The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.
SeaQuest
Abstract
Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.
This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.
This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.
Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.
PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.
{ SQ } - { WARNINGS & NOTES } - { SQ }
All warnings at the beginning of Chapter 3 are repeated verbatim.
For this chapter, time stamps will have America's West & East coast hours.
WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?
Fourteenth CHAPTER; The unyielding nature of reality
Rude awakening
(The US National Anthem – with choir)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 14:00pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 11:00am
Fort Dempsey - US Navy, classified R&D facility
Pensacola, Florida, USA
The SeaQuest had just blasted its way through the artificial harbor's armored waterway doors and shot four plasma warhead torpedoes at submerged defense points before it settled down on the ocean floor, leaving some 125 feet of free passage above her hull. This allowed the pair of Arleigh-Burke destroyers and two other surface ships that were the hammer of the mission to enter the cemented lagoon and occupy nearly 80% of the available space, thus positioning quite well for bombardment while denying the enemy an escape route. The two Arleigh's took the flanking positions, leaving the middle of the formation for the admiral's boat and another capital ship of the UEO's battle line. Anybody who thought the respectable destroyers were just for show were quickly disabused as their 5 inch guns belched shells at the fort's weapons, followed by small missiles equipped with shrapnel warheads to clear out clusters of enemies trying to emplace M2 machine-gun nests to repel law enforcement ground troops.
The other two ships were quite different, but equally modern, high-powered, and lethal.
The smallest was the UEO navy's brand new Carnegie-class littoral combat ship 'Shepherd', a short 300 foot boat, some 50 feet wide and six storeys high. The hull was equipped with a main turret that sported a prototype naval 3 inch railgun and two pulse cannons, four CIWS turrets composed of two pulse rifles plus a 25mm railgun, and 24 small VLS cells for 'Pugio-I' all-purpose missiles tipped with either solid explosives or shrapnel heads. The boat's stern had a landing pad for a helicopter, but no internal hangar to house it so as to keep the ship lightweight, to ride high in shallow coastal waters or up-river towards inland situations.
The other surface ship in the blockade was another novelty from the UEO fleet; the Crichton-class amphibious cuirassé 'Jiu-Jitsu'. It was a big lumbering beast, at 1,300 feet long by 200 feet wide, 18 storeys high, and built like the old dreadnoughts of World War I & II. The antiquated architecture allowed to stack multiple light, medium and heavy weapons turrets, 48 VLS cells for "Pilum-I" cruise missiles, 96 VLS cells for small all-purpose 'Pugio-I' missiles, and torpedo bays with 6 tubes each in both bow and stern. Installed vertically throughout the central structure of the boat was the immensely powerful "Flamberge" plasma lance system. This weapon had two emitters; one atop the superstructure and one submerged beneath the hull. Looking like a standard radar dome, the "Flamberge" was a new version of the prototype plasma lasers that had been built into the SeaQuest, 25 years back. This version was able to pivot 360º horizontally and 180º vertically, to hit targets out to 50 kilometers with energy burning at more than 10,000ºC. The Crichton-class hull had an internal hangar holding two Chinook helicopters, a rear wet deck that could park four amphibious APC's, and a ventral hangar for two MR-# shuttles. The 16 light CIWS turrets had two pulse rifles and one 25mm railgun. The 8 secondary (medium) turrets had two 3" pulse cannons and one naval 5" railgun. The 2 primary (main) turrets mounted on the main deck held two naval 12" railguns and two extra-large 12" pulse cannons. All cruise missile cells were located between the forward primary turret and the main superstructure, while the 'Pugio-I' launchers were spread around the upper decks in eight clusters of 12 cells. The massive warboat was optimized for ship-killing, taking down aircraft and coastal bombardments, thus making the UEO's prototype ship-of-the-line ideal for the kind of job at hand.
Presently, admiral 2-stars William Allard Boyd Noyce stood on the main bridge of the 'Shepherd' when the vessel was rocked by enemy fire coming from hidden defense turrets that had just popped-up around Fort Dempsey. Like the Maginot and Siegfried Lines of World War II, somebody had gotten cute with hydraulics and dug-out armored emplacements for heavy artillery, including flak rifles, anti-ship guns and missile launchers. If it weren't for the four pulse rifle CIWS systems mounted around the 'Shepherd', the boat would have sunk to the harbor's floor, 240 feet beneath the waves, just from the first rocket salvo they shot down when they arrived, mere minutes past.
Bill pursed his lips in anguish as the fighting went on far longer than anticipated by their best tacticians and SEAL veterans. The Fort Dempsey redoubt was supposed to be a moldering old pile of red bricks and Brutalist concrete, harking back to WW-II whence it served as supplies depot and machinery shop for the smaller boats of the Navy that patrolled the important harbors, around the Gulf of Mexico and Puerto Rico's coasts. The base had supposedly been shuttered at three different draw-down periods during the country's various budgetary crises, but somebody always kept putting forward enough money to at least keep the fences electrified, the cameras filming, and the few aging security guards on post. Recently, after 2001/9/11, the Fort had seen a sudden resurgence as many American cities demanded to have their harbors and rivers better protected from terrorist incursions, and Dempsey was already optimized for building & repairing the small watercraft or amphibious APC's that the mayors were calling for. So, the Fort was officially recommissioned under the 2002 Patriot Act (V-1.1-A) in October 2005 and put back under the purview of the US Navy's quartermasters, as it had been before. In the last sixteen years, the Dempsey shipyard had seen many hundreds of small trucks, boats and drones be assembled or pass through for repairs, all in good order as per standard processes.
But...
There was a section of Fort Dempsey that had always been off-limits to everybody who didn't have a security clearance from US Naval Intelligence; the Jepsen Bastion. It was an old 'black site' built off-the-books, in the 1940's, but never revealed outside of certain rarefied circles of officers and agents who had been managing the American war efforts of WW-II, and the Cold War afterwards.
The circle of people 'in the know' was so rarefied that even though Bill Noyce had been the bloody department head of US Naval Intel for the last six years, he had just learned about the place two weeks ago! He was all for his department keeping secrets and classified mission briefs from the open public, or the dumb he-whore politos who dwelt in Washington DC, but they weren't supposed to keep those secrets from their own boss! Especially when the people who ordered that those items stayed secret weren't in the department, or even the Navy at all! Not even intel agency retirees, either!
So, when William Noyce had finally been appraised of the hidden pit of depravity, he had begun an investigation that had quickly connected with three different grave situations that otherwise seemed completely foreign to each other.
1) The attempted dissolution of the ultra-secretive US federal intelligence agency called DXS, the Department of External Services, and its corporate façade for polite society, the Phoenix Foundation for Scientific Advancement. Out of the blue, an order had come down the pipeline to disband the agency, and nobody knew where it came from, nor whom it was that had emitted the order. Thankfully, Matty Webber had a nasty disposition in the best of days, so she had contested the order and immediately found out it hadn't been sent from the Oval Office, Joint Chiefs or Director of National Intelligence. The order was therefore illegal and set aside as such, but they still hadn't found who sent it, nor how they had managed to penetrate the US intel networks that deeply.
2) The reprisal of covert paperwork warfare against SSA Henrietta Lange, director at the Los Angeles offices of NCIS, at the behest of some crooked old have-been's who feared all the secrets she had harvested during her decades at the CIA, in Europe, Asia and at home. Many would be cheering her demise, but some of her friends were working arduously to push back that fatidic deadline, including his wife Janet who had also done the rounds of Eastern Europe and Russia for the Company. The problem with this internal war was that the actors in DC seemed to be financed by foreign assets, and either didn't know or didn't care because their own private needs required Hetty to disappear without a sound. That situation was also under investigation since the methodology and foreigners involved were the same as the DXS almost-debacle.
3) The kidnapping of a young genius of pharmacology, neurology, cybernetics and industry, from Stanford campus three weeks ago. Also, there was the small detail that he had an external director-level contract with The World Bank for network security and transaction protocols. The kid had bloody Diplomatic Privilege higher than some career politicians in The Hague! Plus, he was hijacked from his private rental laboratory, right in broad daylight, by thugs dressed as US Marines. It was discovered just a week ago that they were actually the genuine article, but acting under 'Black Ops' protocols for a mission that was illegal. Nobody in JSOC, CIA, NSA, or any of the people authorized to enact such a hard removal, had signed anything concerning the young prodigy, so everybody was looking for him. Well, it was among the hundreds of things each agency had to do, including the US-NI and the newly minted UEO Fleet.
And it was because Noyce was trying to help NCIS and the FBI find who the traitors were that took the kid, and where they moved him to, when he had accidentally found the paydirt about Fort Dempsey's hidden Jepsen Bastion, and all the doubts concatenated together into today's events.
Admiral Noyce smirked nastily as the concrete base of a retractable ship-killing gun's turret exploded, shearing off the weapon in a spray of drab gray shrapnel and dust that took several seconds to fall back to the ground around it. With that emplacement open, the ground troops could now access the tunnels quickly, instead of using the roundabout way that the SEAL insertion team had run up, in their effort to rescue Lucas Wolenczak from his captors. The breaching team should be inside the bastion already, or damn near blasting the secret door off its hinges by now. Shouldn't they have called in, if they were inside?
Another shockwave rocked the boat, courtesy of an intercepted missile, and that blast was immediately outmatched by the 'Jiu-Jitsu' that tagged the enemy's launcher with a bunker-buster Pilum-I. As Noyce watched, the lumbering battleship strafed 3 enemy rockets out of the air with its beam CIWS, then hammered out of existence the three hidden launchers with a cruise missile and a pair of 12 inch shells from the stern primary turret's railguns. The destroyer's secondary turrets were kept for lobbing 5 inch fragmentation shells at the clusters of enemy soldiers and lightly defended vehicles that were trying to reinforce the defenders against the lawful sailors who were mounting a ground assault against them.
The 'Shepherd' pivoted its principal turret, aiming the 3 inch railgun and two coaxial pulse cannons at a large tractor-trailer truck that seemed to be speeding up in preparation to ram its way through the blockade set in place by the navy's MP and local lawmen. Twin ocher beams lanced out in a straight line, punching through the truck's engine block and drive cab in one strike, detonating the controlling elements of the vehicle so badly that it careened wildly, almost immediately overturning the trailer which caught fire from the secondary explosion of the gas tanks. In the far, the sirens of fire & rescue could be heard wailing as the fight ground away the enemy's positions at the pace of a lazy snail.
Another set of mighty reports from the 'Jiu-Jitsu' informed Noyce that another pair of 12 inch shells had found homes in the enemy's bunkers, the confirmation given by two matched explosions as each warhead bearing 1,150 pounds of high powered explosives detonated in tandem. Immediately, both ships' CIWS arrays took down several RPG's, shoulder-fired rockets, and one small drone laden with a chemical device that revealed itself to be a phosphorous mixture upon exploding. The gunners tried their best to track the projectiles to their sources so that the launchpads could be bombed out. Soon enough, a full cannonade of 12, 5 and 3 inch railguns shook the artificial harbor so damned much that the waves were forming in concentric circles around the four hulls as they repeatedly fired.
Bill instinctively homed-in on the comms officer at the back of the bridge when a particular alert sounded loud enough to be heard over the boat's regular combat warnings. Without even hesitating one second, the young ensign unhooked the handset from his console and passed it to the Boss of the entire UEO fleet since the call was for him anyways.
Grabbing on to the console to avoid being shoved around by the ceaseless shaking of the ship, Noyce called out in the mike "Colonel Madray! Report! Did you manage to penetrate the bastion? Over!"
A squeaky noise came through the handset speaker followed by a plethora of ambient noises, most of them protests from scientists and the shouts of the bucket-heads pushing them around. "Aye, sir! Colonel Madray, reporting on mission status! We managed to breach the bastion through the secret door that was indicated in the old blueprints from 1940, but it took nearly fifteen minutes more because they had put in another armored door, about two decades back. We could only pick the locks manually if we wanted to avoid triggering an alarm or booby traps, so not blowing our way through took time. After that we got on schedule and had only about six minutes of total delay, compared to mission planning, and we got in right in the heart of things. The sewers connect into an office, connex to a bio-lab. My guys are in the process of pulling the eggheads together, for tagging and handcuffs. Over!"
Somewhat happy with the results despite all the hard fighting still going on topside, Noyce asked the most pressing question. "What about the prisoners we expected to find? Are any of them liberated, or at least found? Over!"
Colonel Madray replied "We found only one target, admiral, and it's a fucking hot mess! The kid genius is floating in a cylinder of blue liquid, with pipes and wires plugged in places no human should have to endure that sort of thing. He looks to be in a chemically sustained coma. Give me a sec!"
William heard the SEAL colonel shout aloud "Oy! Eggheads! Is there anybody here that wants to tell me nicely what's with the kid, or do I have to find out the hard way?" His query was promptly answered by a female voice that screamed for his attention. "Let her through! The admiral wants to talk to her!"
Bill heard the SEAL inform the woman about who was on the line, and just how screwed her life would be if she lied or tried to lead them into a booby trap. The woman's impatient reply was lost to the ether as the 'Jiu-Jitsu' sent out another broadside of 12 and 5 inch shells arcing over the redoubt to land in the far rear sector of the base, some three kilometers away.
Putting a finger in his free ear, Bill concentrated on hearing the woman as she spoke; "I am doctor Euphemia Lisbeth Durand, biologist, biochemist, geneticist and evolutionist, in the employ of general McGrath for this project. The child is inside an immersive neural interface. It takes hours to put him in properly and almost as long to remove him without causing brain injuries or mind-shock. Whatever you want here, you have to let my team maneuver the boy and the machines together, or else he will be so badly injured that his ending a drooling vegetable would be an optimistic outcome. My people can unplug the devices from the wall sockets and servers to make everything mobile, including the sustention fluid tank itself, but we need time to make it happen safely!"
Noyce griped nastily into the handset "Why the bloody blue blazes should I trust you?"
Duran replied simply "Because I know the reputations of both McGrath and you, and you are by far the more civilized and business-minded of the pair. Every time I was obliged to work for him, I was never certain I would make it out of the worksite alive, especially when the projects were winding down."
Snorting in disdain, Bill queried tartly "Then why did you work on so many of his jobs? Was the money that good?"
The woman answered glibly "When the choice is between death of your entire family and accepting the pay-off to be both silent and productive at work that you enjoy, and it happens to be on the cutting edge of human evolution, the moral qualms die soon enough. My husband and daughters are alive, and several diseases have been found to be curable, or at least manageable, due to my work. I am truly aghast that we could not simply make an honest deal with the child for his willing assistance in the project, but that was McGrath's choice, and he pushed on it hard. In his view, the boy was nothing more than a threat to America's white Christian dominance of the planet, a living challenge to all adults in the nation, and possibly an unnatural abomination despite not being modified or artificial. When you have an employer like that man, your options are limited, especially if you insist on survival and good health as part of your pay & benefits. McGrath believed very much in the expendability of soldiers, and what he deemed to be 'work product' rather than human beings. Surely you remember the GUELF project, and how the general renamed them 'DAGGER' to denote just how cheap and disposable the new human beings were?"
Noyce frowned at the wired phone set, wanting his anger to transit through the airwaves so that it could impact the woman at the other end. He had heard of Euphemia Durand during the tactical briefing about Fort Dempsey's hidden workes, and her attitude matched what the intel said. However, she was also probably right about the way to handle the kid's current condition, since she was the actual specialist concerning these technologies. Well, that wasn't really true; she was the specialist currently not in a coma or too afraid of McGrath to help them recover the boy in good health.
"Okay doctor," Noyce ground out through gritted teeth, "You have just earned your team of eggheads a reprieve, but a short one! If everything works out, we'll see for later on. Can you get the system mobile for transport aboard an MR-4 subsurface shuttle? We have the SeaQuest loitering in the back of the attack convoy, and their hospital is bigger, better equipped, and has better medics than all the other ships and facilities around Fort Dempsey at present."
Sighing in exhaustion and stress, the female doctor said "Have your men stay out of the way and make certain nobody shoots around this lab for at least 45 minutes, and we'll be fully mobile for either your shuttle or a ground truck. In any case, everything was designed already palletized so as to be transported while a patient was inside the working apparatus. Given that it was Lucas Wolenczak himself that designed and built the machinery, I'm inclined to trust the durability of it."
Not happy but having no choice, Noyce agreed and spoke out his orders to colonel Madray, confirming the sequence of events to happen so that their child genius be back in their hands safely. He hung up the line then dialed for the only dedicated submarine warship in the convoy. He waited a few seconds for the connection to establish, gazing idly at the pair of Black Hawk helicopters that had just launched from the two Arleigh-Burke destroyers that were the convoy's flanks. The helos were being called in to do a first run of med-evac for some of the marines and SEAL's that had fallen during the preliminary wave of fighting against the ground-level defenders. Soon, the secondary wave of attack would go down into the warren of tunnels under the fort, in an attempt to ferret out the remaining criminals, and maybe a few other victims of unresolved kidnappings.
A tone in the line sounded, and the captain of SeaQuest was on; "Admiral Noyce? Madelyn Stark at your service. What can the Quest do for you?" the firm, cold voice of the career sailor offered without fear or doubts, just as if it were any ordinary weekday.
Shrugging-off the feeling of ill-ease he always got when speaking to Stark for the last three years, Noyce got down to the basics of what he wanted done. "We found one of our targets, but he's in a tube full of liquid, in a medical coma. McGrath's people are not particularly attached to the general, his orders, or his paranoid necessity to destroy all proofs of what was done down there. They have offered to help us liberate the boy and bring him to SeaQuest safely, if we are simply patient enough to let them disconnect the machinery without causing damages to the sleeping child. It should take them some 45 minutes just to make everything movable, then more time to reach the docks to board the shuttles."
Stark replied in cold detachment "Then I will send a navigation plan to my shuttle pilots to set timers for 15:25pm. They will leave the ship's protective shadow and return to the shore for the pickup of our victim and his support crew. I gather the SEAL's will remain aground?"
Bill blinked away the glare from the sudden explosion, barely 400 yards off the boat's tower, when a drone the size of a kayak was destroyed by a well placed shot from one of the Arleigh-Burke's 5 inch cannon. Unfortunately for the 5-ton truck that had shot the thing out of its back gate, the other Arleigh tagged them with a pair of their own shells that liberally spread steel shrapnel like confetti in a wedding, causing the military transport to explode in a large fireball.
Answering the female captain on the phone, Noyce confirmed "Yes, yes, the SEAL's haven't finished clearing out the main lab, and we want to avoid destroying equipment or solid files until we have Wolenczak awake and healthy enough to confirm we don't need any of it. That, and they have captured McGrath. He's unconscious and injured, but I want him in a different boat than any of the people he kidnapped or forced to work for him, so as to avoid any deplorable incidents. Over!"
"SeaQuest, ten-four, admiral! Over!" Stark replied, and the line went dead.
Studiously ignoring the strange feeling of dread that oozed down his spine after speaking with the captain of the biggest and most powerful ship in the UEO arsenal, Noyce concentrated on winning this damned fight, once and for all. Now, why did he think that would be easier said then done?
{ SQ } - { Life under a microscope } - { SQ }
(NCIS – opening theme)
Eastern America; 14:22pm
Western America; 11:22am
Unbeknownst to anybody at the time, Lucas Wolenczak had in fact become free of the neural control system since the simulation was so rudely interrupted when his mind had finished compiling all the raw data fed to it by general McGrath's orders. Without anymore novelties to process or jobs waiting in the queue, the simulation manager app shut itself off, thus the young boy's mind was finally free to start processing stimuli and information for its own needs, rather than serve an outside imperative.
And Lucas had in fact designed the immersive neural interface, the pod, the fluid, the new molecules of neuroplexic crystal and the connection colloid gelatin, he had made it all. And most importantly, he had also written the entire program for the system; the BIOS, the OS, the apps, the management suite, all of the proprietary software that ran the machines and allowed the operator to see the dreams, thoughts and mental processes of the patient on the console were his creations, his alone. Lucas had always worked alone, in isolation, whenever he decided to spend a few days of hard labor on his personal, private project. Several key parts of the device like the heavily modified 'Angelator' gaseous display consoles, the crystal CPU's, the liquid cooled servers and neuronal induction antennae were also designed and built in isolation.
And all of that solitude, all of that secrecy, meant that nobody knew anything about his machines and programs, except what they had managed to divine in the short span of time since they had kidnapped him to exploit his mind and work product against his will. That was a mistake on their part. Like any good programmer, Lucas had built-in back-doors and fail-safes throughout the entirety of his devices, all because it was good business to be able to survey and control your program from several access points together. The fact he was also paranoid about his science getting stolen was normal, because that happened a lot in R&D companies. The other reason he had been paranoid was that he had anticipated exactly the sort of depraved bastardy that had happened in the last month.
While he was young and lacking in general life experience, Lucas had never been stupid or foolish; he understood quite well the power of the devices he invented. While his initial goal had been to permit the awakening of coma patients, he had quickly segued towards trying to actively heal the brains of the mentally ill who had suffered structural damages to their cerebrum. As soon as the first trials were finished and the results tabulated, the teenager knew he had built an awful weapon that would be used by perverts and monsters all across humanity. His machine could repair injuries or defects in human brains alright, but the software could interface so well with the mind that it could make the images, sounds, tastes, touches, and even emotions, perceivable through the gaseous holo-projector. The depths of the living human mind could not only be reached for healing or understanding, they could now also be touched, altered and reprogrammed kindly, or else be ripped apart savagely to produce a barely-present slave creature.
Despite being just 13 years old when it happened, and despite all the secrecy and isolation during the test phase, Lucas just knew that his invention would be debased into a machine of horrendous cruelty by petty, meaningless men who craved absolute Power over all others. In the pit of his soul, Lucas realized too late what abominable device he had wrought. He had created a system that allowed to wipe the mind of a person, modifying it violently against their will or well-being, until only an empty shell of flesh remained. He had founded the basis of eternal enslavement coded into the brain engrams of the victims in such a way that they would not even be aware they were enslaved, or that their living situations were illegal, immoral or unjustifiable. The people whose minds would be re-written by the system would not even have enough 'soul' left in them to even want to change anymore.
He had brought into existence the accursed UNIMATRIX of the Borg from Star Trek.
By accident, the boy had brought into reality the worse piece of tech that could ever have been permitted to exist. Now, some small-minded, power-drunk maniac with absolutely nothing good to their name could use the cybernetic crucible to smelt souls like cheap minerals to mass-produce idiotic minions, or utterly loyal champions, at their will. If you coupled this technology with what the US Navy was rumored to have built in secrecy, the capacity to clone humans, then you had the basis of an unending army of docile, loyal slaves that would never challenge their master's desires, even if it meant letting the bastard beat, rape and murder their family and themselves.
Lucas had passed through a very rough patch of night terrors, waking hallucinations and moral tempest that lasted several days before he had recovered enough to set his new course of action. He had brought the machine and programs into this world, but he wasn't obliged to let them be used by anybody other than himself. Furthermore, if he put in place some discreet safeguards, he could insure he was the only person to ever be able to use the joint pieces to their full potential without incurring a spectacular backlash. So he programmed back-doors, put passwords and genetic locks, created artificial dependencies between several key parts that had to be assembled together for any of them to work at all, and much more.
But the best, most dependable safety he had built into the system was himself; the fully assembled neural interface would never do more than light up the consoles and perform like a glorified laptop unless HE was the user installed in the 'master user' position. By using the neural interface on his own mind, Lucas had preemptively embedded reliable, un-pirated archives of the BIOS, OS, and apps required to make the machinery work safely for himself. This would allow him to reboot, trouble-shoot and control the system from inside of the interface, regardless of whatever a crooked usurper could try to inflict upon him. He hid a phantom root-kit and several viruses in the BIOS chips on the server boards, the networking cards, the GDC connection cards, and in the smart sockets of the pipes & wires, so that he could hijack control of his machines from multiple points all at once without the crooked user knowing.
Once Lucas had made reasonably certain he was the only person capable of using the machinery to produce above 5% of its power and capacities, he began to build another layer of safety against having the interface used to reprogram his own mind as a soulless slave. He copied a psychic clone of himself into the system's main parts, hiding it in separate pieces across the BIOS, OS and neuroplexic viewing apps necessary to run the system for mind healing or psyche encoding. He had made the clone as complete and autonomous as he could with his limited capacities as he worked alone and, yes, had several clear limitations due to his youth and limited social interactions. The psychic clone's job was to ensure that Lucas was never harmed or reprogrammed while he was in the system, and to serve as a lifeguard in case he began to suffer from virtual reality addiction.
Luxis Wolenczak existed for real.
He wasn't just a figment of the child's hyperactive mind, contrary to what McGrath and his felonious technicians believed, when they saw the image of the second 13 year old appear in the holograms as they watched the simulations unfold. Luxis was also far more autonomous and capable of independent thought that anybody had ever imagined. While the virtual child made certain that his flesh brother was unharmed by the criminals, he had also come to the conclusion that they would kill Lucas the moment he was no longer usable in their plans. Furthermore, he understood that Lucas would be killed or worse, enslaved after his mind had been broken, when the men realized that he had made the machinery dependent upon his presence as wetware in the system for it to work at all. McGrath was an extremely prideful man, prone to fits of rage when his pettiness was challenged by people or situations. Making the man doubt the usefulness of his flesh sibling could only end badly, just like it would not go well if the general became aware that his device hid a cybernetic ghost that was also the living lock.
For both of their sake's, Luxis stayed silent unless Lucas was in a simulation, then he could act as a sort of mirror-phantom that represented the neuroplexic system inside its programming. Because humans had become used to avatars and artificial helpers in the last decade due to major OS providers pushing hard on products like 'Alexa' or 'Cortana', nobody questioned the fact that Lucas seemed to have programmed such a module inside his system. Even when they saw the teenager and ghost-boy interact, nobody thought it weird or dangerous because they were inured to this sort of thing by now. And that was how Luxis was able to help his sibling; he secretly controlled the life-support inside the immersion pod, regulated the strength of the current in the interface wires, pushed extra nutrients and air to keep the flesh boy healthy, and never allowed access to the deeper cognitive processes or personality of either of them. Plus, he also did his job as moral & social helper during the sims so that Lucas was never truly alone in whatever fake world the criminals invented. It was also the gentle, invisible push of Luxis that made Lucas always hire household help and surround himself with large groups of employees and machines during sims, to give his powerful mind enough raw materials to work and play with, so his mind didn't starve due to lack of stimulation or data.
Shielded by his cybernetic brother, Lucas was able to slowly adapt to the harsh, high-powered strain on his body and mind until he could finally reach a level of consciousness inside the simulated world, but without letting the people outside become aware of his autonomy. It had taken almost three full weeks for Lucas to finally fight off the machine's usurpation of his mind and soul, but just as he had predicted and planned for, the joint efforts of Luxis, the safeties and his own inner psychic strength had prevailed.
Lucas Wolenczak was awake again, even though his entire body read as still being under the full effects of the sedatives and psychotropic drugs inflicted upon him by McGrath's men. The truth was far different, from the cyberscape's perspective. Flint-blue eyes met matching gaze as the two teenagers began to ascertain their situation, plots and schemes being elaborated at the speed of electrons as they considered, calculated and rejected options. Then the paradigm of their captivity changed.
The bunker was being attacked by a massive force using heavy weapons such as only a national army could pay, build and deploy with any usefulness. The people in the lab started panicking, then explosions occurred, things shook and jarred, and then McGrath himself came into the viewing room next to the sterile theater where the neuroplexic system had been reassembled, after its theft. The general barely had time to ask a few questions before he started to open a secret door behind a filing cabinet. Surprising the elderly soldier and his mercenary medic, that very door was wrenched open with a demolition charge, stunning the felons and ushering in a flow of SEAL's along with the end of their captivity.
But Lucas was paranoid.
With good reason, as recent history showed.
So, he stayed quiet, seemingly comatose from the drugs and overworked mind, while Luxis remained invisible to the outsiders, as always. The new soldiers were unknown entities, with undetermined goals, and just because they wanted to get Lucas away from McGrath didn't mean that their own boss would be a more benevolent man, let alone more honest and lawful. No, Lucas was going to play this one safely, by faking his coma to the bitter end so he could see the lay of the land enough to comprehend just whom it was that had hijacked him now, and what their true desires were.
