully at a pair of underwear lying in the open, the door opened and a familiar face strode in without hesitation. Cami was the kind of girl who was comfortable wherever she happened to be standing – a trait Hiccup was infinitely envious of.
"Nice digs, Harlaus," she said with a smirk, her short blonde hair bouncing as she flopped onto his bed and reclined as though it was her room. "Who were you expecting? It almost looks like you tried to clean up in here."
Hiccup pulled the chair away from his computer desk and turned it to face Cami before sitting. "It's Orientation Day today. Someone from the Project should be coming to collect me soon." Hiccup sat up straight. "Wait, how did you get in here? This whole compound is supposed to be secure."
Cami shrugged and tossed him a pair of keycards. "Persuaded a guard outside one of the maintenance entrances. Don't worry," she rolled her eyes at his mortified expression, "He'll get his cards back when I leave. I just thought I'd see how my favourite mole is doing now that you're living on your own."
"I'm not your mole," Hiccup grumbled. When they were children, Cami's mother had sent her to gain Hiccup's trust by hanging out with him at school. Hiccup, excited by his first friend, ended up spilling pretty much all of his hopes and dreams, but very few useful details. He wasn't involved in the business side of things, despite his heritage, and Cami, rather than chalk Hiccup up as a dead end in the Bog Burglars quest for insider information, ended up finding his blathering rather endearing, and a very confusing friendship began to form.
"We already know it's another attempt to make a true artificial mind," Cami said lazily, in the same way she would discuss her most recent tryst. "All I want to know is what makes this time different."
"Well, when you ask so nicely, how can I say no?" Hiccup said dryly. "Please, let me regale you with a comprehensive list of the Hooligan Foundation's secrets."
"You don't know any of their secrets," Cami pointed out. "The last time they gave you anything more than a vague idea of what's going on, I tickled it out of you in under a minute. They'll never tell you what's happening until it's already done."
Hiccup folded his arms and tried to force his cheeks to stop burning. "Yeah, okay, you can stop rubbing it in. Besides, all that changes today. I'm in, Cami. I'll be right up there with the main team, working alongside them."
Cami snorted. "You're an intern, Hiccup. You'll be right up there taking orders for coffee from the real scientists."
"I am a real scientist." Hiccup glared at her.
Sitting up, Cami gestured at the grease smudges on his fingers and the parts scattered around his room. "No, Hiccup, you're an engineer. Probably one of the best in the Archipelago. You see problems and you fix them – you don't just sit around for years observing this and sampling that."
"I could," Hiccup muttered, enjoying the rare praise too much to put any vehemence in his words.
"Maybe," Cami allowed, "But it's not your greatest strength. And in this world, you always have to play to your strengths."
"Are you done with the lecture yet? I could've sworn I wasn't at university anymore."
"Just reminding you how the world works. I know you get lost in my eyes when we have these little chats." Cami batted her eyelashes as she swung her legs over the side of Hiccup's bed.
Hiccup sighed and tossed her the keycards. "I know you too well for that to work on me."
Cami laughed, straightening her short black jacket. "Oh, please. I could get you any day of the week, and don't you dare pretend otherwise."
Hiccup gave her his flattest glare, but once again her words rang true. In some ways, Hiccup was a very strong-willed individual. In other, more delicate ways, he was as strong as a kitten. Cami had known him for almost ten years; she knew damn well how to play him.
"Fine, whatever. Go have fun stealing corporate secrets," he waved dismissively, turning his back to her in a huff.
"I intend to. Come by my workshop on the Bog islands if you get expelled." Cami flounced out of his room and left the door open.
I hate it when people do that, Hiccup sulked.
Hiccup got up to close the door, only to find another woman standing in the doorway. She had a lighter shade of hair than Cami, and it was a little longer as well. Her dark eyes flicked over his messy appearance with little interest.
"Hiccup Harlaus?" she said.
