General Byrce sighed as he stared out the window and into the desolate Arizona desert. Even in the 22nd century the land hadn't changed much, except perhaps drier. There were actual dunes in the northern parts before it suddenly gave way to rocks and scraggly brush the closer one became to the Grand Canyon. The old base in Tucson was all but abandoned when the deserts expanded and the local water sources dried. The monsoons still came every year, but it would be a long while before the aquifers below rose to old levels.
In the room sat or stood other old brass who had nothing better to do than fortify defenses, keep their senses sharp, and stay ready in case any huge rebellion broke out. Some parts of the world had erupted into civil war, and they had been keeping the peace. What no one else knew was there were also reploids mixed in. Their own replicant android units took care of those, but the fights were getting hairier and the military was hard-pressed for reploids that were willing to die for the cause and work as a cohesive team in a short amount of time. They would hold, but something needed to be done before those teams fell apart.
"General Byrce?" asked an older gentleman, one of the few black five-star generals in history. It really was a shame, Byrce thought, that only after unification of all nations did something so rare become so commonplace.
The old bearded general turned to his gathered equals and said, "You all know why we're here in the middle of nowhere."
"The problem is, we haven't even considered the idea again since the Repliforce Rebellion. Colonel and Iris were incapable of merging, which is why we split them up in the first place," a bald elderly man reminded. "How can we make this any different and not have any future drawbacks?"
"Weren't those two supposed to be one?" asked General Carpenter. "To avoid such a disaster from happening again, we don't have to go the same route and fix any glitches from the previous attempt. We just have to take a different approach. Let's take the yin-yang concept..."
"But that's exactly what went so wrong with Colonel and Iris, the inability to maintain that balance within themselves."
"Now just listen for a minute. We don't have to make it one whole reploid. Let's go with a pair, twins. Human twins can sync to each other like no other, even balance each other out. Sometimes it's like they know each other's very thoughts or sense each other's presence and know their condition. It's a unique phenomenon I think we can safely replicate in an android." Byrce scritched his chin thoughtfully, idly making a note to trim his beard again when he returned home.
"It sounds feasible, but is it?" the bald General Smith cautioned. "How long will it take to implement? And if the project is successful, will it be in time?"
"Building any cookie-cutter reploid is as simple as cutting a shape from paper. The hard part is going to be the programming and the custom specifications. What do we want as far as bodily capabilities?"
"Standard military specs for our reploids, to be sure," Carpenter suggested, "with slightly more advanced mental capabilities. We'll have to look closer at the Original's blueprints; even after all this time he still has greater mental capacity and ability than other reploids, very nearly human. Maybe more advanced firepower, but that's something else to consider further down the line. We want our boys to be an inseparable team first and foremost."
"Then it's agreed to go forward with this idea?" Byrce paused as each and every hand in the room went up, then added, "Good. We'll use this base for the project, bring in our best from R&D and reploid manufacture."
"What do we call this endeavor? Take 2?" Smith mildly joked. Byrce smiled at the irony and nodded.
"Project Take 2."
As the meeting made its way back outside, the sun scorched the old men even for wintertime. Snow used to fall in the area, but the air became too dry for that kind of weather. They each boarded a helicopter that would take them back to their respective home bases, planning to keep in touch throughout the project as it moved forward. Byrce hoped beyond hope that something would come of the project. At the very least they had to glean some sort of knowledge or have some kind of breakthrough innovation. If they couldn't use the twins or even make more of them, they would have to be scrapped and the original plans locked away.
"This idea is ridiculously costly," grumped one of the generals present who hadn't spoken in the meeting. "We should have some kind of backup or contigency plan in case something goes wrong."
"You mean if something goes wrong with the finished product," General Byrce clarified.
"The 4th War was a public and private disaster, practically a massacre. We don't want a repeat of history, Byrce. I only voted yay because it's slightly more feasible and this won't go beyond the military. If this works, we'll be the most powerful force on the planet when we seed our ranks with twin pairs. Even those Maverick Hunters will be able to see who truly runs the show."
It would be a few months before the Generals saw any fruits of their labor. Specialists from around the world and with connections to the United Nations Military converged on the old, small base at Tucson, dragging with them equipment to convert it into a research powerhouse. Living quarters were decided upon at the nearby housing, which were essentially townhomes. It was an all-human team, more as a precaution than anything else. After all, the last highly capable reploid scientist went Maverick and began the 6th War.
Neurologists teamed up with designers and programmers to hammer out the initial concept, bringing in older ideas from the Colonel/Iris project and refreshing themselves on the philosophy of Yin and Yang. Harmony, balance, not being able to have one without the other. Indeed, it seemed easier to embody the base ideas in two bodies instead of one whole, so long as each half had a little bit of its opposite within them. The two had to understand each other completely. As a lucky happenstance, one of the women on the team actually had identical twins and could provide input on how they acted. Oftentimes they differed greatly in personality despite having the same appearances, as if they were originally meant to be a single person the entire time. The fact identical twins form after a fertilized egg splits into two eggs added to the truth of the phenomenon. It seemed the Chinese Taoists had it right all along.
While the mental side was being handled, a separate team of designers, reploid system specialists, and analysts tackled the physical bodies. Standard military grade was usually higher quality than the civilian manufactured reploids, even mostly better than custom comissioned reploids. Their armor was more durable, stood up to greater temperature extremes with less loss of performance, and their processing speed tended to be much faster. Their dash thrusters were more efficient and their communications capabilities were longer range. The Hunters updated their recruits as best they could on par with military standards, but it was costly. For this project, no expense was spared.