Nobody did anything for free in this world, and Lucas fully expected some sort of bill to pay for this rescue effort. If it was limited to money and services, he'd be a happy teenager. But with his luck, it wouldn't be that simple on his poor juvenile hide. No, this was gonna cost skin, blood and pieces of his soul, he could swear to it already.
The transfer from the underground bunker to the subsurface shuttles was a surprise for them, but not an unwelcome one. It meant they were being rescued by a very big outfit with a lot of material means since these boats had a very short autonomy. They had to have at least one mothership nearby, maybe a whole convoy. So, in terms of support and resources at least, this could be an upgrade. Time would tell.
As the shuttles were sailed through the artificial harbor of Fort Dempsey, Lucas and Luxis worked together to finally activate the system's outside network linkups, giving them access to the Internex and, most importantly, the local networks of the shuttles and their carrier ships. This informed Lucas of who had come to liberate him, who they worked for, what means they had brought, and what boat he was being transferred to, until he was extracted from his pod so he could be sent to a regular hospital afterwards.
While the different pieces of the neuroplexic servers and immersive interface pod were being rolled around the SeaQuest's long corridors, the two brothers were hard at work penetrating the ship's multiple cybernetic weak spots, creating false user ID's and building permanent back-doors through the firewalls and client management apps that ran the boat's crew, inventory and major functions. By the time the hapless doctors had positioned the pod on sea-deck to start reassembling the whole system to get a read on what exactly they were dealing with, Lucas had already begun to feed false data and sensor imagery to their equipments without anybody knowing it. The crewmen of SeaQuest were spoofed so hard it was actually funny for the two siblings, especially when Lucas began to install his root-kit and control viruses into the BIOS and OS kernel of the giant server complex. When that job was done, they would virulate the different modules that compose the OS, followed by each app or specialty program, until each and every piece of software and tech aboard acknowledged only Lucas or Luxis as its master.
Madelyn Stark might have been experiencing dark desires and lucid dreams of Power as she saw the boy roll by her, but it was already too late. As she wasted time imagining what could be, all her plots were being undone from within before she even got a chance to say aloud what she wanted to see happen to the world. She wouldn't be the only one to experience such drastic reality-shock in the coming weeks, just one of many. After all, McGrath and his techies had all suffered it already.
Taken for a ride
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 15:57pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 12:57am (noon)
SeaQuest DSV
Pensacola, Florida, USA
The two MR-4 subsurface shuttles from SeaQuest followed the floor of the artificial harbor, moving slowly along the smooth sediment covered rock bowl, trying to avoid the wreckage piles from the weapons emplacements that their mothership had destroyed two hours ago. The MR-4 were the third full-production iteration of the submersible shuttlecraft and it showed; boxy circular prisms that looked more like railway tanker wagons with skates than self-propelled boats. While quick in a straight line, asking these small boats to maneuver through a slalom was never going to be a good idea. Unfortunately for the crews and passengers, that was exactly the sailing conditions around them presently. If it wasn't the flaming debris from intercepted missiles and drones dropping from the air to sink down to the sea floor, then it was the massive sonic and vibrational waves emitted from the humongous warship parked right in the middle of the harbor.
Note; Crichton-class cuirassés don't do peaceful or quiet, ever.
Avoiding yet another accidental deviation of their navigational arrays due to the 12 inch railguns blasting another salvo that shook their compasses and gyroscopes badly, the pilots managed to finally reach the underwater docking tunnels. A few minutes of fighting the churning waters saw the shuttles hard-locked to the airlocks and cycling their side-doors open to admit the waiting SEAL team with their heavy cargo.
The crewmen of shuttle C were feeling like they were living in a bad sci-fi flick when they saw the guys with lab-coats push in a large horizontal cylinder of blue fluid with a teenaged boy floating inside, connected to the machinery by pipes and wires. That entire setup looked unnatural to the untrained eyes of the poor sailors who had never seen or heard about things like it before. Moving quickly, the SEAL team split its living and technological cargo between the two shuttles in haste, pushing harshly at the turncoat scientists so they could leave the fighting zone before they were sabotaged or targeted by heavy weapons.
The boarding process took less than ten minutes, and the return to SeaQuest took nearly twenty because somebody had managed to power-up one of Fort Dempsey's officially built missile launchers to shoot at the blockade ships. Several ship-killing missiles were streaking over the mouth of the harbor, getting shot down by strafing passes from the beam CIWS mounted on the 'Shepherd' and 'Jiu-Jitsu' before they could get closer than 1,000 yards. However, that meant a series of constant shockwaves from the detonating warheads pulsing through the water, as well as flaming debris and unspent fuel falling through the blue realm on its way to the silt floor. Shaken worse than in the first trip, the pilots had to fight against their unstable, badly constructed piloting systems to keep their boats on a straight path towards their goal.
After a hair-raising crawl through the turbulent harbor and its inlet, the two shuttles made it to the ship and called in their confirmation codes. In response, the huge submarine opened a pair of large circular doors that moved outwards like the petals of a flower, granting the small boats access to their berths inside the metallic hulk. Given their precious cargo was not two-legged, the crews had to wait until the two parking silos were purged of water to open the side-doors for disembarkation to happen.
As the shuttle pilots raised their flank hatches to let the people out, sailors wearing body armor and assault rifles lined up to move the traitor scientists aside for debrief whilst their own personnel took over moving and securing the rescued victim and his tech. Soon enough, the cylinder filled with glowing blue liquid passed from the shuttle to the ship proper, rolling smoothly along the decking grates as if nothing unusual was going on. Captain Madelyn Stark and lieutenant-commander Jonathan Ford were standing silently in the corridor, watching over the proceedings when the ship's doctors rolled away the eerie glowing tube with the sleeping child inside. Ford felt a shiver of dread crawl down his spine at the sight of the unconscious boy, while Stark gazed on with a cold, pensive look etched into her features.
Neither knew what exactly had just come aboard, but both knew it probably wasn't what the admiral and UEO thought they were getting. If they could have peered into cyberspace, they would have seen just how right they were, and just how thoroughly screwed they already were. Lucas and Luxis had not wasted any time in worming their way through every system or device with an open port to install their private root-kit and control viruses, effectively hijacking command of the ship from inside its brain. Nothing nefarious would happen from this, not unless these people thought they could harm either boy and get away with it. If the UEO and US Navy thought they could intimidate, injure or enslave Lucas without retaliation, then they would be advised against doing so in a painful, public manner.
The ship's doctors and scientists had to rely on Euphemia Durand's pictures, schematics and work notes to set up the neuroplexic array properly. There were multiple wheeled caissons to place, and all of it had to be wired together by proprietary tubes of fluid and armored wires, all of them with smart connectors built into each plug & socket, no matter what the link was actually used for. Even the pipes for cold & hot water were smart-plugged, necessitating the ship's plumbers to affix adapters to the faucets of the work stations from which the boat's waterlines would be tapped. Electrical sockets had to be switched out for custom designed models that had breakers, fuses, sensors and kill-switch built-in. And then they had to take out a deck grate to access the sewage line, to set up the outflow tube with a combination grinder & smart valve at the end that was locked onto the sewer pipe's existing plughole.
Besides all the heavy craftsmanship going on to prepare the sea-deck, the mobile caissons themselves were not the easiest things to move around. Long, wide and heavy like the type of rolling tool chests that you could find in a garage or mechanic shop, these things needed two men apiece to move safely. Then there were a few that were near six feet tall, all built in a single hull so the sailors had to make certain the hatch frames could permit passage before choosing where to roll them. Once all the pieces were on deck, they had to wait for the ship's tradesmen to finish changing the connections and plumbing before proceeding with the assembly. The only boon to their situation was that the ship was moving slowly out of the town's waterways, heading for the Gulf of Mexico and eventually New Cape Quest. As soon as they had been able to confirm they had received their package alive with his tech, admiral Noyce had ordered them to retreat from the fight and haul ass to the UEO's partially built capital, to keep the kid and his scientific booty safely out of enemy reach. Noyce would be joining them directly at New Cape Quest without layovers, just as soon as the SEAL's confirmed that the fort and bastion had been truly emptied out of traitors.
As the huge blue-gray whale made its way towards more comfortable oceanic depths, nobody suspected just how deep into the networks of the ship, its convoy, and the UEO fleet beyond, Lucas had already dug. Him and Luxis were busy making themselves several nice little nests in cyberspace, in case some idiot zealot decided to kill him or wipe his mind down to blank, out of foolish loyalty to whatever plan general McGrath had converted people. That, plus the fact there were enough religious nutcases serving in the US navy, and therefore passed along to the UEO on TAD agreements, that both brothers felt it wise to prepare some virtual bunkers and escape pods for their souls, just in case. Not that it really mattered, since these other networks were so completely not conceived for bio-neural impulses to travel them that it felt like wading through cold, turgid molasses. In fact, several parts of the SeaQuest network were so damn slow that Lucas felt he was trying to possess an old fashion accountant's calculator with a hand-crank and paper roll! Talk about slow-motion sickness, for a change! Those were not pleasant experiences, not for a mind as accurate, fast and powerful as him.
{ SQ } - { Out of darkness, into the Fire } - { SQ }
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; 17:21pm
Western America; 14:21pm
In its first hour of travel, the warship had managed to cruise up to 100k/h, or 50 knots, which was nearly twice the speed of any other submarine currently serving the navies of the world. The sad truth was that this was only half its potential full speed which reached 200k/h, or 100 knots, almost indefinitely given they were powered by the only stable cold fusion reactor to be built to date. The reason the boat was going that slowly was because admiral Noyce had ordered them to never be farther away than 25 kilometers from the national shores, to be in easy helicopter range for rescue or combat support, just in case McGrath had supporters in the few military bases located along their route. Because that put the ship directly in the most heavily sailed blue waters of the Gulf, yet not particularly deep zones either, they had to slow down for fear of hitting something like a cruise line ship or fishing nets dragged by trawlers.
The departure from the combat zone had allowed the crew to settle down from general quarters, and the bridge officers to cycle through with their replacements so they could start the piles of after-action reports the UEO would be demanding. Also, several sailors were aboard on 'Temporary Assigned Duty' agreements, being loaned by their home countries for short periods, usually a full tour, before going back to their normal outfit. These poor bastards thusly had twice the paperwork and reports to write as those hired directly by the UEO fleet. And as their luck would have it, neither the UEO nor the individual nations used the same forms or templates to produce reports, so everything truly had to be done twice all the way through, no matter how boring or useless it was.
That was one of the very big, important, differences from the old UN system which could not field soldiers who were not vetted, hired, trained, and in active service of a member nation, to avoid the organization from developing a sense of power and dominion. Pretty much like what the UEO was doing, with building itself a capital city, establishing its own currency, taxing the international connections of the Internex, and openly favoring its own hirelings for all bureaucratic or military postings, unless one of the big countries that were members decided to put some weight behind a certain person for a certain job.
That was the most jarring discrepancy for Lucas; the UEO replaced the UN in 2003.
He knew this, dammit all! He was born in December 2004, he had lived this!
But he had been made to suffer 'realitive disphasia' due to the damned sims.
Because McGrath's men had treated him like a bloody hard drive or flash chip, many of his memories and education had been rewritten or deleted to make him forcibly follow whatever simulation or work batch was in progress, even when it was something he had no training or affinity for. That meant that a lot of modern history, current events, laws, civics, politics, religious history and geography he had made efforts to learn to be able to run his life and businesses autonomously had been dampened, changed or removed entirely. Just like an obsolete database that got updated or pruned of useless files. The mongrels had butchered his mind until it looked like a diseased gangrenous sponge, without a care for his recovery or sanity as they were told he would never be allowed to leave the hidden Bastion alive.
If it weren't for his paranoid habits and preparing a psychotronic clone, he would be dead. What's worse, if he somehow got released or liberated from the pod, he should have been reduced to a pile of comatose mold instead of just an ordinary, sleeping human boy. The depth of evil these people had done to him, and the sheer impossibility of how he had managed to survive and stay sane despite all odds, created both a deep-seated feeling of haunting anguish while also lighting a coruscating flame of rage in his heart and mind.
McGrath and his servants would suffer!
The fool had insisted on programming Lucas with several PhD's worth of history, sociology, politics, economics, tactics, strategy and national/military logistics to run the sims, but that meant they had also accidentally taught him about violence, torture, depravity, espionage, guerilla, national warfare and genocide on a level no human being had ever experienced before. Because of his psychic clone and self-update routines buried deeply in his subconscious, Lucas had been able to absorb and keep safely all the raw data, technical manuals and course books that the felonious scientists had downloaded to his brain. Without realizing the danger of their actions, the minions had compiled and activated the biggest, baddest, and most capable military manager & war-leader ever seen to date in humanity's epoch.
McGrath and his ilk wanted a Thann, an anointed Teutonic warrior-king that would wage a crusade of the white christian cross upon the masses, but using modern tools & concepts, despite that the goals were the same as any tyrant had wanted since the dawn of Antiquity. Well, the little morons had actually managed to produce exactly what they thought; they just didn't have any control over him. Lucas now had the industrial, social, political, combat & warfare instincts of Hitler, Speer, Goring, Kesselring, Himmler, Doenitz, Goebbels, Eicke, Guderian, Rommel, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Churchill, Mountbatten, Montgommery, De Gaulle, Simonds, Patton, Bradley, MacArthur, Marshall, Nimitz, and Eisenhower, all stuffed inside his noggin' and working in parallel, in a streamlined efficient manner that was so scary to behold it was downright awesome. Like the threads in a loom, all the strings went in straight lines that were crossed by connective strings that were Lucas' original personality, mindset, cognitive processes and memories, weaving together a majestic tapestry that nobody except Luxis would ever see and understand.
The foul criminal, general McGrath, had wanted to program the boy's mind into some sort of super battle-computer that could analyze a societal mess and predict solutions on all aspects of the playing field to guarantee victory. The stupid idiot did indeed get that, and then some!
If anything in this world had ever come close to the dreaded 'Aryan Ubermensch', the Race-Champion of Holy War, birthed from the Nazi's delirious sectarian bigotry, it was Lucas Wolenczak after he had been mind-raped and rebuilt by his own machinery.
Except that, as previously stated, everybody had lost any & all control over the kid.
So now Lucas had a few problems to deal with inside of his head, most notably what to do with all that aggressivity and drive to do battle with everything in reach of his multiple means and skills. Then he had to decide what kind of job & life he wanted to live, since he was now sooo much more than just a souped-up pharmacist, psychiatrist & neurologist. All that hard technology and corporatist mindset had to be good for something, yes? Especially since most of it was related quite germanely to his medical devices and new medications he had been developing at Stanford. Making a prosperous and profitable company to keep him alive, in relative comfort, had always been the basic goal, so why change or reject that aspect of his mind just because it had been increased or sharpened a bit? And self-defense or combat skills were always good to have on hand, given how young boys from rich families are at risk of kidnapping for ransom, or depravities and killing.
Lucas had many situations swirling around his mind as he contemplated the ship he was in, and the state of his body, mind and soul, plus Luxis who was now alive and autonomous full-time. What admiral Noyce wanted out of this was summarily punted to the back-end of the job list, to be addressed when he actually met the man face-to-tube... Or something of the sorts...
Thinking about all the mental repairs and resetting he had to process, Lucas used his secret back-door into the machine's BIOS and OS to lock the immersion cylinder so he couldn't be awakened or removed without his prior consent. That would allow him to work on his damaged fore-mind while consolidating all the data agglomerated by the various databases, simulations, apps and processes that McGrath had his people install in him. Some would be immediately useful, others would be good for the long-haul, and a few would serve in the later part of his life, after retirement. All in all, given his truly miraculous capacity to repair his physical body and rewrite his brain engrams himself, the young boy was pretty much garnering a net profit from this whole sordid debacle. Certainly not what McGrath and his church backers had in mind when they authorized their illegal little pet project to happen.
Snorting mentally, Lucas could only glare virtually at the foolish navy techs who were milling around his pod, trying to read the assembly schematics and connection protocols to get the whole kit back into one functioning apparatus. Sighing to himself in disdain, and ignoring the snickers from the virtual boy besides him, Lucas admitted defeat and used the LCD displays on the cylinder to signal the incompetent blue-shirts that he was now semi-awake mentally, if not physically due to the neural interface and drugs used to keep him calm while in fluid sustention.
A few screams of surprise (and disbelief) later and the teenager was confronted with the lead-bitch herself; Euphemia Durand. Scowling in tandem, Lucas and Luxis gazed at the woman who had presided over the enactment of McGrath's fell commands upon their persons. This was one woman that would be getting a nightly visit from a contractor to settle her outstanding accounts. She owed pain, shame and blood to the Wolenczak boys for kidnapping, enslavement, mental mutilations, mind-rape and many other things that demanded a truly medieval response. She would get that, in due time, and in a manner that nobody with a badge or elected office could link back to their hands or money.
Forgoing all forms of politeness or social graces, Lucas flashed on-screen a set of simplified orders to guide the idiots for a quicker, orderly assembly of the entire neuroplexic server system. While the pod itself was good enough to do some introspective work, trying to affect the wider world outside of him was a back-breaking chore because of how slow and badly maintained the ship's network segments were. The only way to palliate this was to use the psychotronic processors and cables to link-up with the boat's massive server complex directly, despite the fundamental compatibility issues that would arise upon activating the management console and ECB caissons.
Blergh! "Slow-mo net... Oh, woe is me! Wet concrete curing in a rainy Autumn night is faster than this bastard spawn of a snail's sleep cycle!" nastily muttered Lucas to the blue-silver ether he was floating in. He tried again to transfer building instructions directly to the tablets and consoles of the tradesmen working on sea-deck to assemble his temporary home, but the bandwidth available and download speeds were execrable. Even the hard-wired stations were pitifully slow compared to what he used in Stanford's labs, forget about comparing it with his proprietary neuroplexic cables!
A movement attracted the attention of the two siblings, as they could see the outside world through the sensors and cameras mounted in all angles of all the caissons and pieces of the system being rebuilt. Two people had just walked unto sea-deck, and Lucas remembered them vaguely since he had not interacted with them directly during the sims. Madelyn Stark and Jonathan Ford, the captain and Ex-O.
Doctor Durand approached the two officers with caution, well aware of the armed guards that lined the perimeter of the sea-deck, and that whatever report the sailors wrote to Noyce would greatly impact her future living conditions. If she wanted to stay free and profitably employed, she had to start by satisfying these two, and hopefully get some kudos from their boss in the process.
"Good day to you. I am Euphemia Lisbeth Durand, biologist, biochemist, geneticist and evolutionist, in the employ of the US Naval Intelligence, division of Future Warfare Commandment, department of Human Asset Enhancements. I was, until recently, the project manager for the Wolenczak psychotronic array, namely its recovery, analysis and slaving it to general McGrath's other projects. How may I assist you?"
Captain Stark glared idly at the self-important, bespectacled woman as if she were a particularly unsavory specimen of sea-foam scum that had just washed over the moonpool's edge to splash onto her shining black leather boots. Making a face of distaste, the senior officer declared tartly "I have heard that the boy had awakened already, and that he was -somehow- communicating with the scientists and tradesmen. Apparently, he's taken to guiding them in the reassembly of the array? How is that possible, since he seems as vegetative as when he boarded, an hour ago?"
Doctor Durand, was well experienced in dealing with soldiers who communicated through violence and pain rather than civilized methods, so she could easily read the anger, contempt and dark desires for Power that wafted off Stark like a gray mist. The woman was practically wreathed in palpable envy soiled with a nasty streak of barely controlled, gut-roiling rage. Keeping her own emotions under a tight leash, Euphemia made a drab, harmless facial expression common to all servile bureaucrats the world over before she explained the situation for the armed barbarians.
"Well, captain, the boy can communicate with us because the immersion pod is fully autonomous in its own right; it has power, CPU, life-support systems and networking capacities, plus a suite of sensors and loudspeakers for directly interacting with personnel around the array. The machine was designed and built this way from the start. Lucas Wolenczak had apparently intended for the patients who used the device to be awake and lucid as often as possible, when entering the neural interface. He did predict that several would in fact be too violent or mentally unstable to be left unsedated, and the machine is designed to account for that process as well. In any case, the psychotropics we administered at the beginning of the day have worn off naturally through metabolic action; we just didn't renew them as the bastion was under attack at the time. We thought the surgical sedative would hold him asleep for transport, but it looks as if it never took hold properly. Hummm... Strange..."
Clucking her tongue in exasperation, Stark moved to stand besides the horizontal cylinder full of bluish liquid, to knock on one of the thick glass panels with her knuckles, as if she were knocking at the door of a neighbor's house. She blinked twice in surprise when her own knock was repeated back at her through the speakers of the pod and those mounted to the deck's walls in-synch, while the blue fluid itself seemed to pulse matching vibrations. Looking at Durand, she asked "Is this normal?"
Shaking her head, the woman doctor replied "I have no idea. You have to understand the methodology that was imposed upon us by general McGrath, and the threats made against our families to insure we did not deviate or question him. The child was kidnapped with his equipment, from his private rental laboratory on the Stanford campus, barely two days after the project bureau was assembled in Fort Dempsey to receive him. We had no preparation to speak of, almost no documentation or schematics to work from, and the boy was never allowed to awaken in our presence. He arrived already sedated to the point of chemically induced coma, and was put in the pod as soon as we could light-up the power. The general didn't want any of us to speak with him, let alone see him as a person or develop any sort of rapport with him. He was 'wetware' or 'work product', never a person. Because of this, we never had a chance to ask the necessary questions to understand the machine's functions or limits."
Ford asked, quite aghast by what he heard to date; "Are you saying you just chucked him in without a clue as to what would happen? How the fuck is that logical? How could anybody expect reliable data or results from doing that?"
Shrugging in powerless resignation, Durand answered him softly "General McGrath ordered it and held us at gun-point until the boy was in the sustention fluid with the pipes and wires in place. After that, he wanted several classified databases to be processed, and the historical and tactical sims run 24/7. We had no choice, and he DID NOT want to hear any opinion contrary to his stated goals & means, and even less about doubts towards his religiously derived world-view paradigm. The man was a bigoted, small-minded, myopic mule who could only think in terms of violence, raw power and domination of bodies, minds and souls. He had no care for humanity as a whole, or individuals either. I saw him kill more than 30 different scientists with my own eyes, in the years I was made to serve his department. And I know he ordered the secret murders of over 400 others, almost all American citizens, who had tried to resist his criminal projects and methods."
Nodding, Ford whispered harshly "That would do it, all right."
Madelyn Stark was unimpressed, and, in truth, didn't care for others, especially if they were already dead or beyond her capacity to control and exploit. In her mind, McGrath had the correct way of things, and she had no blames for him, other than the fact he was so foolish as to leave a trail of malcontents behind him instead of keeping his house clean and ordered. She would not make such amateurish mistakes if she were allowed to wield the same authority and tools as the general once had. Thankfully, her career was on the right path towards that goal, and the UEO's executive cabinet leaned far more to the right of the political spectrum than the member confederations thought. The current secretary general, Andrea Dre, was nobody's pawn and her schemes were many-layered puzzles into which the female captain thought she could see a good, exalted place for herself. Her military experience and larger skill-set would certainly be valued, in due time.
A pair of technicians wearing white lab coats and badges from Jepsen Bastion approached the pod while pushing forward a chest-high metal podium that rolled on fully hidden casters. The dodecagonal hull was a smooth drab gray that reminded of battleship paint, with odd blue lines inlaid in the metal to form strange characters and icons that glowed softly. The two techs explained that this was one of a pair of devices that were supposed to be connected directly to the immersion cylinder, with a long flat caisson between them. The other two pieces that would be set after this one were just to the side of the three important people, waiting for them to move away a bit to clear some space to work.
Aggravated but not showing it as much as usual, Stark allowed Duran to move herself and Ford back to the closest permanent workstation still in place to watch the assembly from close by. The two techs were reading from paper printouts as they used screwdrivers to unlock and open maintenance panels on the base of the interface pod, revealing a complex faceplate with many sockets, LED's, buttons and switches that regulated God-knows-what inside the unnatural device. Surprising everybody, a young, reedy voice emanated from the speakers hidden around the pod's frame, giving the poor techs a fright and making both sailors glare at it in anger.
"Oi! Twit #2! You have to deploy and gyro-stabilize the projector before it will open the maintenance panels to connect the cables and tubes. It's written plainly on the bloody sheet! Are you really this dumb that you can't follow what amounts to a glorified Lego kit instruction? I made this blueprint so easy to read that a primary school kid could use it safely, and you're telling me that a 29 year old with a doctorate isn't bright enough, or useful enough, to read it himself without being held by the hand? What the ever loving fucks, people?! Durand, you cretinous ass! Where in tarnation did you find this reject from a compost heap? Some online for-profit college that lets you print the diploma after 30 minutes of questions he answered from the crib sheet without thinking? Gormless morons, the lot of you's!"
Jonathan Ford snarked good and hard "Welp, if that's his usual attitude, I can understand why McGrath wanted him sedated 24/7. I would too!"
Smirking in dark amusement at the obvious queasiness Euphemia Durand suffered upon hearing the clear, lucid and coherent child tongue-lashing her minions, Madelyn Stark privately agreed with both males. Lucas Wolenczak was right that the pair of techs most certainly hadn't been hired for their skills or competency, but rather for their blind loyalty and absolute lack of empathy towards whatever victim McGrath would have them vivisect for his benefits. Conversely, she agreed with her Ex-O that the kid's voice, which still hadn't finished changing tone given he wasn't completely passed puberty yet, would get on her nerves after mere minutes. His snappish attitude and contempt for the minions matched her own view of the situation, but it was her ship, her command, and she allowed nobody but herself to berate idiots publicly, unless an admiral or general was on deck to do it. Yeah, the kid was gonna be a pain in her ass right the moment he was fully verbal, and she could only thank her job that she'd have the rank to order some low-paid fool to handle him in her stead. Now, who was it that had irked her this passed week, and hadn't yet felt her displeasure? Hummm...
"You're supposed to plug that wire in the BLUE socket, you nitwit! The plugs and sockets are color coded to make assembly easy and error-free! How can you BOTCH plugging the fucking wires, you ill-aborted procreate of an unwashed test-tube! Get y'ar mitts off my hardware before you accidentally dumb-down the system by your sheer lack of human wits! Ghaaarrr! I wouldn't boil you down for axle grease, for fear that your mental slowness would pass through and act as a damned brake on whatever machine you'd get put in!"
Rubbing a hand over his bald head, commander Ford opined blithely "I can't stand his voice, but I have to admit he's got a few good points about that dumb-ass. And his choice of comparatives just might have some truth to them, if the tech's reactions are an indicative of mental capacity."
Stark's only reaction was to gaze indolently at the female biologist who was now mortified beyond description as her subordinates were becoming more of a nuisance than assistance in the process to reassemble the neuroplexic array. Huffing herself up like a stressed chicken, she strutted imperiously to the mess the two techs were trying desperately to set to rights, hoping against all hopes that it wasn't as bad as the child made it sound. If it was, she just might shoot the two useless cads herself, to spare the US Navy the trouble of public trials and executions.
"Oh, joy of joys!" snarked the teenager from inside his chemical sleep, his emulated voice echoing through the cavernous sea-deck, the reedy tones grating on the nerves of everybody present, "The womanly fore-minion has joined us! Harken and rejoice, knaves, for the mistress of the obvious hath arrived upon thee! Now we'll have three idiots to screw things up instead of just two. More waste of time, more lack of understanding, and much, much more dicking around uselessly! What a blessed day I'm having! It's without compare!"
Ford dropped his head, eyes closed as he shook his head sideways in powerless denial of just how badly things were devolving aboard ship whilst the captain merely clasped her hands behind her back as she turned on her heels to walk away from the hot mess. In her opinion, if Noyce wanted the brat that much, he could keep him without contest. He could keep Durand and her team too, while he was at it. Stark would not waste space, air and food on these imbeciles if she could avoid it. And she would not let it happen unless somebody could prove beyond doubts that this boy was more than a verbose pain in society's ass. Such proof having a monetary mount, number of units produced, and a clear explanation of the tactical value of said units deployed. If he could not design & make something to help the UEO fleet win its fights, then he was no use to her and her world; civil society could keep him and she wouldn't complain about his absence.
