How is everyone doing?
This is the sequel to "Project Bifrost". Still more science stuff written by someone who is not so good at science. : )
Chapter 1:
Hiccup woke up when the warm morning sunlight landed on his bed. He stretched his right arm and tried to find the girl in his dream. But his fingers found nothing.
It had been half a year, and he still had that dream every night - Astrid running toward him on the beach of Charleston. Now Astrid wouldn't be running anymore on the beach of Charleston, she was sleeping in liquid nitrogen in Charleston Air Force Base.
He sat up and grabbed his lab coat resting on the nightstand. He came home at 11 last night. He was working on another project with Fighlegs and it was his turn to take care of the paperwork that day.
Half an hour later, after grabbing some breakfast, he rode his bike up the Road and toward Asgard. Asgard was the codename for the headquarters of Muspelheim, and Muspelheim was the private technology company he worked for.
His car, a blue Ford, was destroyed during a raid on Asgard, performed by Heimdall, a mercenary group, now taken down by the police. Since he lived only a few miles from Asgard, Hiccup decided just to ride there instead of finding a way to get another car.
"The great Hiccup is back alive!" a guard on the Road greeted him.
"Did you get another girl last night?" his partner added with an evil smile.
"Shut up," Hiccup replied as he rode past them.
Asgard was located in the forest of the Appalachian Mountains, and there was only one roach connecting it with the nearest human population, Asheville, North Carolina. That road was about two miles long and was referred to by the guards as the Road.
Thousands and thousands of red spruce made up this part of the forest, and Hiccup loved the fresh scent from these trees. They were natural lung refreshers, way more effective than any artificial products. Sometimes squirrels would show up on the Road, swaying their furry tails as they sprinted across the pavement.
The pavement was really smooth. Samuel Timothy, the CEO of Muspelheim, didn't like to drive two miles on a bumpy road every day before and after work. Hiccup couldn't feel one dip or bump the whole way.
When he reached the four-story building at the end of the Road, he was greeted by three more guards. The guards of Muspelheim were all armed with SRM 1216s or P90s. After that raid on Asgard half a year ago, they lost at least half of the guards. Helga Ragnardottier, the CSO of Muspelheim, or Chief Security Officer, didn't like the idea of hiring new guards to replace them, so the security force of Asgard was lessened by half. She was from Iceland and served in SAS before. She wasn't those shirt-and-tie people who sat in an office dealing with paperwork all day. The engineers usually saw her in her black combat uniform with an HK 416 stripped to her back.
Muspelheim spent millions of dollars each year in its security force. Sam and the engineers believed it was worth it, considering some of the projects they dealt with might destroy an entire city if used incorrectly.
Hiccup put his bike in the bike area. He didn't need to lock it since there were no thieves in the forest. He walked carelessly through the front gate and went to his lab on the second floor. He exchanged some simple greetings with other engineers along the way, but he wasn't really in the mode of being friendly that day.
Fishlegs was already waiting for him in the lab. He was working with an active camouflage suit. A client would pay nine hundred thousand bucks for it. Fishlegs was promoted to Lead Engineer a while ago, so he and Hiccup were at the same level. They were both nineteen, way younger than the average age of Muspelheim's engineers. Most engineers here were at least thirty, and some even got their jobs here after forty. Gobber, the ME of Muspelheim, or Main Engineer, wanted only the best engineers in this world.
As a very close friend of Sam and also a world-famous engineer, he didn't have a specialty. It was rare in the science and engineering field since most scientists and engineers spent their entire life and could only expertise in one small field, but Gobber was one of those geniuses who was all-round. Sam put him in charge of all the engineers of Muspelheim. In a technology company, that position was just below the CEO. Sometimes, Gobber could get more people to support him than Sam.
Gobber found Hiccup and Fishlegs one day during a world-wide technology conference in Atlanta. During the exhibition part, Hiccup and Fishlegs had a small table in the corner. Not a lot of people visited them, but Gobber did. At first, he was too bored watching the others so he wanted to find something new.
Just after one conversation with Hiccup and Fishlegs, he decided to hire the two young people who were still undergrads in college.
And, he said that was the best decision he made in his entire career.
Hiccup was quickly promoted from Engineer Assistant to Co-Engineer and reached the position of Lead Engineer in a year. Lead Engineer was the position that usually only the most experienced engineers could get, and most Lead Engineers in Muspelheim had dedicated at least four decades in engineering.
At first, other engineers believed Gobber had finally lost it. Gobber wasn't young either- he was fifty-something and near sixty. But Hiccup's skills made them shut up quickly. He came up with the idea of nuclear-powered aircraft and finished the wind tunnel testing in a month, and he almost finished the project if it wasn't because Sam paused that program and assigned him to Project Bifrost.
That project was proved to be a great success as well. DPA, Direct Protection Agency, a half-private and half governmental agency, spent four million bucks to buy the finished product of that project. That project was started in the '50s, but Muspelheim encountered some issues that hadn't been solved for half a century, but Hiccup solved all of them in half a month.
"How are the visual projectile cameras doing?" Hiccup asked as he settled his backpack on the counter.
"Still trying to figure out the latency. The camera transmitting time is still too slow," Fishlegs replied, tying some codes into a computer which was connected to a poncho covered with things like small LED lights.
"Then how about we inject a microcomputer into the suit?"
"How is that going to solve the latency?"
"You see," Hiccup walked toward his friend and looked at his codes. "The latency is caused by the overload of the image. Our cameras could function as small computers but they are slow. If we plant a microcomputer into the suit that is solely functioned for image analysis and projecting, the latency should be solved."
Fishlegs thought about it for a long while, "but that needs very small chips and delicate wires. It's usually a soldier wearing it, and a soldier will encounter all sorts of environments. I'm just afraid the planted computer might malfunction in some circumstances. We need to make it water, wind, erosion, extreme temperature and even EMP proof."