But what gender to model the new additions? It was an unspoken courtesy to make as many female reploids as male, but after a few minutes everyone decided males would suit the project better. If the project was successful, notes were made in the plans to make the next pair female twins. Day by day, the first-draft blueprints took shape.
During the middle of the first month, General Carpenter visited the base to survey progress and obtain a status report to take back to his peers in the Capital. The ebon-skinned man toured the facilities with one of the neurologists as a guide, and already Carpenter was able to see a workable skeleton taking shape. The microfusion cores, the power source for all modern automatons, had just arrived and stood by in their shipping casing until they were ready to be inserted. The microfusion generator had been around for over a century, but since then astounding improvements on the design had been achieved. They were smaller, more efficient, and for some specific models they had thicker shielding. The twins would have the thickest shielding allowed without adding too much weight to their bodies and therefore inducing unnecessary strain on their systems.
"How is their mental foundation coming along," asked the general as he looked over the programming team typing line after line of code, compiling, and debugging every few minutes. Papers were strewn about everywhere on every workstation, and Carpenter marveled at how each person knew where everything was despite the mess. He would never fully understand "organized chaos", it was an oxymoron that only seemed to work because of incredible short-term memory.
"So far we haven't hit any snags. Results from early simulations suggest that these two will 'grow up' together without any problems. If there are any, they're liable to be as easy a fix as retraining. Their brains will re-wire just like any normal human would while maintaining their inherent sync. Lydia Maxwell's input has been extremely helpful."
"She's the one with actual twins, isn't she?" At the scientist's nod, he added, "Did she have any long-term recommendations?"
"Not to separate them for very long. Identical twins tend to be very bound to each other, and unless they wish it so, they don't want to be apart for long amounts of time. They have a natural inclination to draw near each other again. If they're isolated from each other very suddenly, it won't take much for them to break down."
"We may need to build precautions in them just in case that does happen. If one of them dies, we don't want the other committing suicide to join its twin. They'll have to be able to function as a whole entity as well as part of a whole entity." We can't afford to have another direct repeat of history, not so soon, he thought gravely.
Back in the Capital, Byrce impatiently paced his office. He had done so since learning of General Carpenter's landing at the airport; he would have been there to greet the highly-respected man, but he had his hands tied with other work he couldn't rightly make an excuse to ignore for even a few minutes. Said work finished for the day, he now awaited his aide notifying him of Carpenter's arrival and impending report from Tucson. Enough time and money had been poured into Project Take 2 that the Parliament leaders were getting anxious. He needed something promising soon if they were to have continued nearly-endless funding.
Finally, the door opened and even before Carpenter could announce himself Byrce turned and asked the question everyone wanted to ask: what news from Tucson?
"Things are going well, General Byrce," Carpenter smoothly reported, in his formals and his clean white hat tucked in the crook of his arm while the other laid at rest. "The twins are coming together nicely, and they're starting to work on the skeletal framework for the bodies. All the details have been worked out, and the programmers are working double-time to keep up with the physical team's pace." He approached the antique mahogany desk and laid down a manilla folder stuffed with a typed report and a few photos from the operation. "There's a basic outline of what's going on, and a detailed report of what I found when I visited there, plus a picture or two to give you a better idea. All in all, I'd say we've got a good case to present to Parliament to see this project through."
"How's security at the place?" Byrce asked, his last and final worry of the past few weeks. Fanatics were still at large, pro-human lunatics who believed they should go back to the days when robots were nothing more than dumb terminal computers with a limited AI. Some believed they should go back even farther than that, before the integrated circuit, maybe even before the Industrial Revolution, all to avoid what they called an Apocalypse they were sure reploids and robots were sure to bring. Byrce just brushed them most off as asocial people who spent too much time watching old movies, but the threat of some were very real.
"Tight as can be. Everyone has an ID they are not to enter without, and they can't get back out of the facility without it, either. Had one lock-in already, poor man. It had just fallen off his coat while he was working and he had to crawl in the dark to search for it so he could just flip a switch. Cameras and retina scanners have everyone working there in a database, and at every door requiring clearance they are scanned one by one by both before confirming with their badge. It'd take one hell of an impersonator to get inside. We've also done background checks on the teams there, we know that our current team is no threat to the Project."
General Byrce nodded at the reassuring report and finally allowed himself to relax. He smiled despite his misgivings about the whole thing. He had reviewed the incident with the Repliforce siblings, even read the report that was an account with a battle with Iris. The Hunter that had written it had more than just grieved at the whole thing, he had been heartbroken. That war was a disaster on all levels for all sides, and it made Project Take 2 even more important in that it succeeded. The sad attempt at cleanup had brought upon all of them a massacre, so if even Take 2 failed, they had to be discreet about it. No one else could get involved.
"So, how soon can we expect them to have the boys up and running?"
"Within the next month or so if all goes as planned. I personally plan on being there for their activation. Where should we take them for training and conditioning? Fort Leavenworth? Lackland Air Force Base?" Carpenter added in a joking tone, "Fort Davis?"
"Leavenworth and Davis are isolated enough, too bad Davis is a museum. Lackland is too central, I still want to keep them hush-hush until we're sure they'll work out completely. Leavenworth should do just fine."
"Then I'll let the others know. When are you going to present that to Parliament?"
"At tomorrow's summit meeting." The timing couldn't have been any better, in Byrce's opinion. If Carpenter seemed confident all was well, then it was probably true.