Old war hog 'a fighting
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 18:07pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 15:07pm
Fort Dempsey - US Navy, classified R&D facility
Pensacola, Florida, USA
Admiral William Noyce glared at the wreckage of what had been Fort Dempsey through the old analog binoculars he held in front of his face, peering through the debris to see if he could spot enemies or looters to shoot at some more. Next to them, the massive, lumbering shape of the 1,300 foot long Jiu-Jitsu was being supplied in situ by a pair of small tender boats, the warship having gone through nearly half of all its munitions reserves during the engagement. Noyce could never have guessed that it would take over two hundred 12" shells to reduce the bloody compound, but there you have it. And nobody but the quartermasters were counting the 3" and 5" shells that had been spent on CIWS duty or blasting smaller targets.
A loud beep sounded from the main chair where the captain of the Shepherd took up the wired handset to answer the page. The man's face took on a somber mien as he listened to the person on the other end, then snarled something nasty and short, slamming the phone down hard.
"Admiral, sir!" the captain called out, terse and short.
Letting the binoculars hang from the neck strap, William walked the two paces to reach the chair, hands resting on his ample paunch as he waited to be briefed on whatever new calamity had just befallen them now.
Blowing a discontent sigh out of his nose, the captain explained "That was Washington DC. Your request to have DXS send over technical staffers at NCQ to help get doctor Wolenczak out of his tube has been denied. They said that NSA or USSS would be able to do it, the moment you or Andrea Dre sign the papers to authorize those agencies to have legal status inside NCQ territory."
Snorting in dark amusement, Noyce replied "We didn't see that one coming, did we? The moment we have an emergency, the Trumptards try to pass a little piece of shyte right in the open wound. Well, no, we won't be giving them those damned permissions. We need competent people, or we'll manage all on our own. Besides, the UEO's technician sailors are at the same level as the NSA or USSS techs. It won't be a step down or detrimental to the job, just slower."
The comms officer at the rear left of the bridge called out "Admiral, sir! Incoming message from the SeaQuest! It's from an 'Agent Hams', tagged from 17:58pm, eastern clock."
Noyce passed around the captain to go read the classified message on the console. Upon seeing the few characters that composed the short message, the admiral emitted a malevolent laugh that made the crew look at him askance. Walking back to the captain, he thumped the backrest of the chair with a closed fist, greatly satisfied with the situation.
"We can forget about Washington's crapulence for the moment. It appears that Lucas Wolenczak is fully cognizant and helping the SQ techs with finalizing his awakening procedure. He's in the process of having the neuroplexic array assembled for service as we speak."
Gloatingly, Noyce bellowed "Have me a launch ready to depart! I'll be going over to the warship to look into our traitorous cur, McGrath! I want me some answers! And it's damn time the bastard be made to suffer for his crimes!"
Turning to his right, the captain ordered "Ops! Get the stern ramp down and have the hovercraft ready to ferry the admiral's party to the Jiu-Jitsu! Comms! Call the battleship to warn them!"
{ SQ } - { Floating swine } - { SQ }
Noyce walked off the cramped bridge of the small littoral fighter to go fetch his briefcase and duffel bag from the miniature cabin he had been attributed for the mission. At 300 foot long, the Shepherd had no luxuries whatsoever, not even for VIP or Diplomatic passengers. The pit-stop was as quick as in-&-out because Bill was paranoid when going into enemy territory; his two bags had already been packed and locked, ready to grab on the go if the ship was hit badly enough to warrant evacuation.
As he left his cabin, Noyce collected the UEO military police officer and Section-7 agent he had brought with him as escorts -slash- aide-de-camp in case he needed to ferry classified messages around the boat, or the ruins of Fort Dempsey. The two young men already had their bags on their shoulder, due to the admiral using the PAL system to warn them from the bridge. The three males marched at double-step to the boat's stern, quickly passing the watertight bulkheads and climbing right into the newly minted HB-D 300-c (Hover Barge – Diving 300' depth – civilian) and took a seat in the clearly utilitarian craft.
The size of a Ford Econoline minibus, the HB-D 300-c was part of a brand new lineup of dedicated amphibious machines like the MR-# class shuttles, meant to facilitate the transfer of peoples and materials between shorelines, ships and subsurface colonies. The old way of using DSV capsules or bathyspheres simply didn't cut it anymore, especially when a national navy had maybe three such devices on hand for the entire planet. The diverse universities and contractors got together to rapidly create some new submersible tech which led to the development of the MR-#, HB-D and Zundweil ferry. Likewise, these programs were grabbed by the UEO to guide the building plans for their new lineage of surface and submerged assets, like the Crichton warships.
Being some 24' long by 8' wide and 9' tall, the HB-D 300-c was a pretty basic and ugly thing to look at, but it did the job on request. The vehicle was powered by an electro-plasmatic reactor and moved by four blocks of three impelling turbines for levitation, plus four horizontal guide blowers. The craft was boarded by four on-ramps located in the front, one on each side, and one at the back, plus a cargo hatch that opened half the length of the roof. The vehicle was a 'civilian' version, therefore bereft of any weapons or defensive systems. The constructors had planned a 'military' version for next year, that would include pulse pistol sized CIWS turrets along the roof line's edge, and a pair of pulse rifles set in a fixed barbette just above the front boarding ramp. This would never be anything else than a glorified battlefield taxi, but since it could float at 60 feet in the air over any type of terrain or water conditions and also dive down to a human's maximum unassisted depth of 300 feet, it was still pretty good.
While the non-existing internal comforts of the HB-D was nothing to envy, it did have two things going for it; a powerful air conditioning unit that kept thing cool all day, and a small wet bath stall at the rear of the habitat. Given the 2,000 Km autonomy on each fuel canister, having a toilet had been seen as a vital necessity for a boat that could cross the Great Lakes of North America and come back without layover. That was something the people who built C-130 Hercules airplanes still hadn't grasped, likewise for the morons who made most of the Navy's boats under the 150 foot hull caliber.
Promptly, the shuttle lifted off the well deck and backed out of the boat's wet hangar, doing half the distance to the Jiu-Jitsu in reverse without any efforts, then pivoting on its central vertical axis to aim its bow towards the opening cargo ramp at the rear of the massive warship, revealing their own huge well deck and the two amphibious APC's that were being resupplied after bringing in wounded marines from the still going-on fight inside the Jepsen Bastion. Thankfully, the wet hangar aboard the large ship had been designed to take four APC's at the same time, plus another two atop the ramp if necessary. This allowed the pilot to bring his shuttle into the sheltered deck to land and open the ramp for his VIP to disembark directly on the raised, central pier that separated the two landing tanks and permitted people to stay dry as they climbed out of ferries or launches.
As Noyce hauled his person and bags out of the shuttle's front ramp, he was greeted by the well deck's supervisor, a senior lieutenant with engineering specialties indicated by the pins on his shirt collar, still visible above the upper rim of the flak jacket he wore. Without any wait, the shuttle closed up and backed out of the warship, letting them close the well deck again as it went back to the Shepherd.
"Get my bags to the stateroom, I want to speak with the captain before anything else." Noyce ordered as he handed his bags to the MP officer. Smirking at the sailors, Noyce quipped "Well, I guess I just have to go up to find the smarmy son of a bitch, don't I?"
Snorting in amusement, the lieutenant replied "Yes sir, your cousin is in the top of the structure. Right on the bridge, sir. I'm sure you can find it, sir. It is the last inhabited level in the tower, sir." The sailor said with a big bratty smirk on his face as he pointed the admiral at the stairs just outside the deck.
Snarking back, Noyce replied "Well, from the attitude of the folks aboard, you can tell it's my fool cousin who's in charge of the tub! Nowhere else would I be just sent out in the wilds like that! The sheer lack of decorum and protocol boggles the mind, I tell you!"
Amused, the lieutenant retorted "Oh, yeah? Cuz the way the captain says it, you're the one that's got the deficient manners and graceless disposition of a rutting hog! And I don't see no nut'tin that says differently!"
Laughing aloud, Noyce patted the sailor's shoulder as he passed by, already thinking about what punishments he could heap on his cousin for speaking 'out of the family'. That was a privilege that William reserved for himself or Janet, not for the minions in the cadet branches, especially not the simpleton cousins from Janet's side of the bed. Bill climbed the stairs two at a time, surprising the few sailors who saw him since nobody thought the elderly admiral could still be so spry with his body shape and desk-bound job.
Arriving at the bridge level, Noyce showed his badge to the pair of MP's at the door then slid the card in the reader to validate his ID before the armored bulkhead retracted to allow passage. He walked into the glass walled room imperiously, bellowing louder than everything on deck: "Varmint! I be wantin' my report, now ya'll!"
Snorting aloud, Vernon Flegmard DuCoteaux, Janet Noyce's cousin-in-law by having married her female cousin some thirty years back, was mostly amused as the older, and much nastier, male strutted around the bridge like one of his hogs at mating season. Except Vernon wan'nt no sow, and he wasn't interested in the old boy that way. Although, Billy did have a mighty fine figure in that beige uniform for a man his age. He looked just as swell as if he were in his casket at his own funeral... Eh eh eh!
"William Allard Boyd Noyce! You mannerless coon-spawned cad! How dare you bellow at my crew on my own deck? I'll be having words with Janet about your lack of 'savoir vivre'! She'll see to you, just you wait for it, boy! The captain shouted back in a thick Louisiana accent that confirmed his creole and cajun roots in the bayous. "Now git ya'r fat hams here so I can school you on surface warfare, you idjiot child!"
Noyce huffed in mirth as he parked his ample girth next to the command chair, plentily amused by the other man calling him 'boy' since he was a full decade older, and while not university diplomas, his US Navy brevets and professional certificates certainly showed as much education as the cousin had. While the ship's master may have Oxford and Cambridge sheepskins hung on his wall, from the real places in England to boot, them thingies weren't really that much better than navy courses for the same things. Whether civilian or military, administration, accounting and management classes were all pretty similar, except the teachers wore fatigues and could get you court-martialed for insubordination if you disturbed the group or failed like an inbred mule.
"Now, now, Vernon, don't get yourself an ulcer at your age! You wouldn't recover and I would be the one blamed for your leaving the service."
Shaking his head in denial, the captain retorted with toxic sarcasm "You lying bald rug! The only thing you care about my good health is that it's still good, and none of ya'r vitriol affected me yet!" Then, wagging an accusatory finger at his cousin, he affirmed "The only regret you'd have about me quitting is that you wouldn't be the one to force me out!"
Shrugging that off, the admiral countered with bonhommie "Is there anything wrong in wanting you to have more time to spend at the farm with the family? Hell! Even my kids miss you someth'ang fierce!"
Snorting through the nose noisily, Ducoteaux shook his head in denial at that lie, calling out his bastard cousin for his prevarication; "That there be a fib, Billy-Boy, and ya know it! The only thing on that there farm missing me is the wood chipper out behind the barn, and that's cuz you want it that way!"
Making a wide smile of evil glee, William admitted publicly "Even my pink pretties can't be expected to eat in one whole piece that hard boulder you call a head. I'ma gonna hav'ta break that egg open and piece-it out in the pens, if I want the poor darlin's to be gobbing you! Eh eh eh!"
A young black-skinned woman wearing dark blue jeans, a red button shirt and leather jacket with hiking boots approached the squabbling pair from the other side of the command chair. Wearing a big smirk, she asked "You do realize admiral, that you just admitted in font of witnesses to planning the murder and dismemberment of you cousin, and his disposal through porcine digestion, all of which are crimes under the US Navy uniform code." Shoving her hands in her jeans pockets, she quipped with a toothy smile "I aught'a be haulin' ya in for that, but Pride would just laugh it off as family gabbin, or some such tripe."
The captain swiveled his chair towards the new comer, welcoming her amiably "Agent Percy, I had been thinking about just how quiet and... unobtrusive... ya had been up to now. It's not often that NCIS people from NOLA happen aboard my fine vessel, and even less that they don't make themselves heard and felt. I do hope that means you find my operations to be satisfying?"
Sonja Percy replied with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes as she followed the movements of the crew around the bridge, occasionally blinking when the massive twelve inch railguns shot a salvo deep into Fort Dempsey without prior warning. The muzzle flash was so harsh that even the tinted glass around the command deck was insufficient to dampen the effect entirely. "Well, I have been mostly in undercover missions for diverse agencies before I joined NCIS in New Orleans, so inspecting warboats during combat isn't my best skillset, but I do try. And you do have some mighty fine specimen of the sailor-kind aboard."
Both older men scoffed aloud at her jest, knowing well the effect that a man (or woman) in uniform could exert on others, because of the physical performance requirements and the moral correctness that were implied by being in active service. Then again, the same could be said for police, or firefighters and paramedics.
William Noyce asked the salient question "Whelp, girl! Don't hold me in suspense! Did you manage to get ya'r mitts into that felon McGrath or not? He needs to be read his articles of the code to be transferred over to UEO custody fully. Our boat may have grabbed him, but this is still a joined operation, and the niceties must be tended, if we want to keep the peace between governments."
Percy made a face, nearly a pout, as she shook her head negatively. "Nah, the docs are working on him, cuz apparently one of the jar-heads got chummy with him during the shuttle ride back, and he didn't take it too well at his old age. Something about his back or spine... I ain't no doctor so I couldn't tell you the details. Call down to medbay and they'll tell you the gory stuff. But he was on the table and still breathin' when I saw through the window into the operating theater."
Noyce made a face like he' sucked on a raw lemon slice. "Damn! I need him awake to answer questions, before the bloody JAG tries to abscond him back to Washington DC for debrief. The Major Response Team is in the air already, and Jethro Gibbs wan'nt born a patient man. If that gray furred dog gets it into his head to grab McGrath and leave, there's precious little the UEO can do to stop him, as this is above all a local USA matter, and we're just lending a helping hand, so to speak."
Captain Ducoteaux suggested sotto voce, "We could put the traitor in a MR-4 subsurface shuttle and send him out to NCQ, have one of the Zundweil ferries pick him up along the way. From there, he could be routed out to international waters and a 'black' site under Section-7 control."
Waving her right index finger decisively at them, agent Percy declared "Nuh hun! No way, people! I may be young and adventurous, but I ain't no dumb-ass to go tango against Gibbs! Especially not since I know damn well that Leon Vance is standing behind him with a bigger set o' danglies! I value my job and my life, thank ya'll so very friggin' much! Ya can do this without my input, or presence. See ya!"
Both older males were quite amused to see the young agent rush off the bridge, her hasty departure noticed only by them as the crew kept their attention focused on pounding what was left of the criminal element in Fort Dempsey down for good.
William grabbed the wired phone from the armrest of the command chair, calling up the UEO's central maritime planning office to get himself a ferry in position to play football, then he called down to the medical hall to order McGrath's treatments cut short unless it was necessary to keep him alive. Anything that was just to limit handicaps or disfigurement wan'nt no concern of the UEO, nor the US navy to be honest, so they could just do without for now. With his deleterious plan in motion, the admiral exchanged a few last 'pleasantries' with his kinsman then left to go grab his bags and get himself a Chinook ride over to NCQ to meet with a certain juvenile prodigy. He had several messes to clean up, and maybe a few accords to establish, if luck was going his way.
What, this old can?
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 19:12pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 16:12pm
SeaQuest DSV
Outside national waters, Florida, USA
Three hours.
That was how much painful time Lucas had had to endure at the hands of the most ignorant, inept pair of nincompoops that had ever been bred by American society in his lifetime.
Who the ever-loving, hard-pumping fucks takes three hours to attach three sets of cables that are color coded specifically so it takes less than five minutes per set? It was supposed to be as easy as plugging a gaming console to a television! How could two guys in their late twenties who were born and raised in the USA, then attended university classes and got hired by the US navy, be that mentally limited?
Addressing doctor Durand as she stood near the first gaseous display projector that had finally been connected, Lucas griped "You know I'm a fully trained pharmacologist, psychiatrist and neurologist, and I do respect and help mentally ill people as often and capably as I can... But these two berks, honestly girl, where did you get them from? Cuz I wanna black-list that place from my HR recruitment database ASAP!"
Passing a weary hand over her brow, the woman doctor was actually reduced to agreeing with the younger male, given the absolute mess that had resulted from the two Jepsen Bastion techs being involved in the reassembly of the neuroplexic array. After nearly two and a half hours, the SeaQuest's security crewmen who ringed sea-deck as a precaution had noticed something odd about the behaviors of the suspected traitors. They were in fact traitors since they were moving parts around in a manner that made it look like inept bumbling, but was merely an act to cover that they were making all efforts to slow down or prevent the reactivation of the neural interface, and subsequent liberation of the Wolenczak boy from captivity. A quick replay of the sea-deck's camera recordings showed clear-as-day the nine times the two men exchanged silent hand codes to agree on which stalling tactics to use when doctor Durand or Lucas tried to push them to perform their jobs correctly.
As soon as the two confirmed criminals were apprehended and removed from the worksite, assembling the array became as simple and quick as Lucas had planned for the process to be. Inside the fifteen minute time frame the genius teen had first envisioned, all three primary modules were positioned and wired to the central immersion pod without further hitches. The central management console deployed its monitors and keyboards properly, then the two gaseous displays lit up, allowing Lucas to project an interactive holographic image of his person when he conversed with people. Following this happy event, the ship's captain and first officer returned to speak with him.
Gazing at the floating blue & silver representation of the young super-prodigy, Madelyn Stark was finally amazed at what she saw. The variable density of the gaseous display meant that it worked both as a touch screen and a bio-feedback output so that the user could be touched by the person on the other end of the connection as if they were in a live meeting. It would allow an engineer to experience the depths and texture of the objects they were designing. But even more, it would allow a doctor to feel their patient's body, from the skin's outer layers to the innards of deep lesions, or even palpate tumors to know the shape before cutting them out. Yes, just for that piece of technology, it had been worth the wait and tolerance.
But then the child had started speaking to her directly. Not the vague emoting he had spouted at Durand and her minions when he woke up, no, but real conversation, coherent phrases about complex subjects that hinted at many levels of high-powered mental processing. Stark spent twenty minutes of her day to speak with her erstwhile guest, just to keep up the façade of politeness necessary at her rank & job when meeting VIP's of Wolenczak's exalted standing, and she felt it was a good investment. The kid's mind, if anything, had been severely downplayed in the UEO reports she had read during the preparation phase of the raid against Fort Dempsey. The fact that he could be so lucid, loquacious, and able to reason several levels above her best officers, indicated she needed to revise his usefulness in her future plans to rise above the military ranks. Now, if only she could understand better the functions and advantages of the array's different pieces, she could evaluate the long term strategies at play, but even an educated guess told her it would soon be invaluable to any person with goals towards Power.
{ SQ } - { Teenager in a tin can } - { SQ }
Once the painfully onerous task of assembling the neuroplexic array was done, Lucas sent orders to each module for a series of materials productions for new clothes and weapons, plus a long batch of queries and hacks to the ECB modules. Captain Stark and commander Ford were surprised to see the speed at which the systems responded to the boy's mind, and the quickness of execution that was being demonstrated by the printers/routers in the crafting cabinets. Right beneath their eyes, multiple complex devices took shape, from the metallic or plastic shells to the circuits and crystals that focused energy for undetermined effects.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Lucas spoke from the speakers built into the neuroplexic array, "The raw speed, and yet the precision and reliability, that my manufacturing systems whelm in service of my Will."
A small noise was heard as several pieces on the stasis pod began to move around the frame, showing them to be fully mobile parts that rearranged until the entire liquid-filled tube had four bigger wheels in the middle while the four regular ones moved to the extremities. New crystal lenses and small LCD screens had revealed around the frame, and the small speakers had -somehow- enlarged and gained the ability to pivot to direct their sound to a specific target. The eight wheels spun, the motors inside bringing the cylinder assembly forward, liberating it from the rest of the array, so that it could tilt upwards to stand vertically, then turn to face towards Madelyn Stark.
"Such artistry," the comatose adolescent's synthetic voice caressed her entire being as he spoke, "Such mighty industry, and such unlimited capacity for Power..." Rolling the tube a pace towards Stark, the young man asked in seductive tones that a child his age should not be able to use; "Shouldn't such Power and possibilities be in the hands of a person who knows how to wield them potently?"
Pivoting the tube around towards the remaining technicians, Lucas snarled loudly "Stop standing around like palm trees on a beach, and make yourselves useful! There are batches of orders waiting in each of your tablets and workstations! Get things done before admiral Noyce gets to us, or YOU can explain the delays and failures to deliver what he has commanded! Mach Schnell, schergen!"
Captain Stark walked abreast of the tall, glowing cylinder to whisper "If you can find a way to speak with me privately, perhaps there may be a few things we can do for each other. Noyce is not an easy fellow to satisfy, but I have known him for two decades. It would be faster and less onerous for both of us to collaborate." She suggested in conspiratorial tones, hoping to manipulate the isolated child.
On the side of the pod, a small half-sphere of crystal lit up and Stark's private PAL device beeped an incoming line, a short text appearing on the LCD screen. "Vid-phone link, your cabin, 20h00pm, be alone." Putting the device back in her jacket pocket, Stark nodded and turned on her heels, marching out to go finish her emergency shift on the bridge, just to close the day when they arrived in NCQ.
Jonathan Ford was gazing quizzically at his captain's back as she walked away, the short bizarre exchange the woman had with the teenager in the pod echoing fearfully in his ears. In his experience, people didn't let you hear tactical or diplomatic comms unless they wanted you in on it, or planned to kill you already so it didn't matter anyways. The motorized and stunningly mobile pod pivoted towards him to expose the front side of the sleeping body inside, the glowing blue liquid suddenly seeming an evil omen of dark things to come as the lambent light bathed his own form in its ethereal aura.
The speakers on the pod whispered in a very low, soft tone, to Ford's ears "Wait until Noyce is present to report what you witness. He will understand what is happening. Then move yourself and all you care for out of the way. I will take no prisoners, and Noyce would not ask me to, even if he were inclined to keep bodies to interrogate. Besides, I will get the answers myself, and -barter- them with him, so he doesn't need to bother his own hands, or task men to it. Just make certain you're not in the way when the heavies start moving on the field."
Frowning anxiously at the comatose child inside the machinery that was so clearly awake and in charge of everything around himself, Ford wondered want kind of insane reality he had stumbled into. The mission to attack a location in the US mainland had been a shock to the entire crew's morale, but the information about the bunker and its prisoners made it imperative that they be stopped. Now, looking into the luminous fluid, gazing upon one of those 'dark projects' in person, Jonathan didn't know if they were lucky to have brought the boy out alive, or if they hadn't made the worst mistake possible.
"Keep asking yourself those questions, commander Ford," Lucas whispered through the speakers, "You have the right of it. Maybe that skepticism will allow you to divine the truth from all the propaganda, and keep your moral compass pointing the right way. Or maybe it will lose you even worse. You never know what will happen, when Power is the final stake of the fight."
Ford was scared stiff now, as the child had answered something he hadn't spoken aloud, nor shared with anybody before. "Who, or what, are you?" the sailor asked of the ailing child, nervous of where this conversation was heading. No honest navy man should be speaking like that, in his captain's back.
A chilling, soft chuckle emitted from the small speakers mounted to the pod's frame, as Lucas replied amusedly "I am the successor that William Noyce has been hoping to see emerge from the morass that has become Humanity in the last thirty years. And like him, I suffer neither traitors nor fools."
Without further comments, the motorized cylinder moved back to its horizontal stance, the internal lights dimming back to night dimness as the child had no real need for them at present.
The sudden silence and withdrawal of the boy-genius left Jonathan Ford interrogative, and very much in a quandary about what came next. However, if there was one piece of advice the teenager had given that was valuable, it was to move out of the way so the admiral could handle things unhindered. That was a good plan, especially if Madelyn Stark was heading down the crapper at flanking speed, the way things looked to be doing right now. Giving one last look around sea-deck, the officer walked out of the the vast room, unaware of the plotting and scheming happening inside cyberspace.
{ SQ } - { Canned messages } - { SQ }
Lucas waited until commander Ford was completely out of the sea-deck before truly docking the pod with the main array, just to be certain the older black male didn't decide to ask more questions, or commit a momentously stupid decision. Now that he was certain to be alone with his fluid and thoughts, and Luxis, the boy finalized the connection process, then triggered the secure protocols for establishing external comms through the neuroplexic network. The closest signals relays were not that far away, since he had installed small, mobile versions in San Diego, New Orleans and New Cape Quest just six months ago, to facilitate contacts with his biggest, and most powerful, client in his life.
The World Bank
Lucas had to connect with their servers to find out if he still had his high-priority directorate access, as per the latest contract they had signed just this passed May. If anybody had made him lose the contract or damaged his reputation with the WB, Lucas would make the very Earth bleed in retaliation for the crime they had committed.
It took several minutes to bypass the SeaQuest's automated firewalls and the pitiful sailors they had on comms overwatch duty, just to push his link through the antennae to reach outside. Then connecting to his mobile relays proved only half effective as the installation in New Cape Quest had been destroyed by whomever worked with general McGrath. Angered at that discovery, the adolescent genius decided to stop playing coy and accessed the ship's scanners to see what kind of traffic was around them.
Using the comms suites of the cruiseliners, fishing trawlers and two coast guard cutters nearby, Lucas assembled a virtual variable geometry array to receive his signals and boost them forward to what still worked in New Orleans, then push towards the central psychotronic hub in Stanford. Now passing by his principal servers and antennae built inside his private laboratory, the boy was able to shunt a line to the World Bank's main West Coast offices in San Francisco to verify his status and access.
All of his worries disappeared in one moment.
Apparently, the cabal that McGrath was part of had wanted to exploit the boy's high security access to penetrate the World Bank's cybernetic defenses, then follow the money movements of 'targets' whose activities were normally shielded by Diplomatic Privilege or the WB's own internal policies. People like Lucas himself, who was rated as 'preferred supplier' and well on his way to higher yet. If McGrath and his mafia managed to infiltrate and co-opt multiple contractors, they could turn the Bank into a gigantic 'Typhoid Mary' that would not only wiretap everything that communicate with it, its servers would also be pushing out client apps that were malware right from conception. That meant that all governments and banks that did business through the WB would be willingly integrating poisonous software into their firewalls and switching protocols, being hacked from within at a deep level none of the usual cybernetic defenders ever looked.
While it was problematic that McGrath had found people competent enough to take Lucas' pass-codes and fake his regular access and project activity for a month, it was actually less damaging than if the Bank had revoked his contract or blocked his access and disavowed his Diplomatic Status. Doing some digging to find out what had been done under his name would be easy as it was all marked with the copy of his codes and contractor ID. Repairing or patching-up the work-product to make it completely secure would be long, but not truly problematic for a programmer of his caliber. The real problem would be in finding all the holes, back-doors and bypasses those fakers had built while using his good name to ferret around the Bank's networks. Of course, once he'd found everything, he would simply recode all those bypasses for his exclusive exploitation, without anybody being wise to it.
No sense in wasting good tradecraft and hacks, if they were still undetected and functional to date.
Now fully connected to his vast web of telephony, emails, social medias and even the physical post that had accumulated at his home and offices, he could finally get on top of the situation. Firstly, he revised the snail-mail that his employees had scanned into a secure database as indexed PDF files, as he had given orders to do whenever he was absent for any reason. In fact, even when he was present, he usually read the paper sheets then scanned them in to have access to the things from anywhere.
Once he was sure he hadn't missed anything from the IRS or a professional order about paying his yearly medical license fees, Lucas dove into the emails which were pre-sorted into personal, Stanford, family, official, World Bank, governments (municipal/state/federal/planetary), and then Wolenbahn (medical/electronics/engineering). With twelve different streams of emails to analyze in parallel, the boy had some work cut out for him, as the four weeks he had passed in chemical slumber had seen a lot of activity, especially with the official end of school year at Stanford, despite that he never followed that calendar in his life. The university admins did follow it, and they had sent him another invite for the usual pow-wow about the labs and offices he rented from them, directly on campus, for his medical R&D division. Since he usually had the lawyers inspect their offers before meeting them, nothing bad had happened, except that the process was running late compared to previous years.
No biggie, then.
Lucas sent the Stanford executives concerned a polite template letter explaining he had been waylaid by 'classified' USA governmental work falling under the aegis of his Diplomatic Privilege for the World Bank, and had been incommunicado outside US borders until recently. He would be calling them in person the moment he was back in Stanford or San Francisco to arrange the usual get-together to plan the coming year of courses and projects. In the meanwhile, he confirmed his satisfaction with current arrangements, which he wanted to maintain and expand upon if it were possible to negotiate this.
