Chapter 2:
In a secluded sound-proof and magnetic wave-proof room of one of DARPA's underground laboratories in West Virginia, a person wearing white lab coats and another one wearing suits stood beside a sixteen feet tall cylinder with transparent glass walls. Inside the cylinder was an unconscious girl with her body covered with wires and cables.
This room was dark, and only two lightbulbs in the corner illuminated this vast space with their cold white lights. DARPA built this underground laboratory about half a century ago, right when DARPA was formed, when their name was still ARPA. It was designed for top-secret project research with the order from the top, the very top. It was located beneath a normal U Haul Rental and Storage place. That U Haul was a fake one, the real owner of that piece of land wasn't U Haul. It has belonged to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency since 1958.
The area of the entire underground laboratory was about the size of a soccer stadium. Its six walls were made of seven different protection layers - three meters of concrete, half a meter of alloy steel armor plate, zirconium steel plate, and so on. The explosion of a nuclear bomb with energy of two hundred thousand tons of TNT could harm the inside. It had its own electricity generator so shutting down its electricity from outside wasn't a thing. It also had a freezer the size of three fast-food restaurants. Besides freezing the laboratory tools and research specimens, it also contained emergency food and water for a hundred people to survive half a year.
Two platoons of armed soldiers provided security for twenty-four full-time engineers and scientists as well as research tools and projects. Some of them were dangerous enough to wipe-out entire West Virginia. Each season engineers from other DARPA's laboratories would come and conduct research using their equipment, and the director of DARPA would visit each year to investigate the progress as well as the security.
The code name for this underground laboratory was "The Ark."
Except for DARPA personnels with special identification granted from the director of DARPA and Lieutenant Engineer of "The Ark", no one was allowed to enter that basement, not even the president.
Lieutenant Engineer was a special position in DARPA, and some outsiders thought it was only a myth. This title was only for the engineer in charge of "The Ark." This person had to be a U.S.-born citizen and, of course, an engineer or scientist in the first place. Most Lieutenant Engineers in the past had a doctor's degree, spent at least thirty years with science and engineering, and could control his or her mouth.
The current Lieutenant Engineer was Grimdale Grisly, but people called him Grimmel the Grisly. He was the youngest Lieutenant Engineer in history, only forty-one. The previous Lieutenant Engineer was sixty when he got the position.
Grimmel was about six-foot-four, tall but a bit skinny and with a long face. His colleagues and the twenty-four engineers under his command referred to him as "Grimmel Hawking-Einstein Grisly."
He was a genius. He started his engineering career when he was only seven. When his friends were still learning the basics of English, he built a small wireless-controlled airplane from scratch. When he was studying at MIT, he worked with Lincoln Laboratory since he started college until he graduated with a doctorate.
Just like Gobber, Grimmel was also an all-round engineer. From simple machines to nuclear physics, and even bioengineering was his specialty.
Now, the director of DARPA, Dr. Ragnar Rock, gave him a challenge, and the challenge was that giant cylinder with the frozen blond girl inside.
"So, what's this?" Grimmel pointed at the cylinder after walking around it and staring at it for about ten minutes. "Human neural activity study? Or brain control? Or do you just want me to wake her without killing her? That's actually pretty tricky as well."
"The orders are to study the human reaction in extreme temperature and environment so that our soldiers could find a way to cope with these extremes during combat," Ragnar said.
"What? That's it? This thing must've cost them at least a million bucks before sending it here, and they just want us to study human reaction to extreme temperature? Are they having too much money right now and want to spend them on some nonsense?" Grimmel cried. "If the data I just read on the controlling computer is right, then she could be used for much more useful research… do you even know her name? It's a shame to be frozen by liquid nitrogen for research without knowing her name."
"Her name is Albert Manstein."
"Wait… as the famous mercenary Albert Manstein? I thought that's a male."
"Well now the truth is Albert Manstein is a female with a masculine name… Thor only knows why."
"How did the Pentagon convince him… or her, to get frozen in liquid nitrogen for research?" Grimmel asked. "Did they pay her like a billion bucks?"
"She is not frozen for research in the first place. A guy in Muspelheim figured out a way to weaponize Bose-Einstein Condensate to freeze anything in battle. And she got shot. The military tech guys got there in time to seal her up before melting and took her over," Ragnar explained. "They just put her in a storage room when deciding whether just to let her melt and die or something, and that's when the top, very top, called them and gave them some instructions. And that's why she is here."
"So you want me to research human body reactions in extreme environment? That's a waste of this…" Grimmel stared at the girl's lifeless eyes. "Precious gift. I'll say she died, or frozen, in vain if that's what the high command wants us to do with her."
"I don't want you to waste her as well, so I did my own research and study before sending her to you." Ragnar took out his iPad and opened a file. "According to my X-ray scan and other tests, I have a feeling that she is already a research product of someone else's experiment."