"That's me," Hiccup replied awkwardly, alternating between crossing his arms and leaning on the doorframe. Great, I look like a spastic.
"I'm Astrid Hofferson, Chief Intern for the Project. I'll be handling your orientation today." She stuck out a hand and he shook it, wincing at her grip.
"Chief Intern, huh?" he said, grasping for something to say. "So does that mean you're getting paid?"
Astrid's lips tightened. "I'm not in this to make money."
"So… that's a no, then?"
Even though she was half a foot shorter than him, he still flinched away when she took a step forward. "Listen, Harlaus, I worked my ass off to get here, and they rewarded my diligence by putting me in charge of the other interns. I'm in good standing with everyone who matters in this Project, and if it goes well, I'll likely find myself in a very good job. So keep your commentary and incompetence to yourself and do everything they tell us to do. Got it?"
Hiccup nodded hurriedly and Astrid stepped back and fixed her hair as though a mild breeze had wafted through the windowless corridor behind her. "Now, follow me. Your father is expecting us, and I'm sure you don't want to disappoint him."
Astrid led the way and Hiccup followed, more than a little irritated. "You know," he said quietly as they left the intern quarters and entered a large mess room, "The point of signing up under a different name was to avoid accusations of favouritism, but so far it seems everyone already knows who I am."
"How many Hiccups do you think there are in the Archipelago?" Astrid replied under her breath. "And how many of them just happen to live in Berk, and just happen to be involved in the Hooligan Foundation's biggest research facility?" She snorted. "Personally, I don't know why you bothered at all. Anyone can search up a picture of Administrator Stoick's son."
Hiccup stewed in his own annoyance as they traversed metal corridors and passed endless laboratories. He occasionally paused to try and catch a glimpse of what the other teams were working on, but Astrid always yanked him onwards by his collar.
The only enjoyable part of the forced march was when they passed by the outer window of the southern face of the facility, which overlooked all of Berk and several distant islands beyond.
The Archipelago.
A collection of artificial islands and facilities situated in the Arctic Circle, where the cost of cooling down massive computers was significantly reduced. The icy real estate was so popular for tech companies that entire cities had been built so that employees could live nearby instead of rotating in and out. The man-made islands became gleaming metropolises, which in turn became the perfect place for said tech companies to demonstrate their latest offerings to the electricity-addicted masses.
In homage to the Scandinavian countries the territory was bought from, city planners gravitated towards strange, old names apparently used by the Vikings. They were often blunt and not really evocative of the level of advancement present in each isle, but it was good PR and kept the rest of the world interested in the Archipelago, so the Administrators of each island saw no reason to discourage the practice.
Berk, the shining jewel of the Hooligan Foundation, was right in the centre of the Archipelago, neighboured closely by two smaller islands and a number of ocean facilities administered by Meathead Technologies. The two companies were the largest competitors, and the parts of their feud that made it to the news articles painted a picture of dark dealings and constant strife, almost as though they were warring nations.
Many other companies had their own bits of territory carved out of the frosty sea in diminishing island chains leading away from Berk, though only a few of them bothered to adhere to the Viking name protocol. The trouble was, those few tended to be the most successful.
The Bog Burglars practically flaunted the fact that they stole most of their 'advancements' by manipulating the employees of other companies or breaking into their computer networks. The Visithugs were slowly locking down a lucrative portion of the consumer electronics market, and the Outcasts, despite being heavily funded by Eastern Europe, continued to act exactly like their ridiculous name, keeping their islands to the north under the pretence of having 'much hotter computers' than everyone else – as though the extra few kilometres closer to the north pole was going to help with that, even if it were true.
Hiccup wondered if the bizarre names had given them all a strange sense of what was 'normal' anymore – as though the roughness of their titles had seeped into the social bloodstream of each company. Would they all be so blunt and barbaric if they had normal names like Future Technologies or Advanced Electronics Incorporated?