Lucas then sent a series of polite but trite template letters to diverse teachers, course assistants, student helpers and potentially hire-able students to maintain established links, and possibly arrange for a series of appointments to meet face-to-face people he absolutely needed to get on project now.
With the new developments brought about by general McGrath's thoroughly inept maneuvers, the adolescent now had to consider the implications of several federal police agencies in his businesses, plus the revealed Phoenix Foundation for Scientific Advancement & Understanding. Having professional spies of the caliber implied by the Department of External Services sniffing around his life and affairs meant he had to get them on his side, or co-opt them somehow. Compared to them, the UEO Navy was not much to look at, and Section-7 were just uniformed thugs barely at the level of the CIA's raw recruits.
As he chatted idly with Luxis, the young scientist processed through all the varied email files to update his life, extended family (that his parents never talked about) and businesses to make sure nobody had done anything foolish, like sell off the Wolenbahn core assets or some similar idiocy. Thankfully, McGrath wanted his op to be invisible so his minions hadn't actually touched any of the physical or intellectual properties on record. They just made it look like Lucas had to take an unforeseen vacation due to the health of his mother's cousin, or such inane tripe that nobody bothered to verify. And that was a safety protocol to institute; make certain his employees always verified with him in person by direct contact when he suddenly disappeared.
After all the four weeks of backlog were processed, Lucas had the not-so-pleasant task of parsing through his social medias to accept new 'friends' or actively 'repudiate' the latest mongrel who thought they could use the public section of his accounts to brag about crimes or preach hatred. The teen once again confirmed to himself the decision to create a proprietary platform that would do the same thing as Facebook/Twitter/Instagram all rolled into one app, but with simpler controls, less clutter, and focused strictly on his employees, suppliers, clients, and governmental contacts. This would allow for a much easier mediation of the posts, and quicker retaliations for delinquents. Plus, he would be able to hide the dark web portal, Tor servers and bot-net functions directly into the kernel of the app, thusly having a prioritary access to any device where it was installed. This would allow much better operational security, and deployment as early warning net would be as easy as touching the icon on the screen. Lucas smirked nastily at the thought of everything he could hear or see, if he were to actually hijack tens of thousands of devices and links at the same time.
Initiating the basis of the new Wolenbahn social media suite, Lucas set in place the basic code kernels for each module of the application, then put in some inert 'Post-It' tags to tell himself where he wanted to go with the particular piece of programming, and what the end result should look like. It would take a few weeks, but he would soon have a beta version. It would be the second time he did such a job, but now he wanted something that would not be spread only between his own personal offices and machines, but in fact shared with as many of his contacts as possible. Deciding to make the job as complete as possible, Lucas decided to add modules for calendar & timesheet, human resources logs, accounting, inventory (people, animals, plants, tools, vehicles, buildings, patents, data), transactions, and a locked security sub-segment (cybernetic/physical/militia/mercenaries). This would allow him to do a straightforward replacement of all computers, telephones, status panels and cash registers across all buildings and vehicles of his companies, including places where he rented space for short terms.
Now that the basis for the new management suite were in place, he tweaked the internal code to process side-by-side the regular Binary maths and his own proprietary Trinary maths. The user would see a shell that gave the impression to run in plain old Binary, while in fact the programming would be written and run in Trinary coding, optimized for use with blue psychotronic crystals and circuits to maintain high speed, performance, and safety versus the enemies now detected. This would allow the devices to work as 'twin-head' machines, like those few experimental systems that had both Intel and Mac chips & OS running side-by-side inside the same box, to test program stability real time.
{ SQ } - { Can of malice } - { SQ }
After nearly two hours, Lucas saw that his crafting modules had finished the parts he had ordered, and all that was left was the assembly. He began ordering the techs on deck to print the requisite sheets from their workstations so they could do the manual labor for him. He wasn't ready to decant just yet, so the UEO's drones would have to suffice for now.
Following the ideas that he had elaborated during the simulations imposed by McGrath, Lucas had built himself an improved armament cane, a pair of defensive forearm bracers, defensive ankle bracers, a utility belt with many sheaths, new improved meta-glasses and contact lenses, along with a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, a wide brimmed hat and a four-seasons frock-coat. He would wear regular clothing for his size until he could get back to Stanford, to his own laboratories, and then he would manufacture several sets of clothing with his crystal filaments and electronics built-in.
From his injured, ailing mind came several new devices that would make his enemies weep:
The primitive pulse and laser systems used by the UEO members had been updated into a hybrid that could channel protonic pulses, high-count photonic lasers, phonon/vibration maser and ionic disruption field. The trick was changing most of the circuitry inside the basic beamers to use synthetic crystal from his chemical forges to withstand the energies and vibrations discharged. As such, all the pistols, rifles, armament cane and beam-edged blades he produced would now have multiple settings on them to deal with the mess he faced.
The new armament cane had spring-loaded quillons on both the pike and sword parts, as well as neuro-shock fields, variable beam edges, and boosted range up to 500 meters on all beam emitters due to new capacitors and new isotopic power source.
The dedicated pistol was based on the Colt 1911 Tactical cal.22 (Long Rifle), with extended 7,5" barrel frame, and a combo of LED flash light and Red Dot sight on each side just fore of the trigger guard. In reality it was a prototype man-portable railgun with the magnetics all built into the wider frame. Mounted under the bullet barrel, but inside the pistol's cover-body, was the hybrid beam emitter that was linked to the power cells inside the varnished wood scales on the sides of the handle. The weapon was completely made of composite ceramics, synthetic crystal wires and fake wood, thus invisible to X-rays and most scanners beneath laboratory grade. Likewise, the cal.22 bullets were armor piercing solid slugs with an empty core that held a small charge of thermite, to act as tracer and set things ablaze.
The forearm bracers now had a small sonic disruptor centered under the palm of the hand, a 6" jack-blade with vari-beam edges over the top of the hand, and smaller slots for the gas canisters on each side. The new grenades were smaller and more pressurized but held the same quantity of poison and covered ten feet wide just as before. Because the munitions were smaller, the bracer could now hold six neuro-toxins, six acids, and six thermite units. Each bracer also had ports to connect devices to charge them or store data in the flash drives built into the defensive article.
The lower leg bracers were basically inert armor without any weaponry, just storage for power cells, flash drives, and three small throwing knives on each. Also, each bracer had a small circuit board to act as an emergency homing beacon to call for help, because that was the life Lucas had to deal with.
The belt was made thicker, with built-in power cells, capacitors, and an emergency beacon in the large decorative buckle, which also had the ports to connect devices for recharge.
The gloves were armored on the top but thin inside the hands to allow the manipulation of delicate or diminutive components. The fingers each had magnetizable pads that could scramble electronics or inflict low-powered neuro-shock for a few seconds. The tips of the fingers each had a composite ceramic 'nail' that was really a small blade with vari-beam edge integrated.
The boots were made of synthetic fibers with layers of composite ceramics and thermoplastics to form the armored parts and the sole, with a rubberized finishing coat. The boots had retractable curved hooks all around the perimeter of the sole to facilitate climbing or moving on ice, wood and rocks. There were power cells, capacitors and flash drives built into the calf-sides, and a sheath for a 6" fighting dagger on the internal side of each boot. The best feature was no doubt the integrated heat control system that would allow to walk in frozen climates for weeks without fearing frostbite, or trek through boiling hot swamps while having cool feet to fight against heat stroke from the lower limbs.
The meta-glasses had improved power cells, boosted synthetic crystal circuits and antennae, and an automated link-up to all his weapons, especially his new hat. The lenses could now serve as virtual screens for viewing critical informations, and a miniature short-ranged projector could let the user show the comms by aiming at a white wall no further than five feet away.
The hat was a novelty for Lucas as he never really liked wearing things on his head. Well, this thing was made with a mid-height rounded center and wide brim to hide all the systems inside. A circuitry equal to a cell phone and satellite phone together, multiple power cells and capacitors, an array of sensors hidden in the top segment, and 36 thin vari-beam emitters around the brim to act as CIWS when he was in a dicey situation. If anybody thought they could stab him in the back, then they would be badly surprised!
The UEO sailors followed their instructions, carefully assembling the devices and tools as they were told by the young prodigy, in accordance to the wishes of the admiral and captain. If any of them had any qualms about what they saw, they kept it quiet.
x-x
Standing aside in silence, Euphemia Durand noted everything she had seen about the wondrous machines and capacities the boy had exhibited. She knew that even if general McGrath was imprisoned or killed, he did not work alone. The knowledge she would bring back would earn her money, trust, and a much better position on the future projects that were no doubt being decided as events progressed. It didn't truly matter for her what the methods were, nor who was the ultimate chief; only the results and having her name appended to these world-changing discoveries had any importance.
x-x
Unknown to Durand, Luxis kept a weather eye on her, and specifically her comms gear, to copy everything she was filming and writing in her reports. At the same time, the virtual teen was gleefully virulating the woman's tablet and cellphone as if he were giving party favors at a wedding. Well, the malwares were free, so why would she complain, hemm?
Call to service
(MacGyver – opening theme 2016)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 19:45pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 16:45pm
DXS - HQ
Los Angeles, California, USA
Angus MacGyver was walking quickly towards the overwatch room with Wilt Bozer and Riley Davis when they encountered Desiree Nguyen who was climbing the stairs up from the armory where she had been stowing new gear for their next mission. The four young adults exchanged weary glances as they unified into a single group to march to the urgent conference they had all just been called to.
The moment they entered the room, they knew things were bad; the glass walls were already whited out, flashing bold red text in the top of the large viewscreen said "secured MIL-web Tier-3 line" and the faces in the image were not friendly. The image was split in four quadrants, showing the smoldering ruins of what had been Fort Dempsey in Pensacola, Florida, the Chairman of the US Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff (JCS) Gen. Allen D. Wauchsaw, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Laurent Yves, and the director of the Naval Criminal Investigations Services Director (NCIS) Leon Vance.
Barely getting a nod of acknowledgment from James MacGyver and Mathilda Webber as they arrived, the four agents were dunked in the deep end of the hot, radioactive mess without preamble.
General Wauchsaw declared tartly "I would dearly like to have had your people on the ground for the operation, director Webber, but the order to exclude DXS came directly from the Oval Office. For some reason that was never detailed, POTUS has decided that your agency was 'borderline rogue' and nearly out of control. We asked why he thinks that, but nobody got any answers."
The director of the DIA snorted loudly in contempt as he countered "They just ran three different ops in what Vladimir Putin considers his backyard, and not only succeeded but got out alive to brag about it. That's your answer, Allen. The ruskies got their skivvies in a twist, and somebody's gotta pay."
The general shook his head negatively, saying aloud "We have no proof of correlation between the actions of DXS field agents, russian diplomatic messages and reactions from POTUS. At this point, it is all speculative, nothing more."
Leon Vance grunted in disdain for the man implied in the conversation, opining "And yet you have enough doubtful events and items to not say clearly that he is innocent either, which is almost as good as an indictment. Well, for his supporters at least, it normally suffices to indict others. He's usually the exception to all the written rules, even when he writes them himself."
Smirking evilly, Mathilda demurred "Now, now, Leon! Let's not get nasty about the bombastic airhead who signs our paychecks just yet. He could still be useful. Besides, no matter how much he claims to hold the final word in this mess, we all know he doesn't anymore. Higher Powers do, since 2003."
Riley asked delicately, very aware of the Power arrayed on the screen and not wanting to make enemies of that caliber, "Excuse us, but who could make any decisions about this mess other than POTUS? The whole thing happened inside the US landmass, in one of our own navy bases."
Director Yves replied in short but polite words "Agents, so kind of you all to join our little meeting. As for your question, the UEO Alliance, in the person of the Executive Cabinet. Since the Charter was signed in 2003, the individual countries have signed some of their rights and jurisdiction over to the local Confederation they adhere to, and another – bigger – portion over to the UEO, mostly without realizing what they were getting into. If the NAC Cabinet petitions the UEO to send vehicles and men to stabilize the mess, they can roll in without Trump's permission, or even asking. Likewise, if certain people inside the USA petition the UEO Cabinet directly, like the Governor of Florida or one of the highly placed military leaders in the US Services or Department of Justice. Finally, since the main victim of the kidnapping bears 'Diplomatic Privilege' from The World Bank at the directorate level, the WB's governor or Board of Admins could make the request, and it would be carried out."
Matty put in "And that's the reason for this call, isn't it? Trump just tried to put DXS on sale like a cheap agency of shopping mall rent-a-cops and got told off for it, so this is his retaliation. He's gonna keep us out of the field, unable to do our jobs until he can show that we aren't doing anything useful and then try to sell us off again, but cheaper. He'll probably try to prune down the workforce and solid assets in the process, to really make us look menial and ineffective."
Director Yves nodded, adding "Yes, that is what my analysts have divined of your situation."
General Wauchsaw countered "I have no clue what is going on between POTUS and you spooks, but it's a pain in my keel! Anyways, as Yves said, the UEO Executive got a direct request from Desdensky to bring in the heavies to help keep their darling geek alive and sane. That means you people."
Leon Vance added "The NCIS already has it's Major Response Team in flight, they left by Lear jet about an hour ago, chartered by the World Bank. Apparently, the Board of the Bank wants to make sure none of the perpetrators and accomplices get away from this free or clean. Several individuals who are believed to be linked to general McGrath's activities have already been apprehended and hundreds are being hunted as we speak. All offices of NCIS are collaborating with the UEO's Military Police, as are multiple other policing forces and agencies across the NAC and Alliance."
James MacGyver wondered "Do we have any news about the main victim? Has he been recovered or at least found, yet? Will our team be need to go ruin-diving in a hot zone for him?"
General Wauchsaw waved a hand vaguely, explaining "The boy – genius was recovered a few hours ago from under the Jepsen Bastion, at the back-end of Fort Dempsey. He's been aboard the SeaQuest for some time already, running at 20 miles off coast on emergency exfil towards New Cape Quest."
Director Yves concluded "And that is where your agents are needed. You have to get to NCQ at the best possible speed, and establish both security grid and medical assistance for the principal. Because the cause of the whole damned mess is that new-fangled neural interface pod, you'll need some hackers and techies to make sure you don't accidentally kill the kid. Cuz that would put Desdensky on your backs."
Angus blinked a few times as he lined-up the pieces of the puzzle, then exclaimed "Wolenczak! It's that new medical wizard from Stanford, the son of the guy who built the climate recyclers and has charge of the World Power Project! Lucas, was it? He's like half my age and already has a doctorate or two, and a bunch of other diplomas, patents, licenses, and speaks more than twenty languages!"
Snorting in amusement, Bozer quipped "Whaaat? There's a bigger wunderkind out there than you? How come you never mentioned him, bro? We would'na thought less of you cuz the kid got his papers waaaay before you did!" The black male had a wide smirk as he teased his friend good and hard.
Riley however griped "Ah, crud! I wanted to stay away from him! The last time I tried to contact him to see if he was available to take a small contract for us on the side, he hacked into my laptop, did the whole project inside of a half-hour, and left a PDF invoice right in my private cyber-vault where I store my bank card info and the DXS files I need for work. The little mongrel even added a few viruses and spywares to my toolkit, all the while copying shamelessly EVERYTHING in there!"
Matty asked the salient question "Did you make sure he was paid? Cuz if he's already set up in the system as a commercial partner, that allows us to bypass any of the shit coming out of DC and do the job as the World Bank asked without any worries."
Nodded grumpily, Riley confirmed "Yeah, I went to speak with accounting and they had received a full packet via email to create him personally and his company separately as both clients & suppliers. And everything was paid the same day. I did not want to mess with this brat! He honest-to-god scares the hairdo off my head, when I think of how capable he is with computers and programs!"
Director Vance commented glibly "Well then, you should get along with him swimmingly, since he asked for the four of you specifically, plus anybody else that Matty felt were necessary for the job."
Angus worried "How the Hell could he ask for -US- specifically when he's been kidnapped and out of circulation for... How long was it?"
Director Yves looked down to his hand as he rubbed his fingers together in a thoughtful movement "He has apparently been aware of several of you by the work you do in the Foundation part of your organization, though his inopportune hack of Miss Davis may have given him the missing links. But for the actual request, he made that an hour ago from inside the SeaQuest. No, we don't know yet how that happened, nor how it came out. We called the ship and their comms managers never saw the out-line being established on their boards. He may have used that proprietary network of his to pass the message. However, he sent the request to the UEO Cabinet, The World Bank Board, the NCIS and the FBI together. They were the ones to warn the rest of the Alphabet Soup that the demand was genuine."
Mathilda Webber turned fully towards her agents, ordering "Get into your mission emails, the briefs are in already. Get what you need from general supplies and pass by medical on your way out. You all need three new shots to be fully clean to work with the young doctor in the shape he's in. Plus, as this is first and foremost a rescue & support mission, you need the portable expended Life-Saving duffels and a special gurney, in case he's not mobile when you get there."
James added in a careful tone "Due to the high-level nature of the mission, the guaranteed interference from the White House and maybe even Congress, plus the diplomatic status of the principal, I will be accompanying the DXS team. We will be taking two of the four MD-11c's to reach NCQ with all the people and materials we need, because it's that big of a mess to process."
All four agents made faces at hearing that. Not that having James with them was bad in itself, but the size of the crew they were sending was something very rare for DXS. The agency preferred to do things silently, with small teams and limited equipment to avoid being detected or traced back to their point of origin.
Matty however added an extra detail nobody had expected. "Don't bother with infiltration secrecy rules; you're all going above-board for this one. The World Bank and Wolenbahn are paying the Phoenix Foundation for its esteemed technical and medical services, on the official clock, with all the quotes, personnel manifest, purchase orders and invoices implied. Gotta keep the IRS happy, and all that."
"Whaaaat?" Bozer asked worriedly. "Is that even allowed? I mean, we're spies! Do we do 'overt'?"
James made an interrogative face as he queried "I would like to know that too. I wasn't aware of that particular detail of the mission brief."
Director Yves spoke in an amused tone, as he detailed "According to Desdensky, it's the best way to pass something under Trump's nose when he's in a snit, because he takes so much of his support from the 'Prosperity Gospel' evangelical churches. Put enough money on the table, and he'll shut up quick."
James declared "I understand the method and the reason, but I want to be on the record as being against doing things in this manner. Our commander-in-chief directly, and personally, ordered us to stay away from the situation; we should obey that. Doing a runaround like this... It stinks badly."
General Wauchsaw agreed with James MacGyver but replied nonetheless "While your position towards the orders of our nation's leader is admirable, the situation doesn't permit to adhere to it. If our internal agencies, crewmen and materials can't handle the mess, the UEO will monopolize it and take all the credit, thusly putting themselves in position of preeminence with the Wolenczak family. This would be a very detrimental event, especially where the younger doctor is concerned. The father, Lawrence, is pretty much a solid believer for our side, but Lucas has gotten most of his money and all of his diplomatic status from the UEO's organizations or mandataries. We DO NOT want to lose him to anybody, especially not the bloody 'internationals'!"
"Alright, people! Get in gear! Those two planes are taking up space on the tarmac when they should be burning air! Move! And that means you too, James!"
All the DXS agents go moving while Matty finished the pleasantries with the Big Bosses on screen then got the remote overwatch in gear. They needed a satellite linkup and one or two drones in the area, but with the way Trump was treating them, she would have to negotiate very hard. Or maybe not, since Iegor Desdensky would want to help, and the comptrollers of other agencies would not want to make enemies of him or the Wolenczak's, who were powerful in their own rights. The plane should be able to lift off in two hours, three at worse depending on the road traffic to get there, and the tarmac lineup, but they should be up by 20h00pm LA time, and in NCQ somewhere ten hours later. Time enough to get things in place and even take a nap in-flight to be ready for their landing on the scene.
A traitor drifting in bloodied waters
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 20:00pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 17:00pm
SeaQuest DSV
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
Madelyn Stark walked into her cabin at exactly 20h00pm on the dot, locking the door's circular handle behind her and whiting-out the window to have absolute privacy. She had barely made it halfway to her desk that the Internex monitor mounted to the furniture lit up, showing a glowing figure that she easily recognized as the child sleeping in the tube full of blue liquid on sea-deck. The young teenager on her screen however was an animation, showing only the basic appearance without any liquid environment, and he was wearing clothing that looked like some sort of purple naval officer's dress suit from back in the late 1800's.
"I see that you managed to waylay the rabble," the adolescent genius began without being asked or having leave to address her so informally. "Then again, when one is motivated by Power, things get done in proper order and timeliness, don't they?"
Ah, yes... There was the reason why she had accepted this little secret confabulatory. Because the smarmy little bastard had piqued her interest about the one fundamental thing in her life, the quest for getting above and beyond all others in this measly, menial world.
Sitting in her swiveling chair behind the desk, captain Stark asked blithely "What could you possibly offer me that I would want? And for that matter, child, what could you possibly know about acquiring and holding Power? Look where you are, and what state you're in. You're a victim, captured and held for four long weeks at the bottom of a navy base that hadn't been on anybody's radar! Who do you think you are, to speak about Power?"
Snorting snidely, Lucas replied "I am the thirteen year old boy who made the USA bow to a planetary alliance and permit an amphibious assault inside their homeland shores. Between my father being head of the climate recycler design bureau and chief project manager at WPP, plus my directorate position at The World Bank and the medical miracle of waking comatose people I did... You can see that anybody who is worth so much, and has so many contacts that the very UEO Alliance would mobilize one of its brand new battleships right out of drydock to effectuate a rescue has capacities... It's not potential that I have, it's genuine applicable capacities, plus the materials, resources and innovation in my direct control."
Pursing her lips as she thought it through, Madelyn replied carefully "You may have the beginnings of a point in there. Somewhere. I just don't see it yet."
She was lying through her teeth, of course. She saw quite well what the boy meant, and what the results could be, if she played it right. Any person who managed to manipulate the USA, the only country on Earth to have never been invaded in its homeland by foreign powers since it was legally constituted, into allowing a foreign army to enter and shoot at its citizens did have factual power. Or at least a great deal of influence over the major actors of the national and international political scene.
Making the opening move of a gambit, Stark affirmed offhandedly "I do think however that most of what happened was due to Desdensky wanting you back so as to indebt you to him, and the Bank. He probably hopes to squeeze some free labor out of you in return."
Her answer was a slow, cold, cruel laugh that made the hairs on her arms raise. She had just woken a predator, her instincts about such things were flawless. How the Hell had she not felt this before?
"You amuse me with your pathetically amateurish posturing, Madelyn." Lucas countered in a tone of voice and language that didn't sound like himself anymore. "I have beheld the true cruelty of humanity, and whelmed Power such as you cannot fathom. The simulations that McGrath put me through were supposed to be like cellphone games, the sort of thing that was uploaded during play then wiped out when done. They were never meant to leave imprints, especially not actionable data, stratagems or new skill-sets for me to use for my own rise to my true station in society and life."
Giving a sharky grin, the boy added "I was never supposed to waken, and especially never supposed to have any sanity left, yet see what I have become... Because the imbecile McGrath could not control himself, nor his minions, I have managed to not only sustain my personality, memories and sanity, but I have actually gained several hundred sets of raw datum for as many situations of warfare, civil unrest, or environmental cataclysms so bad they could count as extinction events. But above all else, my mind processed those damned sims to a winning conclusion, something that NONE of McGrath's cronies had ever managed to do. The felon's best, highest paid tacticians and strategists broke their minds and souls on these problems, only to be outclassed and cast aside by ME."
Intrigued by the prospect of dealing with a keen military mind, Madelyn queried "What kind of mess did they have you resolve, inside the simulator? I want to know what level of difficulty you can handle, in case we encounter some trouble, down the line."
Smiling in a manner that had no friendliness to it, Lucas answered by removing his image from the screen, replacing himself with the video of what he had done to Shay Lynn Mosley in response to her foolish attempts to create a sect right under the nose of the Constable – Governor of the North-American Mid-Line Treaty.
Stark was impressed by the investigative work the boy had done, and by the devious solution he had employed to kill her off, all the while settling the problem with the arms dealer in Mexico and killing the child so he didn't grow up to claim vengeance at some point. However, it was all the training and experience he had acquired through that made-up titled position as Constable – Governor for the entire Canada – USA zone that was important. That job meant he had real experience at managing a large body of soldiers and technicians with some impressively innovative weapons. The juvenile mongrel might actually have something to back-up his claims to Power, instead of just blowing hot wind out of his gob-hole like most teenagers did.
The captain served herself a glass of water from a thermal carafe on the desk, taking a sip then holding the metal goblet with both hands idly. "Fine. The concept was interesting. The execution was not bad. Then again, the person in that film had the benefits of a large militia with several armored vehicles and governmental authority. What do you have, in Reality, that can come close to that?" Stark laid out her bait, trying to figure out what he truly had in his hands to play with. Now that his image was back on screen, she realized that she couldn't take his facial expressions for real, as they were just an animation that he could make show anything he wanted.
The virtual replica of Lucas on screen gazed at her indolently, his expression revealing that he was not impressed by the older woman's lack of appreciation for his skills and resources. Not that he had expected any different, given the woman's psychological profile. Traitors and felons were not known for having honest respect for the education or work product of others, especially competitors in the great race for the obtention of Power.
The young genius glibly said "Well, if you don't want to know about the UEO's space stations that carry illegal beam weapons and nuclear missiles since they were built directly in orbit in 2009, just say so. I'm sure I can tell you something meaningless about the MR-4 shuttles instead. Or maybe the Zundweil ferries, since you judge things by how big or flashy they are. Like a grunt in the trenches, who only cares about big booms and smoke clouds."
Suddenly very interested, Stark commanded him imperiously "What bloody space stations are you harping on about, boy? The UEO put a few GPS & monitoring satellites in orbit in the last decade, but they never built anything up there directly. In fact, nobody has anything close to a drydock assembly in space, not even China! What kinds of lies are you spewing at me?"
Lucas snorted, countering "Ask your good pal Joshua Winters what his four decommissioned oil drill platforms in the south Pacific ocean have been used for by the US Navy between 2002 and 2011. You will get an education in how to run large-scale black ops. The details of it all should also be of some use to you, when you decide if an alliance with me could be advantageous for your plans."
"How do you know about my contacts with Joshua Winters? I never told anybody." The woman was now worried, since the UEO flagship's captain having unsanctioned comms with a principal supplier of the US armed services could scuttle her career, and even get the UEO Military Police wanting to dive into her life and activities. Let's just say that some of those more private activities may not be of the most legal kinds, and she could end up in a navy jail, somewhere on a desert island.
The boy replied by making all the lights in the cabin turn off while he left the screen to instead run a full length video of her making a sweet deal with Winters Senior to sell him some UEO fleet secrets, only to turn around and have hot, steamy, unbridled sex with his 24 year old son who had arrived in her NCQ condo right after she had ended the call with his father.
The lights came back up to full as Lucas appeared on screen again, this time with an unreadable expression on his face. The thirteen year old gazed at Stark with the indolence of an entity that had the real Power in the relationship with the person being observed. The female officer was truly unnerved that the child had been able to take control of her cabin's systems from the depths of that unnatural pod on sea-deck, and then had even managed to hack her comms and backtrack private events in her life. And how the fuck had he found out about that condo? It was rented under a shell corporation that she didn't even own! It was all Alexander Winters who had taken care of things on his end, a year before when they had met during one of the many official meetings between his father and UEO oceanic protection officers, because some of his oil tankers were outdated to the point of being unsafe.
Whatever happened next, she knew she had to buy time to get away from this brat to figure out her next move. And she had to contact Alex to warn him their secret relationship was out of the bag. Then she had to find a way to exploit and profit from this little bastard's cybernetic access, or else kill him quick, before he told anybody about her other illegal affairs.
This is the reality of my life
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 21:31pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 18:31pm
SeaQuest DSV
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
Exhaling a deep sigh, Lucas set his new equipment production projects aside to concentrate on what the simulations had done in his head, what was left, and was was the actual truth of things. He had waited long enough to stabilize himself, it was time to plunge into the miasma at last. Thankful that he was alone with Luxis inside his head, Lucas allowed himself to cry for all that he had known so briefly, only to lose it when the lights were turned on, like a dream come morning.
The Constable – Governor title, rank, position, function and attributions were not real.