"Wait wait wait, so the mercenary soldier is a research product that has gone out of control?" Grimmel almost yelled. Then he calmed himself, "It's rather fun to study another person's research… I have never done things like that, but I want to know who that person is."
"According to my test, her neural activities are being controlled, so basically she is brain-controlled, by a computer program inside her body." Ragnar clicked on a picture and showed it to Grimmel. "The design of this computer is rather interesting. It doesn't have a central CPU or chip. Someone planted two thousand cell-sized robots into her body, and these microrobots work together wirelessly to form the functions of a computer. Each of these robots has its own job, like one controls the right hand and another one controls the left hand."
"So someone created a robot network in her body?" Grimmel's eyes widened.
"I'm afraid that's the truth… Thor only knows how." Ragnar shrugged.
"That's like a fairytale of the twenty-first century! No one has ever done something that crazy before!" Grimmel cried. "Who is behind this?"
"No one in this world, including us, has the technology to do so, and the current two most advanced groups in the world denied they are doing anything like that."
"Who are the two?"
"One is us, of course, and I'm the director, and I know what we are doing and not doing, and I know we are not doing something like that." Ragnar paused. "The other one is Muspelheim. I just talked with their leader and he said they are not doing that."
"That private technology company?" Grimmel sneered. "The last time I studied about them was when they were still a small company struggling with finance."
"But right now they are strong. The engineer who weaponized Bose-Einstein Condensate and froze her is from Muspelheim," Ragnar reminded him.
Grimmel's face instantly turned serious.
"After five years they did have changed a lot." He nodded his head. "I do respect them. I really do."
"Now they are our biggest opponent. Even the military is turning to them sometimes. They just ordered those active camouflages from them." Ragnar sighed.
"Anyway, so you gave me this and want me to do some research, any specific research topics or anything?" Grimmel asked.
"For now, figure out how the robotic network works and who put it in her. Dig out anything interesting about her. Do whatever way you want to do and get as much information as possible. These are my orders," Ragnar said. "The order from the top is to try and find a way to wake her up, and make sure she survives."
"No restrictions?"
"No restrictions. View her as… your toy."
Grimmel nodded gently. His experienced eyes studied the frozen body of Albert Manstein.
In Sam's office, he was also looking at Albert's, or Astrid's, face. The only difference was he was looking at her face in a picture. But that picture was not those photos in a nice-looking wooden frame and standing on his table. It was on the cover page of an electronic ten-page research report on his personal laptop.
Below her face were the words "Lighthouse Program Stage 1, Experiment Subject # : Astrid Hofferson" and two scarlet words "Top Secret" at the bottom.
Apparently, that girl had two names in this world, Astrid Hofferson and Albert Manstein. Hiccup and Muspelheim's Lighthouse Program believed Astrid Hofferson was her real name, but the Interpol and the government thought she was Albert Manstein. No one knew what her real name was.
Sam scrolled down to the next page. The entire page was an X-ray photo of a female human body, and thousands of small dark dots scattered across her limbs, torso, and brain. As he scrolled down more, he realized that Gobber did have a few tricks in writing research reports.
As the Main Engineer, Gobber had some Assistant Engineers who took care of his paperwork. Gobber didn't like writing research reports because he thought they were so boring and useless, so he usually let his assistants write them. He only personally wrote the extremely important reports.
Like the Lighthouse Program.
Gobber's report wasn't filled with words. Instead, most of the spaces were pictures and diagrams with notes on the side. He presented different photos of scanning Astrid's body at a molecular level and diagrams of her neural activity and reactions.
"Hiccup, are you free right now?" Sam grabbed his radio and found Hiccup's channel.
In every lab, there was a loudspeaker and microphone, and they could communicate without physically going to other labs, especially when they were doing dangerous experiments.
"Yeah, why?" Hiccup's voice came out. In the background Sam could hear Fishlegs shouting at Hiccup to pass him some tools.
"I want you and Fishlegs to start working on another project."
"What project? We are still doing the active camouflage."
"Hand over that research to Gobber. He'll finish it for you. I'll send the details to your lab computer."
After a few minutes, bewildered Hiccup and Fishlegs were sitting before the screen of their lab computer, reading the four thousand words instruction Sam sent to them.
"He wants us to work on bioengineering? Wireless computer-to-brain communication?" Fishlegs scratched his head. "I… I don't get this."
"I think we are supposed to inject a computational program into a… human brain, and this program must be able to connect with that brain so the person will… know the things that computer knows... quite confusing... And we need another computer outside the human body which can… connect with the computer inside the human body wirelessly." Hiccup tried to rephrase the instruction into more understandable words. "And the wireless connection range must be longer than from the South Pole to the North Pole."