Probably, Hiccup thought sadly. This was just how people did business these days. Hiccup wasn't as naïve as he knew his father believed he was. The idealism that drove him was sincere but not without caution - it was all-too easy to be sucked dry of your beliefs in an atmosphere like this.
"Heads up," Astrid hissed, breaking Hiccup out of a daze. They stood in a white corridor with red-striped walls indicating a secure area. A small procession marched towards them from the opposite direction, led by Hiccup's father.
Stoick Haddock was 6'9", one of the tallest men in the world, and certainly the tallest in the Archipelago. But unlike most men his height, every limb was packed with muscle and weight, which gave him the bearing of a mountain come to life. He was, in every sense of the word, vast, and his dark business coat bulged despite being big enough for Hiccup to fit inside one of the sleeves.
Astrid stood with her back against the wall and Hiccup quickly followed suit. He recognised a few of the other people following his father as various movers and shakers of the Hooligan Foundation. The Jorgenson patriarch was the only one he knew by name due to some family connection, and because he was Stoick's right-hand man.
"Astrid," Stoick said cheerfully in his thick accent, pausing as they came close. "I saw your operational readiness report this morning. For a moment I thought it was from the department head, it was so polished."
Astrid smiled humbly. "Thank you, sir. I'm looking forward to getting started."
"As am I." Stoick's gaze drifted over to Hiccup, and much of his cheer faded. He coughed awkwardly. "Er, Hiccup Harlaus, isn't it?"
"Don't bother, Dad. The name didn't fool anyone," Hiccup said dryly.
"Ah. Right. Work hard, son." With a thump on the shoulder, Stoick kept moving. Hiccup watched his father march away, the familiar sensation of shame prickling across his skin. It couldn't be more obvious his father would rather have Astrid as a daughter than Hiccup as a son.
"Come on," snapped Astrid from further down the corridor. Her smile was gone, replaced with an impatient frown.
At last, they reached the entrance they'd be using every day for the foreseeable future. There were two sets of thick metal doors with windows in the centre, creating an airlock for extra security. Four armed guards stood to either side, the crimson Hooligan Foundation insignia on their shoulder pads. Hiccup eyed their firearms anxiously, but they ignored him. After passing through an X-Ray machine and handing over their PDAs, he and Astrid were finally admitted into the lab proper.
It took Hiccup's breath away.
The massive chamber was two floors high, with the second looking down into the first as an observation platform. Around the edges of the lower floor, expensive machines with arms that could perform delicate operations beyond human movement were stored and maintained. Hiccup didn't even recognise some of them, which meant they weren't available publicly yet.
There was a smooth white square inlaid on the floor in the centre of the room, but Hiccup was distracted by what lay behind the glass wall on the opposite side from the entrance. There was a stairwell leading out of sight, but the sign next to it was what caught his attention.
"Is that…?" he whispered.
Astrid gave a tight smile in response, following his gaze. "Yep. Down those stairs is where we keep Odin, the world's most powerful supercomputer. It's the only reason this Project is possible."
Hiccup's mouth was dry. Ever since he'd started fiddling with computers and other devices, he'd dreamed of one day having access to Odin. He didn't even know what he'd do with that much processing power! Cure all diseases, maybe, or solve global disputes. What couldn't be done with a computer like that?
"Late as usual," drawled a round-bellied man nearby.
"Gobber!" Hiccup said with a grin, rushing over to clasp hands with his tutor.
Gobber smiled in return, revealing several crooked teeth, one of which was made of gold. His large chin and long blonde moustache looked out of place in the pristine laboratory, but he was never one for caring what others thought.
Most people who lost an arm and a leg would cover their prosthetic limbs with fake skin and heat pads to give the illusion of being whole, but not him. Gobber wore his dark metal limbs openly, even tinkering with them when he was bored. As a child, Hiccup had been endlessly entertained by the many devices packed into Gobber's left hand – especially when he accidentally used the lighter instead of the moustache trimmer.