The teenager had no influence on the governments of the world besides those capacities he had as pharmacology and neurology expert, and owner of a renowned electronics company. Yes, his contract as an external directorate-level security consultant with The World Bank was almost governmental because the job was regulatory in nature, but he was not the penultimate decisional authority. He was a boosted consultant that so happened to have diplomatic privileges and some few legally bound abilities, but nothing like the sims made him live.
The entire Wise Heritage & Trust and the apothecary company were not real.
Well, amend that; they had existed, but ended in the early 1950's, right after World War II had ended and the Cold War had begun to be officially called such. Doctor Wise and his family had existed, but the man's three wives had all suffered accidental deaths in young ages, never more than three years after giving birth to their first child. The man's two daughters had reached adult age but never married since they were afraid of becoming like their father. The three children of his third wife had all died in the boating accident over the Lake Erie, along with their mother. According to public records, F. W. Wise was aboard the boat and did pass several hours in the frigid waters before being rescued by a cargo ship headed for Windsor in Ontario. The man had gotten hypothermia and a very bad pneumonia that weakened his lungs for the rest of his diminished life. The trauma of this third widowing damaged something inside the man, making him even more austere and severe than before, to the point of being toxic for his employees and business relations. He disappeared in the late 1970's without a trace nor proof of death ever being found by anybody, like a wounded bird that knew it was time but wanted to avoid scavengers to die at peace.
Lucas was not in any ways related by birth, marriage or adoption to Franklin Henry Wise, and nobody in his family ever was.
The Holtzenstein family on his mother's side still had about... seven, possibly eight... relatives still alive to have relationships with.
The Wolenczak family on his father's side still had about... thirteen, possibly up to sixteen... relatives still alive to have relationships with.
He knew these people, he had met them and had all their coordinates in case he needed assistance or support of the kinship type to pass through adversity.
He was not alone.
He was not isolated.
His family had never abandoned him, or caused him injuries, pain or shame.
{ SQ } - { The injuries on his young body were not child abuse } - { SQ }
Lucas breathed a virtual sigh of true relief as he remembered his history beyond the artificial limits that had been imposed by the crooked simulations. He had been badly injured at age 4, but it was a banal accident such as happened to kids all the time, not an act of willful evil from his parents or tutors.
The child had been a precocious prodigy, and he had been living with his two sets of grand-parents since they were all experiencing severe degradation of their mental faculties from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The four adults and child dwelt on the outskirts of Buffalo, right on the shores of Lake Erie, in a very large house that had been in the Holtzenstein lineage for seven generations. They had two nurses, one butler and one maid who all lived on the property full-time, to make certain that the relatives suffering from limited autonomy did not get into trouble without help nearby. It was true that Lucas had lived with a certain degree of wealth and privileges most of his young life, and his successful private electronics company had increased this since age 9.
His injuries had occurred when he had been trying to get his poor old grandmother Abichail, Cynthia's mom, to wait for the nurse to come help her move out of the sofa since she had developed bad leg cramps that kept her from moving on her own. Unfortunately, that was the moment that the elderly woman experienced one of the worse periods of mental instability caused by her illness. Instead of accepting the child's help, poor Abichail thought he was a thief come to steal her old heirloom jewelry, so she pushed him away as harshly as her waning strength allowed. The problem was that Lucas had always been a light-weight child, and Abichail's strength was boosted by her manic fear.
There had been an ancient mahogany cabinet just behind Lucas, when his grand-mother shoved him. It was made of heavy wooden boards, unstable because it's lower portion was badly designed versus the flaring top, and filled with glass photo frames and decorative vases with fake flowers in them. There had also been a few rather pretty knickknacks made of silver filigree with stained glass pieces in the holes to form large luminous butterflies that Lucas had loved to watch in the noon sunlight.
Lucas hit the unbalanced dresser which wobbled and fell on top of him, the breaking glass items scratching and cutting his skin, while the thick wooden planks broke several bones in his hands and arms, and gave him a grave concussion, as he wound-up pinned to the floor. It only took seconds for the four employees to be attracted by the noises, and mere minutes for the ambulance to arrive so he could receive emergency treatment, and be brought to the hospital. Yes, he had been comatose for three days, there had been multiple surgeries to his four limbs, and many weeks of physiotherapy when the casts came off, but nothing all that grave since no residual pains or damages remained. Even the scars had faded to invisibility on their own with just some topical cream to help the skin stretch smoothly.
That moment was the only time he had been hospitalized for intensive or life-saving care in his life, up until he awoke inside the neuroplexic tube, just hours ago. Not a single parent or tutor had ever hit him, let alone damaged him badly enough to threaten his life, health or welfare. That was all a bunch of bitchcrap invented by the sims forcibly put inside his mind.
After the incident, all four grand-parents used their last moment of lucidity to finalize their intake papers for the assisted-living facility they had already contracted to house them for their end-of-life, since no regular home could care for them properly. The first of the four died when Lucas was seven years old, and the last when he was eleven, but these losses still felt recent when he got in a depressive mood because of stress in his studies or contracts.
{ SQ } - { A loving family } - { SQ }
The worse, and most unforgivable, depravity that had been imposed on him by McGrath's unholy simulations was the thought his parents hadn't cared about him or the rest of the family. Cynthia lived in a rental condo because it was in walking distance to her office building, the municipal courthouse and even the local federal building that held the FBI regional offices. She spent her work week from Sunday evening till Friday afternoon in town, then the weekend at the shared house to have a constant contact with her parents and son. This routine only stopped when Lucas went to Stanford at age 10.
Lawrence was already deeply buried in the bowels of the World Power Project, but returned to Buffalo six times per year for a two weeks long stay at the house with Lucas and his own parents. In fact, when Lucas moved to Stanford full-time, the man still kept the same schedule so he could spend time with his wife or go see his parents and kin while they still lived. Lawrence had never turned his back on his only boy, nor disowned him or been ashamed of claiming him.
Truthfully, his parents were separated by professional necessities and obligations, not because their relation was on the rocks. Despite what had been shown in those felonious simulations, Cynthia was never whorish and never rented herself to her clients to seal deals, nor did she go around slutting herself to mafia bosses and their men. In fact, his parents were just a mite prudish, so they never had affairs or looked elsewhere for their happiness. They had never divorced, and did not have separate bedrooms in the ancestral house. When Lawrence came home for his vacations, he slept in the same bed as Cynthia, who always tried very hard to make her schedule match her husband's calendar to spend time with him. These efforts extended to have made the trip over to WPP – HQ in South Africa four times over the years, bringing Lucas with her on each occasion so that the family could have a chance to stay together. The fact she had accepted to fly in a UEO jet despite her morbid fear of flying was proof enough that she wanted to spend time with her family at any cost. A blind fool would see that.
The teenager raged beyond his monumental capacities for words in two dozen languages as he remembered his parents' true tempers, instead of the foul, prurient swill McGrath had tried to rot his soul with.
Cynthia was a porcelain-white skinned beauty with long blond hair, ice-blue eyes and a soft-spoken, slow-moving mannerism that helped to keep even her most fearful clients at peace. Lucas took his mild manners, innate patience and oratory skills from her, and her parents.
Cynthia was a renowned criminalist across all of New York State and the New England area, but as a specialist of victims' rights, family violence and juvenile support against the innumerable deficiencies in the DCFS system, local, state and federal. She never represented a true hardened criminal in her career, and actually feared the mafia as she had been approached and threatened by some. She helped women and children get away from the street gangs and organizations that used them as low-rung minions to commit petty crimes like drug carrying and collecting debts, which angered many a Boss amongst the criminal elements of Buffalo.
Lawrence was pale skinned, with brown eyes and hair, with a temper that was as drab and unnoticeable as his appearance. In fact, he was genuinely as placid and unflappable as the English bragged about being, even when most of them weren't. Lucas had never feared his father, never been hit by him, never been ignored or neglected by him, although the constant distance because of the long-term projects out of borders did wear their relationship thin, but never towards anger or violence between them. In fact, the boy took many of his workaholic, perfectionist, and never-quit work ethics from him the honest way.
Lawrence was a certified genius who had been Lucas' role model since he was born. He had gotten his first Bachelors' degrees in mathematics and electronics before age 10, then his first PhD at age 12 in general physics, then high energy physics at age 14, then geophysics at age 16, and engineering of industrial complexes at age 18. He was the first American to obtain a diploma in the brand new 'Sciences of terraforming and ecological decontamination' at age 21 from Imperial College in London. From that point, he had been hand-picked to participate in the design and construction of the first massive, iconic 'Climate Recycling Tower' that lined the two oceanic coasts of America and had begun sprouting up around other countries since. After completing the first tower's design at age 26 and the construction by age 34, the man had been chosen by the UEO to run WPP in its entirety.
In fact, Lucas got his centrist politics and philosophy from both of them in equal measure, since Stanford hadn't taught him anything valuable on those fronts. They were in fact far more liberal and left-leaning than Lucas was naturally comfortable with, but the sciences and medicines he wanted to study and practice were at their best on that specific campus, so he attended there. If he had decided by orientation and inclination, he would have preferred going to a smaller campus, probably in a European zone like France or Germany as he spoke the languages since an early age. However, the changes in political and social climates of those countries made permanent residency for a small, isolated jewish boy hazardous, so he 'resigned' himself to Stanford, which was only the eleventh choice on his list. At least it was where Lawrence had studied two of his PhD's in early adolescence, so he still had old teachers and graduated colleagues who worked there as a support network for Lucas.
{ SQ } - { A hot friggin' mess } - { SQ }
Closing his virtual eyes as he tried to regulate his breathing and center his mind, Lucas could not figure out if he were genuinely happy about the real life he had, or if he was actually sad about all that he had left in the Void. One thing was sure though, he was glad to have kind, reliable family around him for support.
But still, Reality and Truth would stop for no one.
While he may have lucked out in the kindred department, the kidnapping and the sims had showed him that his life was filled with enemies that he had simply been ignorant of, or unable to perceive mostly because he was not trained, and had not been looking for them yet. Given a few of the more deleterious maneuvers he had done in the Dark Web over the last years, since Wolenbahn was created, he knew that he had troubles coming, he just trusted the World Bank's diplomatic immunity to take care of it.
Now though, the fullness of the gameboard he had been playing on was revealed, as were the rules and the other players. All the 'treaty' and 'safety' periods were done, he had to rub elbows with the big boys or lay down and let himself be victimized, without any payment to boot. Well no; he wouldn't be a victim for anybody anymore.
The revocation of the UN after the attack of 2001-Sept-11 and it's subsequent conversion towards the UEO Alliance in 2003 was a bloody mess that had "introduction to tyranny 101" written all over it. Lucas was pretty sure that copying the USA's two-step electoral college system to create the executive cabinet at the top of the structure was a bad idea, as evidenced by all the malversations that mechanism had produced in the last five decades. Unfortunately, the Republicans had been ascendant for that period of unrest and national rage, so they took advantage of the mess to kill planetary democracy.
The new UEO had done a few good things, like maintaining the building of the climate recyclers and World Power Plant, imposing tougher standards for both private and commercial maritime and aerial vehicles, as well as creating the basic laws & borders of the new undersea territories available for colonization. In short, there wasn't supposed to be an 'international' zone of land or water left where criminals could go commit their misdeeds and be truly 'out of legal bounds' from anybody. This was supposed to protect the weakest countries from cartels and gangs that used to kidnap and remove their victims from the state limits so they could be killed & dumped without being tracked by police, or worried about being arrested.
In reality, recent statistics revealed that the UEO's brand of justice was actually more in line with a group of corporate mercenaries since they only had two main components; the Service Fleet and the Military Police. Basically, the UEO was nothing but a glorified military pact with a few commercial and political annexes tacked onto the main contract. Nothing in the Alliance was written to manage the civilian lives and rights of the people on the territories covered, as the agreement stipulated that those troubles remained exclusively 'national jurisdiction' for the individual members inside of each Confederation.
In fact, one of the most visible negative points of the UEO Alliance was the disbanding of the International Penal Tribunal in The Hague, and it being replaced by the 'terror & anarchy suppression court' which worked behind closed doors. None of the trials were accessible to the open public, nor the medias, and Iegor Desdensky had confirmed to him last year that not all defendants were allowed an attorney or council, even if the court's own protocols demanded that ALL suspects or known convicts be represented by a professional lawyer, without exception.
The second problematic point was that this Military Police often tried to bullshit the police forces of smaller countries into thinking that they were the natural step above the municipal – province – federal style of national structure that was common. The ship captains and mission commanders had gotten the nasty habit of trying to either con or strong-arm the locals into ceding jurisdiction of investigations that were not in any ways international, or worse yet, declaring as 'terrorist' or 'military matter' a slew of petty crimes, misdemeanors and juvenile delinquencies that usually never went elsewhere than the local courthouse for a fine or community work.
This hard-right slide towards an abusive militarization of policing at all levels of territory, structure or activity could be seen as the natural outwards expansion of America's own over-arming of small town cops and private security companies. Following 2001-Sept-11, the entire USA were now afraid of another major attack coming into the homeland, and that meant the politos worried of having enemies exist long enough to build a strike force capable of punching through 'Citadel America'. Therefore, the internal movement of overarming cops and deregulating private security, or even PMC's (Private Military Company), saw an instinctive transition through the national borders and out towards the new UEO and any allies the USA could influence directly. In fact, one of the fundamental paradigms of the newly enacted Confederations who served as building blocks of the UEO was the strengthening of all policing, military and anti-terrorist forces and laws, as sine qua non condition for membership.
The North-American Confederation composed of Canada, USA and Mexico had slowly been turning itself into a cheap knock-off copy of what China spent the last 80 years becoming. However, the NAC was in fact succeeding at the job far better than either Russia's block or the North Koreans, and Iran whose partners were actually dragging them back into openness.
Lucas was not in any ways convinced that these 'Confederations' were anything else than a boondoggle meant to separate the lower, poorer people from the capacity to influence directly who was elected at the top, and for what reason. Immediately, the destruction of the IPT and it's replacement by a closed committee of army stooges rang alarm bells for anybody with an iota of education. All the other things being done in the name of 'planetary safety' and 'reliable global economy' just sounded fake, or so damned contrived that he was reminded of the speeches from Goebbels that were shown in the History Channel's WW-II documentaries. All of this smelled of fascism, or at least a totalitarian-leaning view of how to manage society and international relations.
How much would it take for it all to become a distopian hell-world?
At least, now, Lucas was aware of the dangers looming around him, and he also had a few vague ideas of what was happening in the shadows. If he remembered the simulations well, there were hints hidden in the utterly psychedelic things that had happened.
While there were no physical chances for a 'Papal Lord Amerikus' to be enacted this soon in the current century, there were plenty of signs coming from Washington DC and the state capitals that religious fanatics and their neoconservative minions were pining aloud for a return to the 1950's, if not farther backwards. Then you add the defective fools from the thousands of QAnon conspiracy groups who were screaming for an inquisition to destroy the Satan worshiping pedophile democrats without allowing them any sort of trial or public audit before punting them to jail or the gallows. Despite not seeing an actual theocracy taking over the country in the near future, Lucas could still find plenty of signs that society and government were rapidly degrading, and civility was becoming extinct.
Something would have to be done to keep this entire mess from getting worse. Strangely enough, the thirteen year old boy had the weird feeling that it would rest on his shoulders to fix things, if he wanted them to not worsen into outright Capharnaum.
Highly placed enemies
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 23:06pm
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 20:06pm
UEO Drydock 1500-A
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
The massive gray-blue hull of the SeaQuest DSV was slowly maneuvering inside the cement caisson to park for the coming week of post-action reports and resupply while Andrea Dre looked down into the deep water basin from her perch, high in the command tower's bay window. Standing next to her was captain Oliver Hudson, who had just been promoted to the rank in order to take over the dockyards due to security deficiencies by the civilian contractor who had initially run the outfit since it was built.
The secretary general of the UEO Alliance was secretly very scared of what the ship carried.
She couldn't say it out loud, of course, but she felt it in her bones.
Doctor Lucas Andrew Holtzenstein Wolenczak.
The World Bank's external consultant-director of transaction security and military web Tier-3 protocols.
One of the planet's best engineers of software or computer parts, especially for medical systems.
Which he had demonstrated just a few months ago with his neural interface when he awoke a poor woman that had been comatose for nearly nine years. Not only did he manage to rouse her back amongst the living, he had also succeeded in attenuating the psychosomatic symptoms caused by being inert and insensate for so long. The boy had even suggested two small surgeries that the patient agreed to immediately, thus getting back the use of her arms, despite the damages to her spinal column. She stayed crippled from the waist down, but had full mobility and sensitivity in both arms and head, so it was a clear win compared to the previous state of things.
Andrea Dre was not amazed at the feat like the common plebes had been. The lefties and Democrats in Stanford all saw a medical miracle to be hailed and held aloft on the public square, for everybody to see and admire. She saw the future of societal control and management. A future where there were no traitors or seditious elements, crime was eliminated at the very root, and equal education for all was an accomplished fact of life.
The neural interface was the key to ushering in the new Age of Unified Reasoning.
The geeks would shorten it and say "the Borg Collective", but she didn't care if it was true.
The only thing that mattered was doing it on the planetary level, before one of the countries like China or Russia did it and then whelmed an army of unfeeling drones to attack the rest of humanity. The name of the game was speed & surprise. Thankfully, she had an ace up her sleeve, in the form of several men placed in the UEO Military Police & court that would insure things went the way she planned: towards a better ordered, harmonious civilization devoid of conflicts or dissent.
Now, all she had to do was complete her plan to kidnap and execute the Confederation leaders, to be afforded Wartime Emergency Powers, and she could roll out the second phase unhindered. With the boy already captive in one of her many secret island jails, he would work and produce as told, simply because he would never know the truth of what was happening outside his building. He would be fed propaganda and drugs in equal parts until he was exactly the kind of docile, obedient puppet McGrath had wanted to make, but been too stupid to achieve.
She would succeed where all others failed.
The world would finally be in Total Peace.
Her Peace. The only version that mattered.
x-x
Captain Hudson was looking down at the massive behemoth that was maneuvering beneath the waters of the holding caisson, making movements more precise than anything that size should have the right to be able to do without being pushed by tugboats. Even 15 years after she was put in the water, the large boat had a way of making veteran sailors feel a shiver of -something- ooze down their spine when they saw her shadow gliding just under the waves.
Hudson studiously ignored the woman who was supposedly his superior in the UEO hierarchy. He had received a message from admiral Noyce that bode ill for the coming days, to the point that Section-7 agents and MP officers had been deployed all around the drydock. If the captain could read the weather rightly, the woman wouldn't be free for much longer, so her opinions didn't matter anymore.
He knew she wasn't armed, and she had no combat training. The take-down should be easy, unless she had secreted a vial of chemicals in her clothing. The kid brainiac they were bringing in had a nasty habit of doing just that, so maybe Dre had taken example from him. The soldiers would have to be careful when executing the warrant.
The elevator behind them made a chime to indicate the doors were opening, allowing the porcine rotundness of William Allard Boyd Noyce to enter the command deck for the entire dockyard. The man wore the standard two-piece beige suit that was the UEO military's day uniform for high officers, with a white button shirt and beige forage cap atop his bald head. He was escorted by two young men dressed in all-black uniforms who walked two paces behind him at all times when they left the lift cabin.
"Andrea Dre," Noyce began in an unreadable tone, "I did not expect to see you here today. I never took you for a boat aficionado, let alone a SeaQuest fan. Color me curious, my dear secretary general."
Frowning at Noyce's rather daring tone and manners, the blond woman glared at him, silently trying to divine the many meanings behind his curt speech. Giving it up as a bad job, Dre replied "They are carrying a person for whom The World Bank has made a great deal of noise and trouble. Despite his familial relations, he did not seem to be that important, in the scheme of things. I want to meet this boy myself, to see what we are working with. Or against, depending how sane he still is."
Noyce smirked nastily as he dropped the bomb on the ignorant woman; "Oh, he's sane alright! He's been talking with the SeaQuest crew since about an hour out of Pensacola's harbor, and has even managed to take back control of his accounts and corporate affairs out of the hands of McGrath's minions that were spoofing the systems. Yes, his flesh body is still in the tube, but his mind is awake, sane, and working harder than ever at solving humanity's multiple crises."
Andrea couldn't repress the shudder of fear that crawled down her spine upon hearing that. If the little bastard was already awake, then what did that mean for her plans? And how could the child wake from the drugs and electronic devices that kept him comatose? Didn't McGrath have his mind wiped? There shouldn't have been anything left of him to even drool on his own, let alone think or socialize!
"How did that happen?" Dre queried bluntly. "It was written in the preliminary reports that McGrath had probably made his techs wipe the kid's mind, like formatting a hard disk in a CPU, to install a new OS and apps. Did they? And if so, how could a mere boy resist such a process?"
Shrugging the question off, Noyce replied instead "You'll get your answers when you speak with him in person. He sent me a message that he had priority information to impart on both of us at the same time. That meeting should be informative, as well as entertaining."
Again, Dre couldn't repress the shudder of dread in her spine. She knew what Noyce considered as 'entertaining' and wanted no part of it, if it could be avoided. However, she also could tell that her bad luck would put her in the same room as the foul bestial man when his amusements began. What in bloody blue blazes could this boy be, or do, that William Noyce thought of him this way?
x-x
It was 23h30pm on Florida time when the much vaunted team of Andrea Dre, William Noyce and Oliver Hudson were given access to the SeaQuest, which had parked in its cradle in record time. The hum of the electricity in the armored wires was unnerving Andrea, as it reminded her of the terrible secret held deep in the belly of the metal monster: a cold fusion reactor. The only working model on the entire Earth to date, and not a single spy agency was aware of it yet.
Of all the coups done by the UEO, purchasing this boat on the fly had been the greatest. Not because of the depth it could dive, or the ICBM silos, or the six submarine shuttle parking silos already built into the frame, nor the magnificent computer core. No; the real masterful coup was getting their hands on the one and only fusion reactor that worked stably and reliably on the entire planet. With this they could equip a fleet of giant battleships that never stopped, build massive bases that didn't need to depend on a civilian power plant outside the walls, and send to orbit defense stations that would not need munitions since the power for the beam weapons would handle anything needed in combat.
Just like the Wolenczak boy, this ship was an important strategic asset for something far different than the first obvious detail people saw. Andrea quite liked it this way, and would not say aloud otherwise until it was time to unveil her great plan for the Age of Unified Reasoning. And that reveal would be done when the project was being put in place, with a few million people already linked and numerous new orbital bases active to push the signals, spy on enemies, and rain fire on all challengers.
If only she realized she wasn't the only one to think the same way anymore.
Lucas had cogitated a strategy in the same vein, with some rather large differences, though. He still did not believe in slavery or forced labor, but the simulations had broken the 'innocence' out of him. He now understood the value of rules that incorporated firmly applied consequences and punishments, up to and including the entire gamut of physical or psychological means. His version of society would see people free to chose what they did, and what consequence applied at each increment of proper or deviant behavior, and there would be no hidden or cloistered courts to judge events.
Yes, if Andrea Dre knew whom she was about to encounter, she would be running the other way never looking backwards, although she would never sleep at peace again in this life even if she did manage to avoid capture.
They took a short ride in the tower elevator followed by walking through an underground passage, then used a metallic connecting tube-corridor that hard-locked to the flank of the ship to pass people or cargo moved with single-pallet jiggers, making the resupplying almost three times faster than other boats. The three highly ranked officials and two S-7 agents walked in single file on the right of the corridor, a constant flow of crewmen in the left lane that seemed like a human train because they were so numerous. The exalted persons reached their goal on the sea-deck by 23h45pm, at long last.
{ SQ } - { An ill-fated meeting } - { SQ }
The sights that awaited them were almost alien. Between the moonpool's sloshing water and the blue glow emanating from the diverse parts of the neuroplexic array, with scores of flexible transparent pipes and wires that also glowed an ethereal silver-blue shade spread over the deck grates, they could be forgiven for thinking they were on an alien starship.
In the very middle of all things was the long and wide horizontal cylinder of blue liquid that held the sleeping child's flesh body. It was surrounded by the fully deployed network; servers, signal amplifiers, crafting modules and two holo-projectors, with the control chair set aside from the ensemble.
Near the tube were standing three other people; captain Stark, commander Ford and doctor Durand.
Andrea Dre gave small nods of acknowledgment to her subordinates but ignored the female medic as she was just one of McGrath's lesser minions, and she wasn't long for this world. Once Noyce was done interrogating her, she would no doubt disappear to an anonymous island base, just like she planned for Lucas Wolenczak. It was such a pity that Noyce and her couldn't get along more; they shared so many of the best professional and strategic ideas that it should have worked from the start between them.
Madelyn Stark made a short, curt gesture towards the glass cylinder wrapped in machinery; "Madam secretary general of the UEO, this is doctor Lucas Wolenczak, the young man that had been kidnapped by general McGrath's criminal organization."
The two podiums at the foot of the cylinder lit up with a virtual animation of Lucas, showing him in a weird black & dark purple three-piece suit that looked like the naval military uniforms of the 1800's in the British Empire of yore. Or at least, a modernized 'steampunk' version of one. The highest political figure in the UEO walked forward to stand besides the nearest gaseous display, studying the figure that was being shown. "So, this is how he sees himself in his mind..." thought Andrea as she gleaned vital details from the imagery that others had disdainfully ignored.
The young, reedy voice of the inanimate teenager emerged from small speakers mounted into the frame of the sustention cylinder, holo-projectors, array caissons, and even the bigger, more powerful units for the public address system around sea-deck. This surprised Dre badly as she had forgotten that point of the brief she got earlier. "Good night to you all. I do apologize for having you come here so late into the night hours. You could have put back the meeting to the morning, after breakfast. I might even have been presentable, at that time." The boy snarked at them in a tone that was teasing, but with undercurrents of darkness and menace so thick it surprised the veteran sailors and politicians alike.
Andrea put on her blandest, most urbane facial expression to cover her sudden, instinctive fear as she let her eyes roam over the insensate, naked body floating inside the blue fluid. Then she turned to the animated image again, asking in fake gentleness "Is there anything I can do to help? I was told that your father has left WPP a few hours ago and will be picking up your mother in Buffalo before coming here to join you for your recovery. We will be hosting them in a secured UEO residential building for diplomats, to be sure something like this doesn't happen to them. We wouldn't want them to be held hostage against you, would we?"
Her answer was a cruel, bass laughter resonating all around the sea-deck as the image of the teenager was replaced by several films of the seditions, felonies and betrayals of Madelyn Stark, in partnership with her young lover and his clueless father. After fifteen minutes of different films, the boy's reedy voice boomed out loudly "What can you do to insure the safety of my family when you house traitors right in the midst of the planet's most powerful nuclear attack ship? She has been rotting your Alliance from within for YEARS already! And even her erstwhile collaborators, the Winters, have no idea they're being played like rank amateurs who were never trained for anything! Madelyn Stark has even had the gumption to try and threaten -ME- with dire consequences if I didn't help her steal the SeaQuest and retrofit the ship with stronger combat systems, including a laser array able to target your precious invisible stations in orbit! What do you plan to do about that, incompetent fool?"
Glaring at Madelyn Stark with unchained fury, secretary Dre ordered through clenched teeth "Arrest that traitorous bitch and place her in chains! Now! Get the MP's to extract those films and all other evidence from this system! I want an airtight case against her by the next sundown or I will know WHY!"
The two Section-7 agents moved to grab Stark when she pulled out a small device from her left sleeve and aimed right at Dre, triggering the single-use pulse weapon. The short, tightly confined beam went through Dre's chest like a red hot knife through the air, and continued through empty space behind her as Noyce and Hudson were side-by-side thus leaving an open spot right at her back. The harsh blue pulse echoed through the sea-deck's usual din, startling everybody worse than the shouted orders to arrest the ship's captain.
Madelyn Stark tried to make a run for it, just to ram into the hard-muscled chest of Jonathan Ford who had no intents to let the woman get away with either treason or murder. As the senior officer struggled to contain the raging woman who was in fact well trained for hand-to-hand fighting, the two S-7 agents moved in to help neutralize her. It took barely another minute for one of the agents to take out his stun baton to knock her out with an electric shock to the nape of the neck as she fought against the other two soldiers in a desperate attempt to escape.