"EMP as in electromagnetic pulse? Who has that these days? Even our EMP team hasn't reached the field testing stage."
"You don't know about others."
"We are the leader of this field."
"Then maybe there are some nerds with their base in the Alps and now having a party of finishing the first combat EMP. Modern warfare changes all the time, but modern engineering changes so fast that you need to switch your job every two days."
The two friends stared at each other for a while, and then they all burst into laughter.
Meanwhile, inside Sam's office on the fourth floor of Asgard, he and Gobber were staring at Sam's personal laptop's screen. The heavy wooden door of his office was locked, and all windows were covered by curtains. The entire office was dark except for a small light illuminating Sam's desk.
The reason why Sam was using his personal laptop was that all Muspelheim's computers were under the surveillance of the security team. Helga had five computer geniuses who were responsible for Muspelheim's data security. Once, another company tried to hack into Muspelheim's central computer and steal some files.
The engineers mostly used the company's computers since these devices could connect to Muspelheim's powerful world-wide search engine and look up millions of files that normal people couldn't find on the internet.
The engineers' personal computers were not under surveillance, but they didn't use them during work. Muspelheim was rich enough to provide every employee with one laptop and one desktop for working purposes, so there was really no point for engineers to bring their own computers.
"Helga executed him herself, right? You didn't let anyone else do it?" Gobber asked.
"Of course, she is the only one in the security team who we can completely trust with this project," Sam answered. Then he scrolled through the document on the screen. It was filled with small-font words. There were diagrams and pictures here and there but the two men focused on the words.
"He was resisting for a while. We need to empower the controlling computer's CPU," Gobber said.
"It's fine. He has a strong mentality. Not a lot of people have that." Sam shrugged. "Axl's childhood forged his mind way stronger than we have expected."
Sam then closed the file, and then he clicked on the one named "Lighthouse # 2: Nina".
"Her data is fine. Never go out of control," Gobber added. "I programmed her myself."
"So it was you that made her wanting to fuck everyone all the time," Sam chuckled.
"Not really," Gobber scratched his head. "I increased her hormone and adrenaline production in her body. I thought it would make her more resistant to pain and maybe more violent in battle, but I didn't expect it to… turn her on sexually. Fuck."
"Well at least she didn't have a strong mentality to question her mind," Sam said. "David and Evan's data are also not bad. So what's your conclusion for stage one of the Lighthouse Program?"
"I think we did a good job. Nobody tried to do what we are doing right now and our first four products did pretty well. They could do better if we add some more codes to the brain-computer," Gobber explained. "We could've controlled Axl's brain actions to prevent him from resisting the program, but we didn't write that into the code."
"How about Albert Manstein?"
"You mean Astrid?"
"Whatever you want to call him, or her."
"Her data is very interesting. Her physical actions were totally following the program, but her brain and nervous system's reactions seemed to have escaped the program."
"You mean she is now not under control?"
"I tried to restart her controlling computer during my last visit to Charleston…" Gobber paused.
"What happened?" Sam asked.
"I didn't expect Hiccup to scan her brain with an infrared camera."
"So that boy knows what's going on?" Sam slammed his fist on the table.
"No, he doesn't know what's going on. He viewed that heat signal as a sign that she could be woken up," Gobber reassured his friend quickly. "He just has this hope in him, and I think he is trying to figure out a way to defrost and wake her up."
"You know she is not completely frozen. That computer could work even when the outside temperature is near absolute zero. Her body is still functioning," Sam said huskily. "She is our first product. We spent millions of dollars on her. You can't let that innocent Hiccup ruin everything."
"So what do you want me to do? DARPA has her right now and I couldn't request a long enough visit to completely solve the programming error."
"Then tell Helga to get her back. She is the key to the Lighthouse Program," Sam ordered.
"You mean bring her back? She is in a sixteen feet tall cylinder under the military's protection."
"Then tell her cyber team to hack into the controlling system of that container. Her neural data shows that even though some of her organ systems are not responding to the computer, but she hasn't resisted yet. It'll take us too long to start everything from scratch. We can't lose the only remaining product."
After he finished, Sam closed his laptop and stood up. He walked to the shelf behind him. It was where he displayed all the collections of his family. The Timothy family. It used to be one of the most powerful families in the entire Western civilization, and now it shrunk to a technology company.
On the shelf rested a skull, a sword, a mask made of pure iron, a ring decorated with gold, and a book. Sam picked up the book.
"This was written by the…"
"By the 84th Timothy," Gobber finished the sentence for Sam.
"Yes, and in this book, he outlined his plan for us to become the most powerful family in the world." Sam's fingers ran across the old leather cover of the book. "Of course written with his old viewpoint, without cars, without phones. But I'm going to accomplish his plan using what defeated us, technology."
To Sam, it was a total embarrassment that now the Timothy family was only in charge of a company. During the Medieval time and Renaissance, his family was powerful enough to destroy at least three monarchs and take over millions of acres of land. But they failed to catch up with the Industrial Revolution and their power began to shrink drastically. Other families who controlled the factories and new machines defeated the Timothy family battle after battle in Europe and forced them to flee to America.
Samuel Timothy once swore before his ancestors' tombstone that he would bring back what their family had lost.
The Lighthouse Program was how he would do it.
"Are you sure Hiccup doesn't know anything?" Sam asked, resting the book back on the shelf with great respect.
"I'm 100% sure," Gobber said.
"What is he working on right now?"
"Active camouflage, the client is the military. He is almost done."
"Let him work on something that can benefit our program, but act as if nothing is going on."
To be continued.
WARNING: Certain technological and scientific facts and descriptions were created or changed for the purposes of dramatization.