"Good to see you, lad. And you, Astrid. Did you have much trouble wrangling this one?" Gobber said with a smirk as he ruffled Hiccup's hair. Hiccup recoiled and straightened his shoulder-length hair in distaste. He was taller than Gobber, finally, but it didn't seem to matter.
Astrid gave a smile that Hiccup was beginning to recognise as one she reserved for people of importance. "Nothing I couldn't handle, Professor Gareth."
Hiccup snorted back a laugh. "They don't really call you Gareth here, do they?" He ignored Astrid's sharp look.
"Everyone but you and Stoick," Gobber confirmed with a shrug. "Took some getting used to, let me tell you. I hadn't been called by my name since you learned to speak."
"So are you running this thing?" Hiccup asked hopefully.
Gobber barked a laugh. "No, lad, I'm the Chief Engineer. I keep the machines working so the science team can do their stuff. Director Ingerman is leading the Project."
"Ingerman? Fishleg's mum?"
"That's right. Though he'll probably thank you for calling him Finn around here. Not everyone liked the nicknames you made up as a kid, you know."
Hiccup shrugged sheepishly. It had been a long-running habit of his to invent new names for the people he befriended, whether they wanted them or not. Gobber had loved his so much that even Stoick started using it.
"You'd best go join the other interns. I think the Director's going to be inspecting them soon," said Gobber. "Try to make a good impression. She reports straight to Stoick, remember."
And with that final downer, Hiccup was steered away by Astrid into a small conference room on the upper floor. Lounging around a round mahogany table were four people wearing Hooligan Foundation T-shirts just like him.
Hiccup recognised Fishlegs – Finn, he reminded himself – immediately. The boy still had a bit of baby fat on his cheeks despite being eighteen like Hiccup, but the rest of his body was thick and stubby. From a stranger's perspective, it would be easy to think Fishlegs was all brawn and no brains, when quite the opposite was true. The timid boy was Hiccup's second friend after Cami, and they spent much of their adolescence studying together.
While Astrid went and chatted to the three interns at the other end of the table, Hiccup slid into a chair besides Fishlegs, who was nervously flipping through a reference book. "Hey, Fish – er, Finn."
"Oh! Hi, Hiccup," Fishlegs said brightly. "I'm glad you're here. Can you go through these flash cards with me? I think I might have forgotten a few definitions."
"The Director isn't gonna give us an exam," Hiccup replied with a laugh, shuffling the flash cards.
"Still, better to be safe than sorry. We're the first interns to ever be a part of a project this important. We should be ready for anything."
Before they could get started, the Ingerman matriarch strode into the room without warning, her lab coat flapping behind her. Hiccup could never get over the difference between Fishlegs and his mother. She was slender and short with a focused, ice-blue gaze. Hiccup had spent enough time at Fishlegs' house to know she was quite normal, but then, he'd never seen her at work before.
Astrid shot to her feet in respect, and the others followed suit a moment later.
"Hofferson, is everyone accounted for?" asked the Director.
"Yes, ma'am. Six trained interns at your disposal," replied Astrid.
"Wonderful. Now, you've all been chosen because you possess skills useful to this Project. Hofferson, what are your skills?"
Astrid responded as though she'd memorised her answer weeks ago. She probably had. "Small unit leadership, logistics, inventory management, staffing, delegation, and basic training in both computer science and electrical engineering."
"Good." The Director turned to the next two interns, a man and woman who Hiccup didn't know. "The Thorstons, correct?"
"Yes ma'am," they said simultaneously. Hiccup eyed them with surprise. The man had straw-coloured hair as long as his sister's, and she had tattoos visible under her collar. They seemed so out of place he wondered if this was some kind of hazing ritual.
"I understand the two of you studied complementary subjects so you would both have a chance of being accepted into this Project. Please, elaborate and share your names."
The man started to speak, but the woman slapped a hand over his mouth and took the lead. "Rae Thorston, the one and only. Dad calls me Ruff, but that's only 'cause he's a wimp. I majored in microbiology."