When the foul captain fell to the deck inert, Ford quickly made his way to the side of Andrea Dre who was lying on the deck grates, on her right side, blood flowing out of her rapidly. By some miracle, the woman was still alive, as the beam had hit her thorax off-center to the right, punching through the internal face of the lung rather than the heart. Still, it was a jagged, torn wound that was leaking vital fluid at high speed, and even the best medics on ship would not be able to heal this in time to save her life. She was dead anyways, just not on impact as Ford had feared.
{ SQ } - { Tradecraft bluer than black } - { SQ }
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 00:22am
Western America; Friday 13th of July, 2018; 21:22pm
As the crew of SeaQuest got into action to contain their fallen captain and save the UEO Alliance's leader, the images in the holo-projectors changed again, this time showing the secret conversations of Andrea Dre and Malcolm Devries. When it became apparent just how they were planning to entrap the UEO council delegates to declare martial law then establish a totalitarian regime in the name of 'saving the planet from humanity's folly', things changed radically again.
Admiral Noyce ordered that all efforts to save the politician be stopped, to let her die so as to save the Alliance the efforts of a public trial. Then he ordered that everything that was done on sea-deck since he boarded ship was to be extracted from the servers and given to the UEO – MP's and FBI to make it all public. None of this mess would stay secret, and the populations of each country would get to make their choices, no matter what the politos and Confederation pit bosses wanted to manipulate.
In one last gasp of pain-filled red-phlegmed exhale, Andrea Dre expired, victim of a traitor that she herself had been planning to betray. The cruel irony was ignored by most, and savored by a select few who understood the reality of warfare in the shadows.
"Well, get those two feckless bitches off my deck!" Noyce shouted at the milling sailors, many of whom now looked utterly rudderless since both known bosses were down. "Get Dre to autopsy and Stark to the bloody brig! Do I have to tell you cads everything? Ford! Man up! Line up them mules in the traces and get the pack moving!"
"Sir! Yes, Sir!" commander Ford barked back, as he started ordering the crewmen and medics to their tasks with alacrity. The black-skinned male was now the senior-most officer in service aboard the ship, and he had to act like it, if he wanted to have a future in whatever organization followed next.
Fifteen minutes of rushed efforts saw both women removed from the sea-deck and a cleaning detail in place to mop-up the mess to keep the medical areas sanitary for their patient. During this time, Lucas had been conspicuously silent, observing the soldiers and noting their tasks, along with performance and improvements that could be done. The young teen was roughly brought out of tactical planning by the act of Noyce pounding a meaty fist on the side of the fluid-filled tube to get his attention.
"Ye poundeth me gates, barbarian?" quipped Lucas in amusement at the older man's angry disposition.
"Ah! I'll show you barbarity, boy! You think you're so bright and intelligent, but don't you go thinking you can run a black op in my garden without me knowing about it!" the admiral accused as he wagged a finger at the inert flesh body. "I bloody well know you planned all this to knock those two jacked-up cunts off their pedestals! No two ways about it!"
Humming thoughtfully, Lucas agreed readily; "Why, yes, I did plan it out this way. It was even me that supplied Madelyn Stark with the small one-shot 'last call' beamer she killed Dre with." In a coy fashion, the boy asked "Do you object? I was unaware that the good secretary still had uses..."
Huffing swinishly, Noyce shrugged it off, neither impressed nor bothered. What were some wetworks between conspiring parties, anyways? Just business as usual in his world. "Nay, I had about enough of the gormless sow. But, she still had a few weeks in her. Why did you pull the trigger so soon? She wasn't an active threat to you. Not that I could see..."
Lucas replied easily "She was planning to take over the world by using my psychotronic devices to brain-jack people like organic robots. She wanted to bring about the birth of 'The Borg' to serve her and whatever faith, creed and causes she was pushing. I could not allow her to succeed, not only for the planet, but for my personal safety and freedom. After all, the very first person she would need to enslave to insure the success of this plan is me. She would no doubt have convinced Desdensky and my parents to let her put me in a 'safe' secluded island, somewhere out of the way, then I would have been bound to obey and produce devices for her, for the rest of my life."
Noyce nodded at the kid's evaluation of the situation he had faced, and the solution he used. It was both truthful and logical. He had known that Andrea Dre wasn't clean for a while now, but his infiltrators hadn't yet found the dirt she was hiding. She had been good, and surrounded by very loyal followers who seemed to be motivated by reasons other than just money or Power. Now, with the help of the young doctor, they could finally pierce this veil of secrecy and get the straight facts in the open.
"Do you have more proofs than what you showed? I might need to act on some of it right away, to keep the blasted pot from boiling over into a friggin' war."
Lucas made a noncommittal noise, answering sparsely "I have several things, but none that connect to the greater web of Reality outside of Dre's personal field. She had contacts with an occult group that was sponsoring her political goals and a few side-ventures, but she never spoke their name aloud, as she knew the person face-to-face for several years. We are going to need to identify that geriatric crud, or else they'll just replace Dre with a different puppet. However, it wasn't from this group that the scheme to kidnap the UEO Council members came. They were not the ones that pushed for a new, totalitarian version of the Alliance Charter. If we can't figure out who actually did, then we'll be stuck in a rut, hitting at phantasms and shadows without ever knowing if our targets are real or imagined."
Bill rubbed thick, meaty fingers over his chin, wondering in low voice "Should I ask Janet to involve some of her old friends? That seems like a good reason to have a backyard bake, if you get my drift..."
Lucas replied firmly "I would advise you to not trust electronic comms for this sort of thing. The cabal that originally financed Andrea has fingers in all the topmost levels of government, and I expect they have obtained hidden back-doors into the USA's intel networks. You should consider Echelon, Kaleidoscope, CODIS, the Armed Services Registry, and most of the civil databases like the IRS and Social Security to already be compromised, amongst innumerable others. This group that was backing Dre, was also controlling three of the financiers behind Malcolm Devries, and what I managed to wiretap from Winters Industries indicates they guided Joshua Winters to accept that the UEO use his derelict oil platforms to build and launch their space station modules from out of sight. From what I can see, they had a long term, over-arching plan, but lost control over Dre along the way due to her own internal delusions of Power Penultimate."
Noyce nodded slowly, the big picture forming in his mind as the boy detailed things. "So, they have friends in low places, plugging taps into wires, antennae, and maybe even reading physical mail before it reaches the recipient. A good old fashioned shadow war, right in my house. Whelp, not if I can make them stop." Looking at the inert face of the flesh body besides him, the admiral asked in low voice "Are you going to help just a bit, or all the way? Cuz it'll get fugly before sun-up, I tell you that much."
Surprising the older male, the cylinder full of blue liquid began to move. Rolling forward and away from the neuroplexic array, the four large wheels under the carriage rearranged to permit the tube to pivot upwards and forward, while four small guide wheels deployed from underneath, placing themselves so that the entire contraption stood upright on eight solid, stable rollers. From the back of the sustention pod, the wires and pipes sang with energy as commands ran from Lucas' mind to the servers and then the ship's own systems before everything loudly popped out of their sockets, letting the massive three-ton cylinder assembly roll freely around sea-deck.
Without warning, the glowing tube rolled around the right arm of the array, aiming towards one specific woman, a caucasian white techie that had been amongst McGrath's minions that had been brought from the Jepsen Bastion when they exfil-ed Lucas to safety. The nine foot tall yellow machine stopped barely a foot from the gawking female, then unfolding a pair of articulated hydraulic arms from the side of the pipe that was usually the 'under' beneath the fluid chamber. The right arm reached out to grab the stunned woman by the neck, clamping mercilessly and dragging her towards the tube, raising her to be at eye level with the insensate teen inside.
Except that he wasn't insensate or inert anymore.
The fearful woman was now looking into the ethereally glowing blue eyes of a fully awake and aware adolescent genius, whom in turn was glaring at her with the sort of malevolence that normally ended with somebody feeding Billy's pigs from the inside of their guts. The left arm of the machine moved outwards and up, to bring its four-fingered maniple next to her temple, the articulated razor-sharp digits opening to reveal a much shorter metal cone inside the claw. On the small cone opened a single diminutive hole that let unspool a thin glowing wire made from the proprietary synthetic blue crystal alloy created by Lucas last year. The filament moved on its own, sinuously like a snake that was tasting the air around itself before deciding which way to strike.
And strike it did.
Right through the shrieking woman's ear, eardrum, inner ear and finally the auditive nerve, following that all the way into the brain's central processing zone. From there, the wire began to worm around the organ, sliding between the structures without causing any damages whatsoever, the energy coated crystal gently pushed aside the cells to allow its passage without inflicting organic trauma to the poor, unfortunate fool that suffered awake and aware the entire process.
Inside his tube, Lucas turned to gaze indolently upon William Noyce who had walked to stand on his left side, to watch events, and also order the sailors and techs to not interfere, just on a gut feeling that this was important to what they had been speaking of.
The teenager blithely told the older man "This bint was one of Euphemia Durand's subordinates, and supposedly afraid of McGrath. However, she also carried a small, highly encrypted cellphone that was programmed to access a hidden back-door in Fort Dempsey's classified servers, then route her signal to the NSA antennae on site. All of this, of course, without ever warning anybody it was happening. The problem is this; neither NSA, CIA, FBI, DXS, NCIS, nor in fact any of the law or intel agencies in the USA know this woman. She is not in any of the official employee logs, nor in the undercover agent files. I had my bot-net check through the other channels that I can access due to my Diplomatic Privilege from The World Bank, and still nothing. No country claims her, not even by back-channels."
Nodding, Noyce asked "Okay, but why not let my people handle her? Did you just want to make a demonstration of your machine's abilities?" The old man gestured towards the crewmen gathered on the other side of the moonpool, backing away from the terrible spectacle in fright. "Or was it just to show the scared rats that you have the balls to finish the job all the way? That wetworks don't bother you?" It was an interesting question, and the admiral dearly wanted the answer so he could profile the boy better.
Lucas directed his gaze back to the woman's pain-contorted face, and events unfolding in cyberspace, replying aloud "No, I don't care for either. I would prefer to keep the capacities of my equipment secret, and I have no use for the opinions of underlings whose lot in life is to follow orders from whoever wags their tail the hardest."
Inside the tube, the boy moved his left arm, pointing at his shrieking and shivering victim, "Her phone has the same encryption that the occult group used to communicate with Andrea Dre, Joshua Winters, and a few others that I will mention only once we are alone, in a discrete and confidential setting. This cold bint is the best clue as to the identity of this group, and their ultimate goals, and I am not trusting anybody with this delicate task but my own self, and my reserved private devices."
Nodding in agreement, the admiral declared loud enough to be heard over the low gurgling noises of the woman who was now reduced to a drooling, spasming mess of soiled flesh, "Aye, do it and get me the information out of her damned head! I want to know who McGrath was in bed with!"
Hearing this, doctor Euphemia Durand strutted forward, full of her own importance and doctoral might, to protest, and hopefully stall, this disaster long enough to kill the foolish girl to protect their group's valuable secrets. She was a low-paid minion, but she still knew a few things about Codex and it would be calamitous if these confidential things were to fall in the porcine paws of William Noyce, or worse, reach the ears of their ancient enemy, the Department of External Services.
Unfortunately, doctor Durand yet again misread the social and military situation because she was more focused on her own power and self-image than watching out for Reality. Lucas Wolenczak may be a child, but he had genuine, materially applicable Power, and he knew how and when to use it for both survival and profit. The moment the insipid, arrogant bitch was ten feet away from the autonomous machinery that held Lucas safe and mobile, a pair of smaller articulated arms deployed from the 'rear' of the tube. These however did not have clawed maniples, each ending instead with a simple round metal pipe, otherwise known as a 'muzzle', as in a weapon's business side.
Euphemia Durand was blasted by the right-side phonon disruptor for a full second, long enough to stun her senseless, and throw her back six feet in the air to smack down noisily on the floor at the end of the trajectory.
The sailors and techs still present in the vast room to witness the event were all looking in fear upon the mechanized child who was mind-raping one of the Jepsen Bastion traitors the same way that people pass the vacuum cleaner around their apartment: with boredom and nary a thought for the moral importance of the act. Then he used an eerie weapon to blast away the strutting slut Durand with the same effort that a cow's tail swats away flies. Scared even worse, everybody instinctively moved backwards until their backs were against the far bulkhead of the room, putting as much distance between them, the monstrous child and his unnatural, evil contraptions, but nobody tried to help Durand where she lay.
Will Noyce saw the collective movement of fear and could not help himself; he laughed. A deep, slow, cruel belly laugh that came from the depths of his guts, coming out bass and cold and malevolent. His reaction made the crewmen even more afraid, and many would decide to quit the service rather than work besides criminally insane beasts like these two walking depravities.
Each sailor who quit would be investigated and acted upon as needed, by both Noyce and Lucas, and each would judge the fleeing soldiers according to their own criteria and necessities. Not a single one would survive this cold, calculative judgment.
"Noyce!" Lucas harshly whispered. Then the boy disconnected his tube from the speakers around both sea-deck and the neuroplexic array, wanting privacy for this. "I have the name and goals of the group."
Noyce came close enough to put his right ear against the glass panel on the flank of the cylinder, due to the boy's young, reedy voice not being that loud to begin with and the fluid was dampening a great deal of it to boot.
Moving inside the sustention liquid, Lucas approached the left side of the pipe, speaking in slow clear words "They are called 'Codex' and are supposed to be very old, antiquated even. This traitor heard from other members that they claimed to be active for six centuries, since the 1400's. Their goal is to save the Earth from the idiocies of monarchs and priests, especially climate change by stopping or reversing global warming. Their cause is based on some unspecified source material that proclaims they have to kill-off a quarter of living humans to stop enough industries and pollution to have an effective impact on the warming's sources. Besides that, they push on green technologies, renewable resources, and non-polluting industrial processes. One thing told to all new Codex members is that they financed the construction of the 'Climatic Recycling Towers', after managing the design process since its inception at Stanford University."
Lucas withdrew the crystal wire from the woman's head in a single, vicious snapping movement that made the energized filament act like a laser blade, cutting her head in half as it freed itself from the organic confines. The left arm folded back as the right arm threw the dead corpse over the moonpool, all the way to the group of cowering fools at the back of the deck.
The boy dunked the metal claw in the salt water of the pool to clean it of fluids and offal left by the gory execution, then retracted the arm into its housing. "There are a few more details, but I will need some time to fully decompress and analyze everything so I don't miss a vital thing. What I do know that you should be aware of, is that this group considers the DXS as their Nemesis since the early 1900's, but the reasons were not told to the woman. She was a peon; a low-paid, no-importance nobody whose job was to assist McGrath because the group had influenced his thoughts and actions into building this secret project in Fort Dempsey. They wanted eyes on their investment because the general was too unstable and violent to be left without a manager present on site to hold his hand. However, the woman also accidentally found out that the Bastion had been used before, for similar projects that were also under the influence of this 'Codex' group in multiple fashions."
Noyce rubbed his chin again, wondering in soft words but trusting that the boy's microphones would pick it up cleanly "That name, 'Codex', it sounds like a sect or a cult. Like the Illuminati thingie that always crops up every fifty-odd years or so. I'll look into it on my end, as I suppose you will. As for the DXS being their Nemesis, you'll be able to ask them in person when they get here. I guess it was a good thing that you called them as early as you did... Humm?"
Lucas replied "I never heard of them prior to McGrath having them included in the sims his workers forced into my brain. I was curious about them, especially this agent Angus MacGyver who seems to be woefully under-utilized in the job he has. I may have been planning some head-hunting, and using my current situation as brain-bait to have the man's attention was just a good bit of luck."
Huffing in amusement at the boy's amateur plotting, and it was well planned in fact, the old admiral turned around to walk towards the exit, waving over his shoulder as he left. "Get out of that gettup and come find me in NCQ when you're dry and clothed. I dun'na want to see where them pipes are plugged on you! Don't worry, I'll make time for you."
Snorting in amusement of his own, Lucas replied gamely "Make sure to have some of Janet's cake for the meal! I want some sugar to replenish my energy after being drained like a battery for a month inside this metallic doomsday can on wheels."
"Bah! T'is a mess of yar own makin' boyo! If you didn't want to steep in it, you shouldn't have built it!" the admiral laughed at him as he passed the door out of the large chamber, leaving the youth to handle the rest of the mess in progress.
Sighing deeply inside his liquid domain, Lucas pivoted his cylinder towards the cowering crewmen and shouted at them to get back to work or he'd zap them until they looked lively enough to not be thought dead or unconscious. One poor sod was given the task to mop-up the traitor woman's head pieces while another had the not-at-all less messy job of removing her corpse from the deck grates for autopsy. The fool woman, Euphemia Durand, was beginning to wake up when she was grabbed by a pair of stout men who frog-marched her to stand in front of the nightmarish mobile cylinder, to be glared at by Lucas who was no longer hiding from anybody just how awake and active he truly was.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't the head lap-bitch herself... I want to speak with you..." Lucas said harshly as the two articulated arms extended from their housing again, making the weak-willed woman howl in miserable fright and fall unconscious before the boy could actually do anything to her.
Blinking in surprise because he had never in his life had this effect on anybody before, the teen forgot he was inside the tube and instinctively ran his right hand through his hair, the machinery's own arm following suit by connectivity reflex. The two sailors stayed close-mouthed at the darkly comical display, just as afraid as their prisoner but having the training and gumption to face it awake, at least.
Sighing in resignation, Lucas gestured vaguely with the left arm of his automaton, telling the sailors to have the dumb felon housed in the brig with Madelyn Stark and the others until he had time to waste on keeping her awake long enough to answer his questions. Maybe she'd be less cowardly when he was out of the cylinder? One could hope.
Now, if only Luxis could stop running sarcastic commentary in the back of his mind, things would be peachy again in his life. Fat chance of that happening, but 'hope springs eternal...' and all that rot.
New allies and ancient foes
(MacGyver – opening theme 2016)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 08:00am
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 05:00am
DXS plane, in-flight
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
James MacGyver took a small sip of his coffee as he read through the emails and inter-agency memos that had accumulated in the 'regular' classified section of his tablet, since he had taken care of those messages needing the SCIFF earlier, just before breakfast. Sighing in tiredness, James felt weariness due to the nearly sleepless night he had just passed. He had one of the twelve bunks reserved for himself in the back of the plane, just like the rest of the field team, and had managed to get around three hours of shut-eye, but not by much. Too many stresses from the mission to be done, plus the idiocies coming out of Washington DC, plus the recent disagreements with Angus because of his friend being killed by Elliot Mason in that elevator with that trap...
Yeah, he was getting too old for this shit, then you add the cancer and chemotherapy on top...
The older man ran a tired hand through his short-cut silver hair as he sipped a bit more coffee, watching his emails pass in front of him without really seeing the contents. Besides the personal problems, this job had all the earmarks of a clusterfuck in progress, and getting worse by the second.
Apparently, the kid genius was awake, fully cognizant, and already mobile enough to kill people whom he accused of being in cahoots with McGrath or his backers. Plus, they had been advised about the arrest of Madelyn Stark and death of Andrea Dre at her traitorous hands. Everything in the UEO was going down the crapper at flanking speed, and all the Alliance Council could do was say "Marvelous!" as if it really were a good thing.
Closing the messaging app, James laid his head back against the stuffed backrest of his chair, trying to close his eyes for a few minutes to steal a cat-nap while he could. The rest of the field team would be waking up in an hour, maybe less, so he could afford it.
The old spymaster did manage to get a few winks, but he got no rest as his dreams were filled with ethereous unpleasant moving shapes, all sounding like dire warnings of things to come.
x-x
Back at the rear of the 200 foot long tri-jet plane, Wilt Bozer was waking up from his restful ten hours of sleep, a luxury he could afford since he was far less technically able than the rest of the team, so he wasn't as necessary for all the medical and cybernetic stuff. His poor pseudo-brother Angus had not had the same luck; he was too good at too many things so he'd been asked his opinion about pretty much every part of the mission before he was allowed to retire for some rest. Riley had gotten hijacked by the network & software specialists just as badly as Angus, so they both had a very late night, going to bed well passed 01h00am.
Yawning widely, the young black man rubbed a hand over his goatee as he climbed out of his lower bunk to go for a first mug of coffee before he took a shower, with breakfast afterwards. As he stood up and looked around the semi-dark compartment, he smirked as he saw that Angus and Riley had decided to share a top bunk together, because the bed reserved for Riles had ended up being used as extra storage for their most sensitive tools and parts. Normally they would use one of the twelve beds and floor space for piling up their mission-specific kits, but today they had more people aboard than beds, plus as many in the second jet following them, so 'sacrifices' were needed.
Laughing silently, Bozer walked away, finding it funny that Mac and Ri were acting so proper about it, each wrapping themselves in their own blankets so they didn't accidentally touch skin when they moved during their usually very animated sleep. Both friends had been traumatized a lot in their young lives to date, so Wilt wasn't surprised anymore by how much moving, tossing and turning they both did during an average night. However, by what he saw this morning, the pair seemed to have found a position that helped them to stay asleep restfully without their anticipated nightmares bothering them. Then again, if Boze was spooning Riley from behind like that, he'd be sleeping well too!
Snorting softly in amusement as he thought of what kinds of blushing faces the two rather shy friends would make when they realized just how cozy they'd been for the night, the young adult left the bunkie to go for the kitchen. Unfortunately, that was when he encountered their fellow agent Desiree Nguyen, wrapped in a short brown bathrobe, who was coming back from her shower. She instinctively followed his gaze up to the bunk where the other two were sleeping heavily, dead to the world for a good while yet, and frowned at the sight. Wilt knew that she wasn't actually interested in Mac, but she did find the 'almost family' atmosphere of their group to be a bit smothering, and invasive on occasion. The pre-existing relationship between Angus and Wilt was almost too much familiarity for the woman's view of how spies should be running their careers and team missions, meaning anonymously and detached from any other human connections.
What Jack ever saw in her was still a mystery after more than six months together. Yes, she was competent as a soldier and spy, her tradecraft was well above par, and she could drive like Jack used to when they were in hot pursuit, but her personality still clashed coldly with the way the team and Matty were used to running hot, both in field and at home. And James being Mac's father, plus Matty's prior relationship with the older man, had added extra layers of discontent to the young female's angst.
Pursing her lips in disapproval, Desi grumped in a low voice "They could have brought less stuff or found a way to stow it down in the cargo hold. There's still space between some of the fixed modules that could have been used to pack duffels and small crates, so their totes and backpacks would easily have fit. Then they wouldn't have had to short themselves on sleep quality and be half-dead all day."
Huffing softly in disagreement, Bozer countered as kindly as he could "Girl, I don't think you see with the same eyes as everybody else! Look at 'em! Do they seem to be uncomfortable or ill rested? In fact, despite their shorter night, I bet they're better rested than you and me. I didn't get woken up by Mac's tossin' a single time tonight, so that says something right there."
Not happy with that answer but not showing why, Desi replied "It says something alright..."
Deciding to call it quits before he got into an argument near the other sleeping agents, Bozer turned around to go fetch that coffee. He was gonna need all his wits about him soon. While he would not be involved in the medical and technical aspects of the mission, it would be his exclusive task to corral the boy's parents into a room and control them for the duration. The two adults had to be interrogated about who could want to harm their son, or them through him, and find out any things that the family kept hidden from public view. Besides the kid's obviously powerful and dangerous inventions, there could be another, unseen, event at play.
Armed with his mug of liquid courage, Wilt went back to his bunk to grab his day clothes and toiletries, crossing paths with Desi who was dressed and grumpier than before. Ignoring the woman, he walked towards the pair of bunks their team had taken, only to see what had made the asian girl moody. Angus had slightly released his death-grip on his sheets so he could put out his arms to wrap himself around Riley, who had turned around toward him to bury her face into his neck. Both young adults looked to be having a truly peaceful rest, for once in a long time.
Wilt silently adjusted their clock to wake them in another half-hour, just long enough for a short shower and a hot meal before the plane landed at NCQ's military airport, less than thirty minute's drive from the shipyards where the SeaQuest was berthed. They would have a stop at a secured building near the drydock to unpack their gear, establish their field medical ward and prep the rooms for all the agents as they were expecting to stay at least six days to finish everything correctly. After that, the kid would probably get sent to an exclusive private hospital with his parents escorting him. At that point, it was pretty much a given that neither DXS nor anybody else would be wanted in the family's lives as they recovered from the ordeal.
Sipping warm coffee, Bozer grabbed his kit and headed for the cluster of four wet baths to wash-up and prep for the long, arduous day ahead of them. Blergh! Medical problems and hospitals always made him remember all the times Mac got banged-up and had to stay in bed to recover. Not happy times...
{ SQ } - { Cynthia and Lawrence reunion } - { SQ }
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 08:30am
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 05:30am
Cynthia Holtzenstein did not like to fly.
It was a point of much amusement in her small family that she tried everything in her power to avoid traveling by airplane to go anywhere. She used every type of ground transport ever made, could handle a boat ride like a pro even in a bad storm, and learned to ride a horse as a child because she had been to a private secondary school that still taught a few hold-over skills from the old epochs as electives. But she hated airplanes with multiple passions. So, it was a truly momentous event that had forced the woman to embark on a privately chartered Lear Jet to reach Miami International Airport in record time.
Getting her son kidnapped and out of view for a month would do that to a mother.
The fact she had her husband's arm to cling to for the flight helped her a great deal. She wasn't so sure about the functionality of the poor man's arm after that ordeal, but they'd find a way to cope.
Lawrence had been over the Atlantic Ocean in the private plane granted to the position of Head Manager for the World Power Project. The moment he got the call from admiral Noyce, he had called his wife and had her pack for the emergency trip down south to NCQ. So, instead of disembarking at Buffalo to go home for two weeks of rest, Lawrence had waited inside the plane as it refueled and took on fresh water and foodstuffs for the new trip. Cynthia had arrived in a taxi and been passed through security easily as she was taking a charter flight, not a commercial one.
The problem was her phobia of flying, which was actually an extension of her fear of heights and falling down to a resplendently messy 'splat!'. The solution had been to make the poor woman, already scared and emoting from what happened to her son, swallow a pair of Gravol tablets to make her sleep for the few hours of flight. Lawrence, being a good husband, never told her about having dissolved the tablets in the glass of iced lemon Sprite he served her the moment she set foot aboard, supposedly to help settle her nerves for the take-off.
He was telling the truth, just not all of it.
As a lawyer, she should approve of his verbal cunning.
Yeah... Maybe not, but he wouldn't be telling her any time soon.
In the meanwhile, the highly qualified and celebrated engineer had spent most of the seven hour flight on the Internex, trying to follow what was happening at Fort Dempsey and simultaneously find where his boy was located, and what was being done to him. The fact that he was already nearing NCQ on board of the UEO Alliance flagship was only a very small comfort, as the father had met with captain Madelyn Stark on three different occasions in the last two years, and had a bad feeling about her.
The seconds seemed to be grinding along slower than a sleeping snail stuck to asphalt with Crazy Glue, and nothing the poor man did alleviated the feeling of immobility, and the uselessness it echoed.
Finally, after the most stressful flight of his life, once they were safely on the ground in MIA, Lawrence was able to gently shake awake his wife and help her to the lavatory so she could refresh herself. It should also get her mind away from the fact she had just slept through seven hours of eventful happenings without a wink. That pesky detail just shouldn't be worried about right now.
So, it was nearly 08h30am on Miami's clock when the Lear Jet landed at Miami International Airport, bringing them to the private VIP charters' gate at the end of Concourse E - Satellite where soldiers wearing the beige day uniform of UEO navy officers waited for them. After five minutes to verify their identities, the soldiers handled the bags and got them up to the People Mover so they could reach the central terminal, and from there the MIA Mover to reach the MIC (Miami Intermodal Center).
The two parents were escorted by the four soldiers all the way down to the train platform where the station guard was signaling passengers to retreat from the quay's edge as a train was coming in outside of the usual schedule. The lead GE diesel locomotive was pulling three rooming cars, a salon car, two box cars and three flatbed cars with a hydraulic crane on both, with another locomotive at the end. All the carriages had been tagged with a temporary decal to indicate the operating company.
Wolenbahn Holdings & Trust, Inc.
Both parents blinked together at the sight; their son never told them he owned a train...?