"Hmmm… the wireless range isn't a problem. We can just use the satellite. The US Air Force can control the MQ-9 Reaper drone flying over the Middle East while the drone pilot is in Florida," Fishlegs pointed out.
"No, Sam doesn't want us to use public internet or satellite," Hiccup reminded him after reading some more instructions.
"Then use ultra-high frequency radio. NASA uses that antenna to communicate with Mars rovers."
"Doesn't it go through the satellite as well?"
"I don't think so."
"Anyway, we need to encrypt the communication so that others won't intercept it or read the communication. And we need to fit it into a computer the size of a human cell, or smaller."
Fishlegs fell into contemplation, tapping his fingers against the table.
"You know what, let's start simple," Fishlegs finally said after a few minutes of silence. "Let's begin with finding a way to use ultra-high frequency radio to connect two normal computers. Then we try to encrypt the connection and make them interception-proof, and then we worry about stuffing them into a human cell-sized chip. We figure out how to connect the computer to a human brain last."
"Good plan," Hiccup stood up from his chair and started walking toward the storage room to get some tools. But he turned back to Fishlegs before he opened the door. "By the way, don't tell this project to anyone. This is a Level T project. Only you, me, Sam, and Gobber know about this."
"Oh," Fishlegs paused what he was doing as well, looking at Hiccup with surprised eyes.
Muspelheim categorized the secrecy of its research projects by letters. The lowest level was D, and then C was a bit "secreter"-that was the word the engineers used when referring to Secrecy Level-and then Level B, Level A, and Level T. The highest level was TT. Muspelheim had thousands of projects, and most of them were Ds or Cs, those projects' files and reports could be viewed by every Muspelheim personnels. Some projects requested by big organizations, the military, or sometimes even other nations' governments, might be Level Bs or sometimes As. For Level T, there were less than a dozen Level T projects in the history of Muspelheim.
These projects were only accessible by the current leader of Muspelheim, which was Sam, the current Main Engineer, which was Gobber, and the research group made of less than or equal to two very experienced engineers. Hiccup and Fishlegs never encountered Level T projects before, and even Hiccup's previous one, Project Bifrost - which was known among the Muspelheim engineers as the "ghost project" - was only at Level A.
Level TT projects, which no one had heard about, were those top secrets of Muspelheim. The Main Engineer and the leader of Muspelheim would personally complete those projects. No one knew if Level "double T" projects even exist since no one could read either Sam or Gobber's mind.
"What's the codename for this project?" Fishlegs asked in a weird tone.
"Project Electricity."
"You codenamed Hiccup and Fishlegs's part as Project Electricity?" Gobber laughed after Sam told him the plan.
"Stop laughing, I think it's a good name. Hiccup and Fishlegs will do the most important part for us. Without their research product the Lighthouse Program won't work." Sam tried to explain it to his friend. "You see, a lighthouse needs electricity to power, and their project is the key to the Program."
"Ok ok, how about other parts?"
"I separated the work to different teams. So after they are all done, we combine their work and we get the stage two of Lighthouse Program."
"And what are the codenames you gave them?"
"Project Bricks, Project Lightbulb, Project Door, Project Watchman, Project Roof, you know. And I assigned Level T secrecy to all of them."
Gobber howled with laughter, "They all think they are doing something very important, but none of them knows what the hell they are actually doing. Man you are turning this company into your private factory."
"In some ways, Muspelheim is our private factory, and people like Hiccup are our workers, just highly intelligent blue-collar workers." Sam shrugged.
"Hiccup is not going to be happy when he hears that." Gobber chuckled, still trying to calm himself down after the laugh.
Sam wasn't affected by Gobber's almost hysterical laughter. He still stood there, as calm as a statue that had survived thousands of years of wind and snow.
"Hiccup will figure out what we are doing, or at least get some clues of what's going on in this company in the next year or so, and he will try to find a way to know the whole thing," Sam said seriously. "He will try to spy on us, eventually."
"You know you are not a really good engineer, right?" Gobber pointed out. "Your real skills are just around the level of an Assistant Engineer."
"I know that. I can say I am the worst Timothy. All the Timothys before me were excellent engineers or scientists, and in the ancient time they were alchemists or sorcerers and sorceresses, at least people back then believed they were sorcerers and sorceresses." Sam was staring at a painting hanging on the wall. It was a painting of an ancient castle standing among thousands and thousands of trees. That wasn't a masterpiece of some Renaissance artists. It was drawn by an amateur artist. But that castle used to be the heart of the Timothy family. "But I have something else. I have Muspelheim."
"Well technically you didn't start Muspelheim, the fifth generation above you started Muspelheim, and back then it was only a small company, but you are the one who made it into a great company," Gobber said respectively.
People thought Gobber and Sam were just very close friends, but if they were just friends, Sam wouldn't share his family history with Gobber. And, most engineers didn't know Gobber's last name. Some people thought it was Belch because they saw on an old record he was referred to as "Gobber the Belch." But Gobber quickly said it was just a nickname his friends called him.