The brother shoved Ruff aside and slugged her in the arm. "Now that we're done with little miss attention-starved over here, I'm Tait, but my friends call me Tuff 'cause I can open a coconut with my head. I majored in nanotechnology, which is way cooler than microbiology."
The Director smiled. "If this Project goes well, your skillsets will be very useful for future emulations." She turned to the dark-haired brawny intern between Tuff and Fishlegs. "Jorgenson, yes? Your father Steinar is very glad you were selected for this group."
The man straightened in pride. "Stein Jorgenson, at your service. I was in all of Astrid's classes, so we have the same skillset." His eyes flicked conspicuously to the Chief Intern, who was gripping the table so hard her knuckles were white. Hiccup got the feeling they weren't on the same page.
Without appearing to notice anything, the Director faced her son. "Hello, dear."
Fishlegs' face went bright red as the twins sniggered. The Director passed over him, obviously already knowing what he studied, and finished at Hiccup.
"Hiccup Harlaus, I presume," she said with a raised eyebrow.
"It's… just Haddock now," Hiccup replied, wincing at another reminder that his plan to remain unknown was doomed from the start. Stein snorted back a laugh, and Hiccup immediately assigned him the nickname Snotlout. It was better than he deserved.
"I know you shared a few classes with Finn, but I confess I'm not completely familiar with your skillset."
Hiccup scratched the back of his neck, aware of all the eyes on him. "Er, well, I've sorta been fiddling with stuff since I was little, and uh, when I was finally able to choose what I could study, I ended up doing a lot."
"Some examples, perhaps?" pressed the Director, her eyes boring into him.
Hiccup swallowed. "I have master certifications in robotics, programming, and mechanical engineering. I also have had lifelong training in welding and metalworking – just as a hobby – and I achieved a minor certification in computer science and cryptography last summer. I majored in Computer Systems Analysis."
The room was still. "Anything else?" asked the Director quietly.
Hiccup wracked his brain for anything else he knew, wishing he had a clue as to what the Director was looking for. I thought I covered the requirements! What did I miss?
"Uh, well, ah, I'm pretty good at, um, photography."
"Photography," the Director repeated flatly. Hiccup nodded, too frightened to answer.
Directory Ingerman began shaking her head slowly and Hiccup's heart sank, but suddenly a huge grin split her face.
"You must have the most varied skillset I've ever seen," she laughed. "And to think Stoick wasn't sure whether you'd be useful to us! I think you'll do well here, Hiccup."
Hiccup exhaled and slumped in relief. Fishlegs patted him on the back, looking a little impressed. In fact, as Hiccup glanced at the other interns, they were eyeing him appraisingly, as though noticing him for the first time. Even Astrid's eyebrows rose slightly.
The Director's words caught up to Hiccup's ears. "Wait, what did my Dad say?" he asked, but he was drowned out in a rush of motion as the Director gestured for them to follow her.
"Let me introduce you to the star of the show," she said, leading them down to the lower floor again. They approached the smooth white square on the floor in the middle of the lab. The Director flicked a hand at a nearby assistant, and after a few taps on a keyboard, the square began to rise out of the ground. In moments, a metre-high cube stood before them, with a smaller square inlaid in the top face.
"This is the containment box for the Project," explained the Director, "And this is what we're all here for."
Another flick of her hand, and the smaller square rose into a little cube about twenty centimetres tall. The top face was white, but the sides were transparent, revealing an impossibly intricate machine. Particles that glinted blue in the light twisted and swirled around tiny pillars of conductive metal in what at first appeared to be a chaotic pattern, but after observation was revealed to be perfectly ordered, like the transistors on a circuit board. All of it was contained in something that could be carried in one hand.
"The Quantum Emulator," the Director said softly, giving name to this wonder. "The first of many, we hope."