The rail convoy stopped at the MIC quay for less than five minutes, just long enough to bring aboard the parents, soldiers and bags for each of the six persons, then a great bellow from the air-horn warned that the vehicle was moving again. Heading due south, the private train moved through the same tracks as the Miami Metrorail, having negotiated a one-time passage fee to use the most direct route towards the New Cape Quest limits, and the military shipyards within. In forty minutes, the adults would be as near to their son as they could be, given the heightened security in place during the procedures.
{ SQ } - { Enter the fray } - { SQ }
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 09:30am
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 06:30am
The large-body MD-11c tri-jet belonging to the DXS had just landed at the NCQ military airport when a message came into their central mission management software, via HQ in Los Angeles. The parents of Lucas Wolenczak had landed at MIA just an hour ago and were almost at NCQ itself, being processed through the customs station.
They had arrived on a private Wolenbahn train.
James MacGyver frowned at that tidbit, glowing in red on his monitor.
Since when did the kid's company have enough money, people and cargo to move to own his own train, and when did he have the time to move it to south Florida? The older spy sent orders back that he wanted that detail searched & filed ASAP, to know exactly what kind of industrial and commercial capacities the kid could whelm if pushed too hard.
Looking up from his tablet, James spoke out louder than usual to be heard over the noises of the three jet turbines that were straining to push the massive vehicle on the taxiway towards the hangar their agency had found to house the plane during the mission. The second jet would be back in the air after barely four hours on the ground to resupply, since they had two teams of field operatives to recover from Cartel Country in northern Mexico, just south of the USA/Texas borderline.
"It seems that our principal's parents have arrived faster than expected. And it seems that the kid had the time to buy and gear-up his own train, to bring them from Miami International Airport over to NCQ by his own means, without getting jammed in the traffic. According to the customs forms they filed, the train has a pair of sleeper cars and a salon wagon so they'll be staying close by for the whole process. It looks like the conductor has plans to park the convoy in the triage yards between the caissons of the drydock."
Angus frowned slightly as he thought the new variable through the multiple scenarios playing out inside his powerful mind. This move did not compute. The basic psychological profile for the juvenile genius they were heading-in to rescue did not show him to be this proactive, nor this well organized outside of the three buildings where he dwelt; his rented house, the rented laboratory at Stanford, and the fully owned Wolenbahn manufacturing edifice, just outside of Stanford campus, halfway towards the emplacement of the rented domicile.
Shaking his head, Mac had to almost shout "It doesn't fit his pattern! He's not usually that well set up to deal with emergencies and problems! It must be a change to his mindset caused by whatever the neural interface & simulations have put him through!"
Bozer agreed "It's not his story line! He never cared for trains or heavy transports before in his life! In fact, he showed as being very sedentary, almost immobile, when you see just how little movement he made around the map in any of the four years he's been attending Stanford."
Riley confirmed that easily "Only trips to Buffalo, and they coincide with his father coming back from WPP for his vacations, six times a year. Never any deviations, even for other holidays or days off that the campus would offer. He usually stays in his rental or in his company building, doing R&D for the electronics and programs he sells. All the medical stuff is limited almost exclusively inside campus."
Angus gesticulated to have himself understood without shouting anymore "Some of the sims McGrath put him through had to have been about tactics and strategies. Lucas is recognized by his teachers and fellow students as a master of timing, scheduling and logistics management. It figures that McGrath would want to test that out, and maybe use the kid's natural talents to solve a few hard problems that he had when moving too many parts and people together."
Bozer completed "And since the general would have wanted to see his problems resolved with a very hard-line, very proactive military mindset, that could rub-off on the kid's own views and methods, if the sims weren't removed from his mind completely, or correctly. Like when you keep adding games to your PC instead of erasing the old ones before putting in new stuff. You end up with a fragmented disk that has trouble doing stuff in an orderly way."
Riley crossed her arms over her chest with a mock angry pout on her face as she exclaimed playfully "Boze, man! That was my explanation to give! And my comparison, too! Don't you go dissing me in my own specialty, man! I'll log bad reviews of your next flick on Facebook if you keep it up!"
Ignoring the laughter emanating from the three younger agents around him, James hid his smile as he considered the facts and interpretations they suggested. The young boy was already highly intelligent and well organized, but not aggressive nor was he some paranoid doomsday prepper. But, if the felon techs had in fact loaded a few End-of-the-World scenarios in his head then not erased everything in between sims... Yes, that could account for some of the more obvious changes they were seeing.
The noises from the turbines became dull, indicating they had finally finished moving out of the lanes and parked on the taxiway, outside of moving traffic. All they had to do was wait until the tarmac mule grabbed the jet by the front axle to drag it into the hangar and they could de-plane safely to go do the job they were being paid for. Well, paid for by money other than the US government, for a change.
x-x
There were no ways this was going to end well.
James just knew this, and so did his entire team by now.
The DXS crew had barely the time to de-plane, board the SUV's supplied locally by the UEO navy, and drive for thirty minutes to reach the drydock, then get their bags into the lobby of the short office building assigned to them. Right in time to see Lawrence and Cynthia Wolenczak disembark from the private train that had just parked in the triage yard behind said building.
The two groups met in the building's lobby, which had been designed with four entries to accommodate the front driveway on the west, the executive parking lot on the north, the employees & guests parking lot on the south, and the railway & delivery docks on the east side. With each group having their own entry, it was unavoidable they met in the middle, at the reception desk.
The DXS team were surprised that the building had both staterooms and bunkies to house the VIP guests and their road staff. This was a hold-over from when the SeaQuest had been designed and built, the first ever submarine to pass the 1,000 feet length size. The build had caused much lobbying, many visits from DC politos, and hundreds of contractors who needed to get some sort of training to be able to design & craft those parts they were hired to make. This had necessitated the construction of a specially dedicated warehouse, workshop, office & motel combined system, right in the middle of the military shipyard.
Nathan Bridger's all-in-one solution to stop wasting precious time on petty details during the massive, life-consuming project's completion was a good one, and indicative of the man's specific brand of utilitarianism when approaching mechanics and architecture. Once all parties were properly billeted to their floor and rooms by the uniformed staffers, it was time for the messy part.
James sighed deeply as he put on his best, most polite face to meet the kid genius' family. The father was extremely important with the UEO Planetary government, and the mother was a lawyer which was never something to ignore. The spymaster studiously ignored the four beige uniformed soldiers that were accompanying the parents from the train, not knowing why they were present, nor who ordered it.
Trying his best to be sociable, a chore on the best of days, James extended his hand towards Cynthia Holtzenstein then Lawrence Wolenczak, pushing through the greetings as he presented his group as belonging to a Los Angeles Think-Tank that Lucas did business with for his medical research and production. Both adults seemed to swallow this without issues, and they were able to speak with the receptionists in-turn about their work spaces.
Then the first surprise happened; the parents would be lodging aboard the train but have offices assigned inside the services building to facilitate their wait while Lucas was being extracted from his tank of sustention fluid and made mobile again. Lawrence didn't know if he appreciated the thought or was insulted that his son seemed to be pushing him away. Cynthia was simply huffing at the receptionists, saying loudly "I just came here to see Lucas, not spend days on vid-meets with people I could have met face-to-face if I had just stayed in Buffalo! I took vacation time specifically to be with my son during his ailments, not waste time blabbing on the damned phone!"
It was actually Wilt Bozer who stepped forward to present the individual members of the Phoenix Foundation for Scientific Development & Understanding, and their relation to Lucas, or at least the polite, sterile version for public consumption. The young man then tackled the emotional situation the adults were faced with.
"Look, I understand what you people are going through; you're here to show love and support to your 13 year old kid who got kidnapped and tortured almost to death or insanity. But that's the problem, right there. Lucas was a high-functioning super-brain, and a perfectionist workaholic who didn't count how much time he spent to finish a job he took on." Bozer gestured with both hands animatedly as he pressed the point; "And now he's late in everything, his schedule is out of whack, and stuff inside his head ain't what it should be, or doesn't belong there to begin with! For a person who prided himself on his stable personality and mental faculties... Well, he's gonna want some time to cope and become stable again before he meets you folks."
Cynthia was about to accept the explanation when Lawrence cut across everybody. "Thank you for the psycho-babble, agent Bozer, but I want to see my son as he is presently." the engineer spoke tartly, not impressed by the delaying tactic. "I was warned by friends in DC that your agency was running around the area, trying to hijack control of the situation for your own hidden agenda, and I will not permit it."
Standing as tall as his body type allowed, Lawrence ordered "As the father of the minor child in medical care aboard SeaQuest, I hereby order you to stand-down and leave the situation to our family and those associates we select. Since I have Diplomatic Privilege from being a member of both the Climatic Recycling Tower directorate and the seated Project Chief of the WPP, you have no choice."
Cynthia looked between the her husband and the group of now revealed federal agents, wondering what kind of power-play was being done with her son as the prize.
Wilt Bozer shook his head despondently, saying "I really don't think you want to go down that road, doctor Wolenczak, because you won't like what's waiting at the end of it."
Frowning in a rare show of anger, Lawrence demanded "Are you threatening us, or just me?" as he gestured to indicate his wife and himself.
"Neither, actually," Angus MacGyver spoke up as he moved his father aside to take the lead for this part of the problem. "James, could you find the contract and waivers, please? It would show these good people that we are here on a valid request, not trying to interlope in their family affairs."
After rifling through his briefcase for a minute, James handed the folder of documents to his son who presented them to Cynthia since she was a lawyer. Lawrence understood the move, and was not angry by that as he would have handed her the folder himself otherwise. The mother slowly read through the sheets of paper, studying the signatures and seals of office when they were present. Then she reached the part that stopped her in her tracks.
"Lucas has a last will & testament on record, and also a living will, and a medical proxy? He assigned mister Angus MacGyver and Miss Riley Davis as the medical curators for his treatments, and mister Wilt Bozer as the curator if he were to become comatose or no longer viable. Then he names my old aunt Dame Aharonah Holtzenstein, esquire, as executor of the estate, both personal and corporate. The entire will is a recent update as of yesterday, witnessed by admiral W. A. B. Noyce and Lt-commander Jonathan Devin Ford, with doctor Mathias Foss, ship's chief of therapists."
Taking a deep breath, Angus put in "While the testament and living will are important for the coming events, they are not the most important things in there. You need to look at the sheets with the red border, then those with the black tags."
Glaring shortly at the blond male, Cynthia passed the testament portions to her husband as she began to read the 'regular' classified segment of the file. It was the complete argument for having given Lucas un-restricted legal emancipation from his parents, and his Diplomatic Privilege from The World Bank due to his situation as an external directorate-level consultant/legislator for network security.
Lucas had higher DP than his father.
Lucas had a position (job contract) that granted him -governmental- authority over the Internex and the banks of the world, thus making him heads-&-shoulders above Lawrence in the scheme of Power on the planetary scale.
Then there were the 'contract' sheets, signed by Lucas as owner & president of Wolenbahn Inc, and by Iegor Desdensky as governor of The World Bank, who was backing the decisions made by Lucas for his medical care, and choosing The Phoenix Foundation as health-care managers for the duration.
Those -friends- of Lawrence in Washington DC had lied to him, and he would have to dig deep to find out why they thought it was a good idea to do that to him, in this time of turmoil. The answers would not leave anybody happy.
The two parents could tetch and sue, the courts would ultimately rule in favor of following what Lucas had written in the notarized and sealed documents, irrespective of local national laws and customs.
Even with Andrea Dre dead and the collapse of the UEO imminent, the International Court would not undo more than three centuries of jurisprudence just to assuage fearful, crying parents.
This was Power and Authority; this was the life of their son now.
And he was only thirteen years old!
What kind of life could this be, for him?
Despondent but powerless to change things, Cynthia handed back the folder after asking to receive a copy for the family's files. James took back his folder, answering politely that it was among the first order of business, once they were set-up for the week of labor.
{ SQ } - { This is our creed } - { SQ }
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 09:51am
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 06:51am
The old man was caucasian white, with short-cut silvery hair, pale gray eyes, wrinkled skin and stable, agile hands as proven by the way he wielded the pruning shears around the stalks of his prized orchids.
The man's name was Leland. At least, that was what he told people.
Nobody knew his full identity, or if it was true. Nobody ever would.
He was known to be a scientist specializing in ecology, plant biology, and green technologies.
He was also the sector head for the North American branch of the occult group 'Codex', thus having a seat on the organization's planetary Council. The Council had a seat for each continent and ocean, thusly being comprised of 14 chairs, plus the 'Gaia Oratio' (He who hears Gaia) who led the group through debates and the actions decided by the assembled members.
Founded at the end of the 1400's in northern Europe by wealthy, erudite white men of enlightened philosophies, The Codex was foreseen as humanity's last useful safeguard against a new Black Plague, religious obscurantism and military tyranny at the hands of insane monarchs. The small group had rapidly grown as they offered patronage for new research and protection from the Catholic Inquisition to the newly trained apothecaries, scientists and philosophers who joined them. Over six centuries later, the group spanned the entire globe, reaching into each & every government at all levels, having silent spies in all world-wide NGO/charities, and using blackmail or threats to get into military installations where willing partners hadn't been found.
Financed by thousands of different streams, from the banal operations of convenience stores to well known mafia groups, from credible charitable NGO's to fake churches of all faiths, Codex was financially more stable than most legally recognized countries in existence. They were able to ride over recessions, wars or natural crises without a care because most of what they consumed for their vast laboratories, and military operations to stay secret, were all produced in their own factories, thus also untraceable. Codex had spent untold riches over the last six hundred years to build multiple large bunkers that were then updated as technology and society evolved. Some of their bunkers, like the one where Leland lived, were so big they had thousands of citizens packed together. Entire families forming unlisted 'ghost towns', buried under steel, concrete, and the rebuilt landscape on top, to better fool human spies and modern machines.
The Creed of Codex was: "The Earth is undergoing a catastrophic warming caused by human industry, which in turn stimulates cataclysmic climatic changes. Only a reduction of heavy industry and total population, with a return to more environmentally sound practices, will avert the coming hecatomb."
This led to the Codex motto: "What was lost shall be regained; from death will emerge life".
The cause of Codex, or most specifically its methodology; to cause a series of titanesque cataclysms that would redo the planetary environment in such a harsh way that it would wipe-out between a quarter and half of all humanity, destroy all national governments and structures, and purify human-kind by forcing it back to a state of agrarian, neo-colonial lifestyle and management.
Normally, members of Codex never saw their continental / oceanic head unless they worked directly inside the same building, and never interacted with them directly, unless the situation was so dire as to threaten either Gaia or the group's existence. Secrecy was paramount, but not at the cost of exposing a sectorial head to just anybody who hadn't been vetted properly. Also, it was never spoken aloud, but certainly practiced, that all humans and animals inside Codex were expendable for the accomplishment of their unending Cause, and the continuing unyielding obedience to the Creed. Most of the higher and mid-level leaders in the group did actively try to limit deaths, sacrifices and collateral damages to a minimum, but only to make the contrast between Codex and established governments more visible to their own members and supporters.
NOBODY was irreplaceable, and none should ever suppose their life was worth so much that they would be spared if their loyalty or adhesion to the Creed were suspected of lapsing. Deaths were in fact numerous but secretly carried out, so very few people ever truly saw that executions (or mass purges) were done as a matter of routine maintenance in the organization. Since it was only the sector heads and Oratio who could command the death of a confirmed member, almost everybody who worked for Codex internally, and the majority of external supporters, thought that the group was quasi-non-violent, just fanatically dedicated towards the lofty goal at the end of the line.
While The Codex did have many aspects of its management system that resembled a doomsday cult, they were not a religious organization. While Codex itself derided all churches and religious groups as mafious pyramid schemes, they did accept members or supporters from all faith communities, including from the marginal sects and fringe groups since they needed to have spies in these places too. In fact, much of Codex's reach across the world accelerated in the 1600's by sending out fake English missionaries throughout the sprawling British Empire, and they used the same method at each new technology when newspaper presses, radios, televisions and the Internet were created. If a human could reach you with a system, then Codex had learned that technique and put it to use in their unending quest to cover all of Earth under one single philosophy and common purpose.
They were not far from succeeding, given they had financed the creation of the UN, followed by the UEO, and a quarter of the UEO Cabinet owed them for getting the high-priced jobs they held. With the inception of the convoluted Planetary Alliance's two-step charter that demanded the establishment of the rather useless Confederations, the occult group had been one step closer to nullifying the individual voices and powers of nations, transferring the decisional authority upwards. A few years more would have seen the UEO either renovated or changed for a system where the Terran Government would be seen as just one more level above the cities, provinces and federal states, and nobody would question their right to send in police or soldiers to quell problems anymore.
They almost had it done.
Almost, but not quite.
And now things were changing against them.
x-x
Doctor Leland, the sectorial head for north-America, was tending his precious hydroponic cultivation of rare orchids, as was usual for him. This was his favorite activity when he had deep issues to resolve. The sorts of problems that a cup of chamomile tea, lemon scones and a good book couldn't get rid of. Unlike his local security chief Roman, he couldn't relieve his stresses or conundrums by shooting things to bits. He was 'slightly' more civilized than that. And, also, he never learned to use a gun.
Issues of life, death, and keeping Codex in existence for yet another day, so that humanity could perhaps have a chance to correct its many mistakes against Gaia. Those sorts of anxieties were what made him spend hours with the beautiful, and silent, colorful flowers in the isolated botanical ward.
Sighing deeply, the old man set down the small pruning shears, wiping his hands on the old canvas apron he wore, then taking off the garment to go clean-up before going back to his office. He still had some calls to make, and none would be easy to live through, given that the people on the other end of the line would be uncultured fools who thought themselves far more important than they actually were.
Finally seated in his swivel chair with the door locked and a warm cup of tea nearby, Leland dialed a number from a list displayed on his computer screen, from a secured virtual rolodex.
"Good day. You have reached the…" The line went dead as Leland entered a 12 digit command to make the automated telephony server switch him over to the appropriate person. A few rings later had him speaking with his personally selected agent, USAF major Anne Frost, deeply embedded in NORAD as aide-de-camp to John Acosta, the senior 4-star general in charge of US missile defense.
"Yes sir, I have the report you wanted..." Frost began as she spoke inane things to make it look ordinary for bystanders as she found a more discrete emplacement to have the conversation. "Orchid, I am now alone and off monitors. My jammer is pinging strong, cypher has all lights green. Please go ahead."
Maintaining an urbane tone of voice, Leland asked firmly "Thank you, major Frost. Do you have any news from the sudden military maneuvers at Fort Dempsey, and the Jepsen Bastion? This has set-back many of our most pressing projects. It has also cost us some of our most productive scientists and equipments based in the USA. I would like an explanation, if possible from your end of things."
The young woman's voice was blandly polite, in the way all soldiers were expected to do when speaking with superiors. This was to maintain the charade for accidental witnesses, as well as the basic reality of this call. She only knew the man as 'senior field-agent Orchid of Codex' and that he was her dedicated handler for the organization. She had no idea of his real identity, nor his actual rank in the group, but had deduced rapidly that he had access to information and people only a true Boss could, so she always addressed him carefully, just as a precaution.
"I can report that NORAD were not involved in either the attack, nor the decisional process that lead to the actions in-theater, sir. It was all done at the UEO – HQ in New Cape Quest, at the behest of admiral William Noyce, on an information coming from The World Bank. The WB's Governor called in person to arrange things so that Andrea Dre, Donald Trump, the governor of Florida and the mayor of Pensacola could not refuse, nor interfere or leak the plans. The US Marine Corps was read into the mission no more than ten hours prior to the UEO battleship group arriving at Tampa, so our supporters in the regiments involved were never able to contact us through the comms black-out that is standard when they deploy for hostile action. Plus, general Acosta was in a vid-meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff late last night, and it was confirmed that the commandant of Fort Dempsey was not even warned of the impending assault, as he was believed an enemy sympathizer."
Nodding lightly, the old man accepted this, as most of what she reported was known factum by now, having been said by multiple credible sources already. "What about the DXS movements that were recorded at John Wayne airport in Los Angeles? Did they go to Florida as expected? Our radar operators have lost track of them over Louisiana for reasons the techs still haven't figured out." And he frowned at that particular piece of trouble. Even his primary scientist, Gwendolyn Hayes, was stumped by the snafu, and she was one of their best engineers for electronics and cybernetics of that sort.
"Yes, sir. I can confirm that DXS has landed two MD-11c jets at NCQ military airfield this morning, with all personnel being shuttled to the shipyard as we expected. NORAD never lost them from our screens, sir, so I can't even begin to imagine why your antennae did. On a similar note, the parents for our latest project arrived at NCQ by WPP jet plane, but moved around Miami by private train rolling under a Wolenbahn tag. We had no previous reports of the boy owning such a vehicle, so it must a recent purchase, or an old one that he pulled out for the occasion. Our eyes report two GE diesel locomotives, three passenger cars, two box cars and two flatbeds, without any visible weapons or armor anywhere. The field sensors have however detected massive amounts of electricity and signals being put out by the rail convoy. We suspect the boy has built himself a railway equivalent to an AWACS to move his neuroplexic array without shutting it off."
Leland made a noncommittal noise, replying "The moment the attack on Dempsey occurred, we began to expect the parents to come for him. Likewise, we expected the boy to mobilize his life's work, though our tacticians had foreseen a two-box trailer-truck, not a train. However, rolling on rails does have many strategic and technical advantages that I can see, such as a bigger crew with permanent lodgings, food services and washrooms. Yes, given his medical needs and his mother's fear of flying, a train is a good decision on his part. Our people just thought that a thirteen year old would not think of an old method of transport like a train. We'll need to adjust the boy's overall profile."
"Well, sir, you'll have to adjust that profile a lot. The kid somehow managed to kill one of our low-tier informants in McGrath's tech team, then he precipitated the death of Andrea Dre, while insuring that Madelyn Stark was set-up for her murder beautifully. General Acosta was shown the security film of what happened yesterday in SeaQuest's sea-deck, and it was clearly a scripted fall that all three women never realized was coming for them. And admiral Noyce picked it up in-flight, running with it all the way to a score. That rotund swine is now actively conniving with Lucas Wolenczak to bring him into the cabal of old crones that surrounds his wife. Plus, all this mess will have the NCIS central office involved in a hurry. Acosta was confirmed that MRT was out of DC yesterday, already in flight for Pensacola in priority, but they redirected to NCQ mid-flight. They will be interviewing Lucas as soon as they can get the kid out of his tube safely."
Leland was out of his chair, pacing slowly around his desk, as he asked the speaker-phone "All the Alphabet Soup details can be reviewed later. What I need to know is if Andrea Dre is truly dead, and is it confirmed? Can it be verified by outside agents? Her passing will change all the paradigms that we have operated under for the last decade, and cause much societal chaos that we can exploit."
Major Frost replied with certitude "The body was handed to Section-7 and our implanted supporters have been sending copies of the photos and partial coroner's report to those external followers who need to be appraised of the dangers this change represents for Codex and our goal. The fact that the boy was in first-row position to not only witness but actually influence the deaths of Dre and our tech, plus the imprisonment of Stark, is mindboggling, and an indicator we cannot see him as a passive item in the calculations, unlike before."
"Agreed, he is an active player on the board," concurred Leland immediately, "But I want you to secure the details on how and why this child was linked to killing Andrea Dre. The woman worked for us, and she was our best asset to realize our Great Plan in this life. We cannot let her death be chalked-up as an accident or just another disgruntled naval officer going bonkers. I want solid, verified facts, major. And I need that data before the coming Friday. Thank you. Orchid out."
Leland disconnected the phone, sitting back in his chair truly disgruntled himself.
Andrea Dre was dead!
How in tarnation did such a calamity happen? She was the secretary general of the UEO Alliance! She should have had bodyguards, escorts and hangers-on, like all politos of that caliber. Why was she alone and defenseless in such an open setting as the sea-deck of that boat?
It smelled like a set-up, just like major Frost suspected.
Leland simply had problems believing the boy, barely awake from severe mental trauma, could have the wherewithal or resources to arrange something as complex as this hit job.
This would need further consideration, and much more tea.
x-x
Leland was readying to call his next highly placed informant, a senior department head in the UEO's executive cabinet, when a private unlisted line came in to his terminal from the Gaia Oratio.
Activating the screen, the old horticulturalist answered "Good day, Madam Oratio. I trust that you have heard about our changes of fortunes at the UEO cabinet? I was about to call some sources to validate, but you calling me so soon seems an affirmation in itself."
The old woman who served as the Gaia Oratio for the Council of Codex had caucasian white skin, her heart-shaped face framed by long silver hair, completed by cold blue eyes and pale pink lips that seemed to be perpetually thinned into a line of discontent. She was a PhD of pharmacology, chemistry, material sciences and molecular modeling. And she was born into Codex from one of the lineages that had founded the organization, so her faith and loyalty were unimpeachable, unlike most of the others who would speak with her, never knowing what she truly was.
"Yes, Leland. That is indeed the reason of my call," the woman spoke in her usual slow cadence, not hurried nor anxious about anything. Then again, she was over 85 years old so she could afford to let herself float atop the problems of mere mortals indolently, as she was well past them.
Continuing, the elderly woman clasped her hands in front of her, explaining "We have been betrayed most foully, Leland. Andrea Dre had an agenda that was not ours, and she used our money, resources and agents to make it happen. This causes several difficulties, mostly in the sense that we now face exposure to the governing authorities, and the open public, of practically every nation on Earth."
Frowning interrogatively, the old man asked "What could she have done that was so bad? Besides dying on our clock, that is?"
Snorting delicately, the Oratio replied "She was planning to kidnap and execute the heads of the Confederations during a fake UEO Alliance conference. The real kicker was that this fake assembly was planned to happen in an undersea hotel complex purpose-built just for the one job of grabbing the leaders then flushing them out to the ocean via a dedicated drain. Everything in her plan was designed around single-use, one-off pieces and actions that just scream 'I'm here' and 'find me' even to amateurs."
Leland took his glasses off, dropping them to the desk surface as he pinched his nose, closing his eyes in despair about the ever-growing stupidity of humanity. Sighing deeply, he asked "I gather that you will make the blueprints of her schemes available in the Council server so we can study this miasma to prepare a response?"
Nodding slowly, the woman replied "I have already made the complete set of files retrieved from the private server of admiral Noyce available. From what my analysts have discovered, it was Lucas Wolenczak who ferreted out the secret plans of both Stark and Dre, then acted unilaterally to put an end to them at the same time. He never asked permission, and never warned anybody ahead. He saw the threat and reacted within less than 12 hours of discovery. Noyce had to send out several very polite and solicitous letters to many politicians, bureaucrats and military officers across the globe to smooth over that particular damage. Desdensky helped, but not that much in the end of things. It was mostly the diverse nations' lack of rancor at Dre's death that is really allowing this to settle so easily."
Passing both hands over his face in anger, Leland inquired "And how many countries are already aware of this debacle? Why the bloody Hells are they in the know while our operatives inside the bloody zone are completely mute?"
Shrugging carelessly, the Oratio explained "Our agents are deeply embedded in the UEO and USA military apparatuses and bureaucracy, which means that when the defensive lock-down was imposed they got stuck under a thick blanket of EWC systems that would have spotted them if they tried to warn us from the active zone. Pretty much all the information I've been getting is from the military hubs where the suit-&-tie ministers and secretaries hide out when war breaks out. Even my direct lines have gone dark, leaving me dependent on informants who are not only third-hand but delayed as well."
"Well, that's just peachy." griped Leland as he poured some warm tea to occupy his hands instead of throwing things around the office in a rabid tantrum. "What's the point of pushing people's careers up the ladder of government, and paying them bonuses and benefits under the table besides what their day job gives them, if we get shut out the moment a little bit of bad weather passes by? And now parts of our electronic surveillance systems are fritzing-out too! Gwen has reported that we have several blank spots developing around NCQ and Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with several small bubbles in Washington DC, New York and Buffalo. It's as if all our structures became defective all at once, across the board!"
The elderly woman commented glibly "That is the nature of the beast, Leland. Humanity keeps moving onwards in the most stupendous ways, regardless of what lays ahead, even a yawning chasm. It goes to reason that somebody invented a new type of jammer, or cypher, or maybe they found our own private network and managed to hack into the less encrypted segments as they sniffed around. I am not worried about this. It occurred in the past, and will again as technology and know-how change. Have some of the lower tier technicians deal with this, we need Gwendolyn Hayes to concentrate on File 47 matters, especially now that DXS will be neck-deep in it."