The other reason why Gobber and Sam were so close was they were actually related. Gobber's last name was also Timothy. But unlike Samuel Timothy, who was the heir, or the successor, to the great estate of the Timothy family according to their bloodline, Gobber's position in the family was similar to a secretary or assistant to the heir. Before Sam's father, Emmanuel Timothy, died because of old age, Emmanuel appointed Gobber as Sam's assistant. The assistant to the successor to the Timothy title was actually a very high position. If the successor was not in the position of leading the family, the assistant could become the acting leader.
And, Gobber was right. Sam just might've been the worst Timothy in engineering. But he had an intelligent mind in leadership and modern politics and economy. He used these skills to turn Muspelheim from a small company into an organization that could compete with DARPA.
Muspelheim was founded by the Timothy family during the Industrial Revolution in North Carolina. It started with a small factory powered by the water frame, and since then, it didn't have much of an improvement. Its marketing wasn't bad enough to make them bankrupt but they were surely not a big company. And when DARPA was founded in 1958, they started secretly suppressing all technology companies and organizations out there whom they thought had the potential to become a threat to DARPA. And, Muspelheim was on DARPA's suppressing list.
Sam's father and grandfather worked really hard to make sure the company didn't go bankrupt. After the Timothy family lost its power in Europe and came to America, the family lost almost everything they had-army, political power, money, connections with half a dozen royal families. A lot of family members were slaughtered during the 1600s and 1700s by the royal families who used to be their allies but later on turned against them. The surviving Timothies fled to America with only their suitcases. They started this small company called Muspelheim with whatever they had left and tried to fight back everything they lost.
When the company finally had some opportunities to grow fast after the Second World War, DARPA almost pushed Muspelheim to bankruptcy. And later on when the technology improved fastly, more and more technology companies showed up and tried to get a piece of the cake of modern technology. Laboratories and companies like Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works and Boeing dominated the market. It was a miracle that under Sam's lead, Muspelheim became one of the most advanced laboratories in the world while competing with all the other big heads.
But the most dangerous opponent was still DARPA. The competition between Muspelheim and DARPA never ended. They were enemies the instant they met each other. Even though DARPA had the support from the US government, Muspelheim became the strongest private company.
"Let's just hope the Lighthouse Program could defeat DARPA for us once and for all," Sam said softly.
When Hiccup dragged his tired body into his house at 10 pm, he and Fishlegs brainstormed for hours, trying to find a possible way for Project Electricity, but they failed to do so that day.
Hiccup remembered that when he was a member of the chess club of his middle school, after each round of chess his brain would hurt as if those brain cells were trying to escape. Now he was feeling the same.
After briefly cleaning himself up, he laid on his bed and decided to put on some music from his phone. Maybe it was because his mind was in turmoil at that moment or something, he ended up clicking on the photo album instead of Spotify. That's when he saw the pictures Astrid took with him during their short reunion.
Astrid took a lot of selfies with Hiccup using his phone after their reunion. Most pictures were the two in bed, but there were also some when they were in the forest surrounding Asgard. Hiccup scrolled through the pictures. Astrid did like to take pictures. In the three weeks of them living together, Astrid took around seventy selfies and pictures using Hiccup's phone. Thor knows how many on her phone.
But after Astrid was frozen by the weapon he built, Hiccup's heart that was still excited about their reunion after around a decade broke. He had a custom of recollect and refresh the memory of things he didn't want to forget. Like the time he spent with Astrid on the beach of Charleston when they were still kids, his friendship with Fishlegs, the day when he received the news of his father, Stoick's death, the day became a Lead Engineer... After the three weeks with Astrid, a bit more things were added to the "recollection list."
Hiccup stared at the girl in the selfies. Her smile was as warm as the sunlight of mid-spring and her hair was as gold and smooth as silk. He ran his finger through her face, trying to recall the feeling of her skin under his hand.
He still remembered the future that he and Astrid planned. He said after completing Project Bifrost they would go somewhere quiet and live peacefully and away from the noisy society.
He did complete Project Bifrost, but the day of him and Astrid walking hand-in-hand on a quiet trail and enjoying their life would never come. He knew a lot of things had happened to her after they separated from each other when they were only ten, but Hiccup was willing to accept her, no matter what identity she was using or what job she had or what crime she committed. He just wanted to be with her again, as careless as their time on that beach.
Hiccup chuckled at that idea. Maybe it was Astrid who would choose whether to accept him, not the other way around. Astrid was the one deciding when and where to meet and controlling everything else when they were young, and Hiccup would agree with all of her decisions.
To be continued.
Aha! We finally have Grimmel here.
Any thoughts on what Grimmel will find out about Astrid?