As the interns crowded around, each eager to get a closer look, the Director walked in a slow circle behind them, speaking in tones of excitement. "Countless companies have tried to emulate the human mind with powerful computers. We ourselves have tried to do so for over a decade by using Odin's enormous processing power, with no results. But this Project is different. We have refocused our sights on lesser minds so that we might use them as stepping stones to work our way up to something that thinks like a human."
Director Ingerman captivated them with her words as they watched clouds of particles perform their baroque dance. "Through Odin, we successfully emulated the minds of ants, then mice, then cats, then dogs, and finally apes. We thought modern humans were the next step. We were wrong. Recent discoveries regarding ancient Viking interactions with a certain race of diverse flying reptiles have given us cause to believe that they are the missing link in human consciousness emulation.
"Dragons, ladies and gentlemen, were nearly as smart as humanity in some aspects, though obviously still primal in others. Another department managed to reconstruct the blueprints for a dragon's brain based on the most well-preserved fossil we've ever uncovered – I believe it was found in a cove on some island near Norway – but unfortunately there's a little more to consciousness emulation than just looking at a holographic brain." Director Ingerman chuckled and Snotlout guffawed like the good little suck-up he was. Hiccup ground his teeth and focused on the Director's words.
"And that's where this Quantum Emulator comes in. Our greatest scientists laid down the plans for it, and we let Odin fill in the gaps. It took five years of dedicated processing before we had something buildable, and only now are we ready to join the two projects together. You're witnessing scientific history." The Director sounded a bit breathless at the notion, and Hiccup couldn't help but get caught up in her excitement.
"What remains to be done, ma'am?" asked Astrid. She stared at the Director with a determined stiffness to her jaw, and Hiccup knew in an instant he was going to get worked to the bone over the next few weeks.
"We will be… translating, for lack of a better word, the reconstructed brain into the Quantum Emulator. Essentially, we have to teach it to reconfigure those particles in a way that mimics the brain we are trying to emulate."
"Hang on," said Ruff, folding her arms, "How come this little thing is gonna be able to do what Odin couldn't? I mean, that thing downstairs is like, the size of this facility, right?"
Director Ingerman smiled. "Odin is indeed quite large, but atoms and molecules, which are what this Emulator uses, are smaller to such a vast degree that we can fit almost half of Odin's power in here."
"Half?" Tuff clarified, looking sceptical.
"It wasn't the power that prevented Odin from succeeding with emulating the human mind," the Director chided calmly, "It was the lack of versatility in terms of how a computer thinks. Odin, while powerful, was static and unchanging in its layout, whereas the Emulator is in a constant state of flux, as you can see here. It is far better suited to consciousness emulation than a supercomputer."
Hiccup thought he understood. He compared his father to Odin: enormously powerful but lacking any capacity for change. In that way, he decided happily, he had a lot in common with this little box. He changed courses every five minutes, according to Gobber.
"Mum? I mean, Director Ingerman?" said Fishlegs, blushing once more.
"Yes, Finn?" The Director didn't appear to be bothered.
"What kind of dragon will we be trying to emulate?"
"Draco nocte icio," she said with a grin. "The Vikings called it a Night Fury."
Author's Notes:
Let me know what you think so far. Too cyberpunky? Too much jargon, not enough robot dragons?
Wondering why I included Cami when this is supposed to be like the first movie? Well, it's pretty clear this isn't going to be exactly the same as the movie - how could it be, when the whole world is different?
Setting the stage is important, but the meat of the story is yet to come.
For convenience, here is a table of everyone's Viking and Modern names.
Hiccup Haddock = Hiccup Haddock
Stoick the Vast = Stoick Haddock
Gobber the Belch = Gareth Bent
Fishlegs Ingerman = Finn Ingerman
Astrid Hofferson = Astrid Hofferson
Spitelout Jorgenson = Steinar Jorgenson
Snotloud Jorgenson = Stein Jorgenson
Ruffnut Thorston = Rae Thorston
Tuffnut Thorston = Tait Thorston
Camicazi = Cami