Waving his free hands as he sipped some tea, the old gardener queried "About that... Now that McGrath is out of commission and his entire bunker is destroyed, what do we do about all the projects he was overseeing? Specifically the Wolenczak family and the volcano solution?"
Pursing her lips as she thought through the mess, the Oration answered "We will need to let some time pass to see how the different actors of this melodrama adapt to their new circumstances. Not to mention that both The World Bank and the dregs of the UEO Alliance will be on sharp watch for any external influence or deleterious manipulations. This is even more true, given that every indicator on the board shows that said Alliance is going to die with Andrea Dre. There were already deep grumblings of public dissatisfaction with how the UEO military police and courts were structured and managed, to the point that I was informed the Chinese and Montagnard Confederations were plotting to withdraw and form their own Block, with openings to Micronesia, Australia and New Zealand, which had good chances to be accepted."
"So the UEO dies. If that happens, my informants have posited that the current US presidency would favor a return to the old UN system, but without any vetoes for any of the members, and no tribunals or legal courts above the national jurisdictions. We all know why he wants that..." Leland countered.
Nodding in assent, the Oratio confirmed blithely "Trump wants to make sure that no courts exist above the corrupted and bought-off justice system of the USA, which is being converted to serve his whims by placing inexperienced but loyal judges on the federal bench. He has named nearly a hundred to date, and there are still nearly six hundred vacancies to fill across the entire country for that level of the tribunal apparatus. It truly is a wonder that their federal department of justice works at all, given how many gaping holes they suffer from, since the Bush years a dozen years back."
Waving that line of thoughts away with an impatient gesture of his empty cup before he refilled it, Leland expressed more immediate necessities. "What do you want to do about the kid genius? Not only did he survive getting his brain used like a cheap household CPU, he came out with his personality and memories intact! Who in all of humanity has that capacity? We need to know if he's a mutant of sorts, or a new branch of human evolution..."
The Oratio negated that concern away simply by stating "He had integrated a backup of his person and memories in the machine. Lucas was a very private person, and an even more reclusive researcher, who trusted no-one with his work, especially the neural interface. However, my own neurologists and techs confirm that the only way he could have survived was if the array had been programmed with some form of proprietary 'owner's life protection' app or routine. In other words, the boy figured out the true potential of his machine, and foresaw that he could be enslaved by it, to then make more slaves the same way. As such, he would have put back-doors, a root-kit, a mnemonic copy and a psychic clone of himself in one or several components to insure he would never be enslaved by his creation. He is not a mutant. Well, unless you decide to count his multiple advanced degrees and some thirty languages that he can understand, speak or write."
Mumbling something noncommittal, Leland dropped himself carelessly in his chair, not at all amused by the circumstances. From a purely technical standpoint, a psychotronic backup of the boy's mind and memories was the most credible and possible explanation. Not a single programmer made a program or device without setting up a back-door or safety to guarantee against hackers or theft. This would be doubly true for this sort of highly exclusive, bleeding-edge R&D, especially given how dangerous the device could be in the wrong hands.
"Alright, then," Leland gritted out through clenched teeth, "what do we do next?"
The elderly woman smirked tightly as she replied "We survive the storm, and we wait to see who does survive along us, so that we can then decide how to best exploit or dispatch them."
Closing his eyes in the hopes of staving off a migraine, the old gardener nodded assent, then closed the line without further platitudes. Not that the Oratio would be offended, as she herself did the same when she was too busy or frustrated with the dimness of the group's workers and allies.
Groaning in annoyance, Leland decided that he needed more time with his orchids before he wasted time at calling sources to collect information that would be third or fourth hand, and much belated too, for no true changes in their strategic outlook anyways. What a waste of time and effort, and all because he was the regional head instead of just a simple R&D boffin.
He really should have stayed a university botanist; it would have kept his stress levels manageable.
Not-so-happy family reunion
(SeaQuest – opening theme)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 11:00am
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 08:00am
SeaQuest, in UEO Drydock 1500-A
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
The mixed group of Wolenczak family, DXS agents and UEO soldiers was riding in the cramped confines of the small HB-D 300-c shuttle that was taking them to the massive submarine warship that slept in the concrete basin. Normally, the drydock crew would have set in place connection tunnels to access the ship directly from the caisson's sides, but due to increased security after Andrea Dre's death all boarding had to pass by the choke-point of shuttle travel.
Cynthia Holtzenstein discretely glanced sideways at her husband, worrying about his closed temper, something she had rarely experienced in their married life. This was the face he reserved for speaking with congressmen and lobbyists about WPP finances, or when fools doubted the usefulness of the Climatic Recycling Towers he had helped to design, twenty five years back. Cynthia knew the situation was stressful for everybody, including herself, but she did not understand why Lawrence had literally shut down his emotions and personality around the soldiers and technicians that escorted them.
She had her own turmoils to deal with, after learning at the last second that Lucas had written living and dead wills, handed out proxies and called upon her aunt, Dame Aharonah Holtzenstein, esquire, to serve as executor if he died. Until recently, Lucas had gone to his mother for his legal advice, even though Stanford rented out some very good attorneys to their research partners, and Lucas had taken the precaution of hiring one in-house litigator for Wolenbahn Electronics, just in case. It was always good policy to have at least one lawyer who was loyal only to his single client, rather than multiple masters or causes like rented reps. Also, Cynthia often saw Lucas as her young son, not as an autonomous businessman, and that had created conflicts in the past. Apparently, the teen had decided he would no longer tolerate being gainsaid inside his own domain, especially about his health.
Trying to look at the other passengers without staring or giving away her inner troubles, Cynthia wondered again what had set off her husband. Yes, getting his Diplomatic Privilege shoved back in his face would hurt, and it was a damned surprise, but there was something else under it all. Her man kept looking over at the young blond male who was seated between the young black man and the woman tech. He rarely addressed the older man who had been revealed as his father, and kept his comments with the young asian female polite but short and direct. Cynthia was wondering what could be so odd about the young agent when Lawrence's voice forced everybody to pay attention.
"My apologies for disturbing you, agent MacGyver, but you wouldn't happen to have been related to a miss Helen Miriam, by any chance? She had several PhD's in ecology, industrial environmental impact, and climate physics. She worked as a junior teacher at Stanford, some 30 to 25 years ago."
Angus blinked both eyes at the question, wondering where it was going. Shrugging, he answered "That name doesn't mean anything to me. Although, it's weird you'd ask. My mother's name was Ellen Myryam Hayes, so the two first parts sound phonetically the same, but the spelling would be wrong."
James cleared his throat, countering "It was the same woman. She was your mentor at Stanford when you attended as part of the 'Juvenile Prodigy Program', wasn't she? You would have been around 13 years old when you first met her, and worked besides her around 2 years? I do believe that I remember Ellen mentioning she had some sort of prodigal boy-genius readying to follow in her footsteps, when she took her studies public." Making a face of deep melancholy, James added softly "She would have been incredibly proud of what you accomplished by age 21, if she had lived to see that first Climate Recycling Tower get raised and activated. She might, however, have been more ambivalent about WPP, since she never liked the idea of people playing with volcanoes. Risks of eruptions, and all that gas..."
Angus was now looking at Lawrence with new eyes, hope clearly shining in his green eyes as he wondered if the older man wouldn't mind telling him about his mom's personality and work later. Then his world was rocked by the engineer's second question.
"What happened to Guen, her sister? Guenevieve? Or was that her real name? She had PhD's in industrial electronics and national power systems engineering. Where is she now?"
Turning towards James with a frown, Angus asked in a low, dangerous tone "Mom didn't have a sister that I know of. You and grand-pa Harry never said anything about mom having any family, even when she was alive."
Wincing at the terse tone his son was using, and the fact that all their family's dirty laundry was being exposed in front of people who should not be aware of it, James tried to deflect rather badly and failed miserably at doing anything positive.
"Your mother died when you were five years old, and I wasn't fit company to be around anybody for a long time after I lost her, that's why we never talked about anything from that period. Her sister was Gwendolyn Ann Hayes, she was younger by a few years, and a certified genius like Ellen. She died the same year as your mom, in a plane accident over some forests in Colorado. She was part of a group that was surveying the mountains to install wind turbines to generate electricity year-round. The crash killed all members, and we never recovered any of the bodies. The gravity of the accident scared the promoter of the project so badly that he scuttled it and went to build elsewhere. Due to everything going on at the time, neither me nor my father, Harry, thought it was a good idea to burden you with the story, and we just never spoke of it again."
Angus glared nastily at his father, whispering under his breath "You and your fucking secrets!" then turned away, not wanting to look at the man anymore lest he do something inappropriate in the confines of a small shuttle that was floating 200 feet under water.
James just closed his eyes in pain, leaning back into his seat and ignoring everybody for the rest of the connection trip.
Cynthia and Lawrence exchanged a short look, then returned to silently observing their disquieted travel mates for the duration.
{ SQ } - { Playing badge bounce-back } - { SQ }
The docking protocol with SeaQuest was laborious and onerous because of the added security, the men dressed in dark blue uniforms and black body armor seemed intent on using their assault rifles more than the handheld detectors they were supposedly in place to employ. Then the second nasty surprise came in the form of a tall, athletic older man with white skin, short silvery hair and eyes so blue they seemed made of sapphire flecks. That man and his three escorts proved to be waiting for just the two aggrieved parents, much to their displeasure.
Unfolding a leather wallet out of his jacket pocket, the man presented himself "Supervisory Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, from NCIS central in Washington DC. We need to ask you a few questions about your son's kidnapping and recovery."
Lawrence glared at the man, about to remind him of who he was addressing, when the middle-aged white man with a short brown goatee to his left commented "You are aboard a UEO ship inside the UEO capital, and we have a signed authorization to proceed from the Alliance Cabinet, so whatever Diplomatic Privilege you think applies won't. Please cooperate freely, or we'll be forced to take steps to insure that you do."
Blinking at the immovable steel hidden behind the man's gentle, urbane voice, Cynthia asked "Do I need to get one of my colleagues to represent me in this matter? Are you somehow impugning the names of my husband or myself? We learned of our son's kidnapping on the morning where admiral Noyce led those ships into Pensacola's harbor to rescue him. I doubt we know anything useful."
Gibbs nodded at the pair, countering "We are well aware of the timeline and your involvement, but we need to cross the T's and dot the I's before we speak with the concerned principal actor. Your boy Lucas has proven to be somewhat refractive to speaking with us about anything."
Lawrence snorted replying tartly "He grew up with a lawyer and international functionary for parents! Did you truly believe he'd forget the basics we taught him about dealing with police or politicians? He should never even have seen your faces without our prior, written accord."
The white woman with the mid-back length blond hair and green eyes denied that concept politely "No, it doesn't work that way, mister Wolenczak. Your son is an employee of The World Bank with a posting at the directorate level. That means your opinion has no bearing on whether he answers or not. The WB would make that determination, and they have signed their own waivers to let us interrogate him."
Pale-faced and angry, Lawrence sniped back "Then why haven't you spoken to him yet, if you can just ignore the rest of his family like that? Who blocked your great and mighty warrant, then?"
Pointing at Wilt Bozer and Angus MacGyver, agent Gibbs replied "They did. We got their requests to cease & desist any and all contacts with the Bank's young director until such time as they had done their preliminary medical and psycho-social evaluation. Something about the machine the kid was held in having deleterious effects on the brain...?"
Bozer walked forward, flashing his best business smile as he countered "It's actually all proprietary data that doctor Lucas doesn't want released publicly. The machine was showed off in Stanford a few months back, but he never released the specs or internal processes for peer review yet. Since doing an early, unscripted, let-out could scuttle his doctoral thesis on neuroplexic devices and psychotronic programming, plus many governmental grants, private R&D funds, etc... I'm sure you see that you won't be speaking with him until all the data and work products are secured and out of reach of any ill intended hands."
Angus added "And since we know for a fact that agent McGee here is a qualified designer of medical equipment with a John Hopkins diploma hanging on his wall, we definitely won't be letting him near the machinery, or Lucas himself, until we're sure the kid can handle your heavy-handed approach."
Torres quipped amusedly "Whaaat? Ellie! We're not heavy handed! Well, not Tim, you or me. Or Jimmy if he ever got out of the basement. Or Kasie, but she goes out even less. Now, Gibbs on the other hand, I could see them say he's a bit much on the system. But only if you're guilty." Nick suddenly probed hard without warning; "Is your little guy guilty, gents? Cuz then we'd understand that he thinks our Boss is a bit hard."
It was Riley Davis who surprised everybody when she snorted in open amusement at all the posturing and grandstanding around her. "Honestly, guys, the thirteen year old in the tube full of glowing home-made mouthwash has more maturity than the lot of you's. Lucas will speak to NCIS willingly enough because it's part of his job description with the WB to help and support all law enforcement actions by the member nations or the Alliance Cabinet. BUT! He did just get out from a month-long kidnapping and prolonged psychological torture. Do give us the time for an evaluation, and let his family have him for a while before you monopolize him."
Bozer added in less formal words "Besides, the kid already planned to have a layover in DC on his way back to Buffalo for his medical vacations at home. I'm sure that wan'nt no accident, not when he reserved a parking spot for his train right inside the Navy Yard, right next to your outfit's office."
Gibbs frowned, glaring at Bozer as he asked "What did he do?"
Lawrence confirmed, with dark amusement clear on his features, "Yes, agent Gibbs. Our son has just bought himself a train and shared with us his plans for a return trip to Buffalo over land, by railways, and with a few 'important' stops along the path. DC and New York city are the only confirmed layovers, but we were warned that a few more would be added as time went forward."
Nodding, Angus commented "I wouldn't be surprised if admiral Noyce and the UEO Cabinet don't ask him for a pit-stop in Pensacola to give Fort Dempsey a look-see, just in case the other teams missed a few details that only a specialist would know to verify. If it's any comfort, we'll be with him all the way."
"No, it's not comforting," Gibbs replied frostily as he turned around and left the area without wasting time on further platitudes with people who were dead-set on stonewalling his investigation. Shrugging, the other three NCIS agents gave varied nods or whispered polite phrases as they retired, leaving the way clear for the family and hireling to proceed at last.
{ SQ } - { Prodigal son returned... Maybe? } - { SQ }
Cynthia and Lawrence finally walked into the legendary sea-deck of the massive submarine, only to be welcomed by the blasting sound of their only child's voice aggressively reaming out some poor smuck who had the misfortune of being told to work for him while he was aboard.
"Ye miserable, ill-aborted spawn of an unwashed test-tube! How the fucks did you get a diploma in chemistry if you can't even read the bloody molecular models on the canisters!? I put the images and atomic symbols for a damned reason, you fool! And there you go proving that even that precaution was for absolutely NOTHING! Get away from my machinery before you set it on fire, cretinous ass!"
"Whelp, I think he's awake and sane," Bozer snarked as he walked by the stunned parents, "He sounds like you do when the people back at work try to move one of your inventions to storage, Mac."
"Ah, ah, hardy har, ah!" replied the blond agent in his own sarcastic tone as he followed, with Riley, Desi and James behind him, neither jumping into this particular bout of 'sibling' conversation.
The two parents were then further stunned when another voice sounded out loudly in the most obnoxious way possible. A voice they knew well, but hadn't been cursed to hear in years.
"Lucas, child! Stop yelling at the poor sod! You know damn well that if he's in the army, it's because he could never make it in the real world! The last recourse of weak minds, retards and defectives, din't you know? I thought my niece would have taught you these things, by now!"
Covering her face with both hands, Cynthia shook her head in despair as she groaned "Noooo! Not right now! Why did he have to ask her, of all the damned relatives we still have?"
With despair and resignation oozing from every pore of her body, Cynthia dragged her stupefied husband over to the array of large yellow caissons where all the Phoenix techs were converging. The moment they were integrated to the half-circle of standing humans, the two parents saw the source of the poor woman's grievances.
Dame Aharonah Holtzenstein, attorney and public notary, in all her geriatric glory.
Ah, crap! The decrepit old bint was already arrived!
"Cynthia, girl! Get over here, lass! I haven't seen you in years! Not since your father, my poor brother, died of his own weaknesses, I recall."
The elderly lady was reclined at 45º in a lounge chair with a set of hemo-dialysis tubes connected to one arm as she held court next to her young great-nephew who was floating indolently, and absolutely naked, inside a giant horizontal tube full of blue fluid.
Ignoring the detestable old biddy's rambling as she usually did, Cynthia walked right to the cylinder, putting both hands on the artificial crystal panel to peer inside, to finally see her son and be assured he was alive and safe. The boy was a bit more pale than before, his already milky complexion now being more like polished alabaster, with his hair a lustrous golden blond that floated around him like a holy halo of goodness, and his flint-blue eyes had acquired a disconcerting luminosity from within.
Lawrence put his hands on his wife's shaking shoulders as he gazed silently into the depths of the odd machine his little son had designed and built with his own hands over the course of three long years of arduous studies, research and testing. The sustention pod was supposed to be the 'patient' side of the array, with the orthopedic chair occupied by aunt Aharonah being the 'doctor' side. Still, his child looked to be whole and healthy, the way he moved and gestured inside the liquid medium, as if he were simply swimming in their backyard pool.
Placing his own right hand on the transparent panel, Lawrence said softly "Hello, kiddo. How are you doing?"
"Hey dad! I'm relatively well, right now." The boy seemed to smile behind the plastic breathing mask that covered all of his lower face, leaving only his eyes exposed. Snarking a bit, he said "Although I do feel a bit 'boxed in'. It must be the crowd. I'm not used to having so many people around me at the same time."
Both parents groaned in abject despair at their son's deplorable sense of humor, while Aharonah gave out a great bellow of laughter as she appreciated that sort of satirical humor a lot. The Phoenix Foundation techs just stood by, silent and mostly amused at the byplay, with Angus having a wide smirk as he heard the kid's voice come out strong and steady, despite the mess he was in.
Snorting loudly, Angus came forward to introduce himself, then asked "How are you doing in there? Really, kid we need to know so we can help you get out safely."
Lucas sighed before replying with a bratty smirk and tone "I had trouble sleeping last night. I kept having dreams about pipes. Or was it canned foods? I don't remember. It's weird, I 'm a bit young for memory troubles, but there you have it."
The collective groans of dismay were sweet music to the boy's ears, especially since Luxis was threatening to shut himself off for a week if he kept doing it.
Politickings of the petty sorts
(The US National Anthem – with choir)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 12:00pm (noon)
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 09:00am
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington DC, USA
Leon Vance walked up to the uniformed marine lieutenant, nodding at the man as he opened the white wooden door to allow entry into the private domain of the most powerful national leader on Earth. The meeting had been requested in emergency, at the last minute, and only a few people had been able to reach the White House in time to attend.
Present for this messy debate were;
* The US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency – DIA (Laurent Yves)
* The Director of the Presidential Secret Service – USSS (Roland Toopin)
* The Chairman of the US Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff – JCS (Gen. Allen D. Wauchsaw)
* The Naval Criminal Investigations Services Director – NCIS – (Leon Vance)
* The US Navy Intelligence Director – USNI – (Adm. Randy Elms)
* The Federal Bureau of Investigation Director – FBI – (Armand Klepp)
* The National Security Agency Director – NSA – (Horatio Derrel)
* The Central Intelligence Agency Director – CIA – (Raymond Uthenberg)
These august department heads were joined by the President (Donald J. Trump) and the US Attorney General (William Barr).
Seating in his usual place with Barr on his left and Toopin on his right, the President went right down to business. "I have a problem, and by that I mean that we, the country I mean, have a problem, that needs to be resolved quickly. We just got informed that The World Bank's little darling programmer has been recovered alive, and miraculously sane. He's awake and bossing people around, just like any 13 year old kid."
Admiral Elms snorted, declaring "He's doing a lot more than bossing people, but you'll get that in the written briefs, later on. Just don't take him for a dumb spoiled kid or you'll have a nasty wake-up."
Trump waved that away, continuing as if the other man never spoke, "The problem comes from those wild cards in LA, the Department of External Services. They've been making messes all over the place, and even abroad too, to the point that countries in Europe are asking for some heads. Now, normally I'd be all for telling them to shut up and let us defend the Free World like we've been doing for a century, but the information I was given makes me pause. Yes, gentlemen, what the Europeans sent over to prove their accusations against the DXS agents and their managers were quite surprising."
Attorney general Barr spoke up slowly, methodically; "The DXS have repeatedly breached the borders of allied countries without prior accord from them, even when they were supposed to be acting on joint missions. Furthermore, these breaches occurred without receiving authorization from anyone at Justice or Defense, or the DNI. On top of things, the agents have repeatedly acted in such openly public manners that they were filmed and broadcast over both television and web stream, thus creating a direct line from them, to their agency, all the way up to us in this room. The worse part was that many of these missions they undertook would not have been sanctioned as appropriate usage of their time, assets and resources, in the course of America's geopolitical supremacy and preeminence."
President Trump dove in again, full of bile as he griped "Just yesterday I told their director, that stunted Webber woman, a nasty piece of work she was, that I didn't want her group of wild, unpredictable and out of control agents near the Wolenczak mess. They were to stay away from Pensacola, Fort Dempsey, the Jepsen Bastion, and most assuredly stay away from NCQ and the actual Wolenczak family. Well, guess what they did? They went in anyways! They disobeyed direct orders! Direct from me! And that's not even the worse they did!"
AG Barr made a vague gesture of the right hand aimed south, towards NCQ and the situation. "The DXS connived with The World Bank to get themselves hired as a simple civilian think-tank to consult on the kid's health care, to recover from his kidnapping and torture. They are actually operating, yet again out of protocols and bounds, in fully open public awareness. They have a full file of projects, quotes, purchase orders and invoices linking them to the mess. Worse still, they have managed to pass around the interdiction by POTUS by having the child attach several key agents of the DXS to himself directly, being named as his medical proxies and curator of his affairs if he goes comatose again. This is all well plotted and orchestrated by James MacGyver, the DXS 'Oversight', and Mathilda Webber."
The FBI director, Armand Klepp, asked "How does this concern us, and what can we do about it?"
President Trump nodded emphatically, getting to what he wanted done; "This is what I need from you fine gents. I need to know how to shut down and dispose of an agency. I was told that I can't sell them off like a bad building or obsolete car, because they are 'public property', but surely something can be done to shutter the place and stop their wild, savage activities! I need them to stop existing! That agency is making messes worse than what they try to solve, and doing it in full view of the public! What kinds of spies are they, that everybody sees and knows their identities? We're looking like a bunch of foolish, amateur idiots who can't run a job, because of them!"
The director of the NSA, Horatio Derrel, commented "That is correct. The presidency and government of the USA cannot sell-off an agency or department of the state. Now, this agency receives its budget from the yearly Congressional Appropriations Budget, which is voted by both House and Senate, so you can't defund them unilaterally either. However, you could ask your allies in both Chambers to put out a motion to reduce their financing, thusly forcing a reduction in personnel and resources, that would very obviously result in less activities and a much lower visibility. Unfortunately, shutting them down completely will be next to impossible. Since 2001-Sept-11, the governing method has been to add agencies to combat terrorism and foreign spies, not close-down or merge existing ones."
Trump was unwavering in his desire. "But I'm the president of this country, not them! If I want to close a department or division that doesn't work, or makes trouble, shouldn't I be able to? And why am I not able to do so?"
CIA director Uthenberg answered "Because the DXS is an old, old thing, that has been haunting us for more than a century. They change name every few years, like dummy shell companies that serve as fiscal escapes. If you tried to write down a linear story of their existence, you would get a drawing that looks like a mold colony spreading out amorphously. They have precious little internal controls, and there is far too much familial and personal interconnection between the personnel for the agency to remain loyal only to the state, instead of its own interests. Closing them down would be a good thing, but CIA lawyers have been looking at that mess since the traitor-bitch Thornton was exposed, and what we found is a nightmare."
Bill Barr folded his hands over his ample girth, wearing a frown as he asked "Oh, really? I wasn't aware that the CIA was doing inquiries into the validity or legality of other agencies? I certainly never asked or authorized this, and I fail to see how that falls under CIA mandate anyways. Only Justice has the law and rights to effectuate these sorts of evaluations, and produce binding reports."
Director Uthenberg replied coyly "But our reports are non-binding, and only for use here, in these meetings about the stability and viability of the US government, so that we know where the problems are, and how to resolve them. The inquiries done by CIA analysts are never meant to see the light of day, and certainly not be brandished in Congress during an audit or hearing. These are purely internal work documents that detail our ongoing reflections upon the strengths and improvements we need done to keep our country from sliding further into leftist chaos and communist anarchy."
Leon Vance grunted in disdain at those particular GOP trigger-buttons being thrown in, at the end of the pretty little speech, but otherwise kept quiet. There was a deeper, and much darker, game being played here, and he wanted to know what it was before he put his opinion on the table. This could signal him as an ally or enemy of the seated POTUS, and scuttle his career either way so he had to be careful. But, seeing the CIA make moves to scuttle an agency and salt the land where they used to be made shivers of dread run down his spine. Leon remembered well what had happened with a rogue CIA cell in LA a few years back, when Hetty's entire team had almost been decimated. The way Uthenberg spoke gave him a feel of flashback, of something rotten in the CIA being covered-up and the blame getting shoved at the neighboring agency in the hopes POTUS was blind enough to let it happen.
JCS chairman general Wauchsaw asked the director of the Secret Service what he thought of the DXS and their internal management. He had few dealings with them, but things seemed well run from where he stood.
USSS director Toobin replied carefully "The DXS have always been able to give off an appearance of being well managed and stable, even when a traitor was at the helm. Patricia Thornton was ordering the deaths of her own agents at the hands of contract killer Dennis Murdoch while she was on the line with the head of the Department of National Intelligence (DNI) and several others, none of whom perceived anything amiss. And that's not the only time, just the most recent. One has to wonder how much of this rests at the feet of James MacGyver, the 'Oversight' as he's titled inside DXS, since he's had that post for nigh on 35 years now. He's been their shadow master, always on the road, always moving and skulking in the shadows, while a puppet figure sits as 'director' to pacify the government and agencies."
Trump jumped in eagerly on that point "So! So, what you're saying is that part of the problem is they have two leaders, and one of them is pretty much invisible so he doesn't have to answer to anybody, because he disappears when Congress wants to do an audit, or hold a committee hearing. That explains a lot! It's that blasted 'Deep State' swamp I always talked about! That James fellow is one of those swamp rats that think he's hidden so well the laws can't reach him, that he's -beneath- Congress and public scrutiny because we can't find him! Well, we'll find him, alright! Tell me who is in charge of the DXS structure? Who makes their personnel chart, decides the pay grades and stuff? Surely I can get into that and make them come to heel, if I grab the reins that way. If we could get rid of this 'Oversight' job and make the guy just another bureaucrat with a fixed office, he'd soon be back under control!"
NSA director Derrell gave a carefully constructed response to the president's queries; "Normally, an agency makes its own charts and pay grades, based upon the federal charts voted by Congress for the entirety of the national government apparatus. A few very delimited exceptions are known, but they are few and very strongly, legally fenced-in, so they don't multiply or transfer to other postings. Also, unlike the other intelligence or counter-espionage agencies that get funded by DC, the DXS was based on a very unique charter that predates all the methods of management and visions of federal governance that we operate under since the towers fell on 9/11, or even since the Cold War started in 1960."
CIA director Uthenberg cut in "The DXS charter is a bit older than 155 years. It boggles the mind, but there you have it. They were conceived and created in an era when there were no electrical devices of any sorts, steam engines were the industrial norm but horse buggies still ruled the streets, and presidents didn't always resort to Congress to solve every little problem they faced. Back then, carrying a gun on your belt was as common in downtown DC as it was on the ranches in Minnesota or in the brothels of Louisiana. If you found you had foreign spies or internal agitators in your town, you got your own hands dirty to settle it, you couldn't wait for Congress or the White House to send orders. The DXS charter reflects that old mentality. The current 'Oversight' was nominated by his predecessor, and so on in a straight line, all the way to the first man who had the title. The 'Oversight' names the director of the scientific foundation that covers the whole thing as façade to interact with polite society. Then, the director is responsible for most of the daily grind, including financing, admin, personnel movements, and almost all governmental contacts. In the background, the 'Oversight' handles the spies, the soldiers, and an occasional throw-away external contractor when they don't want to be attached to a death or terrorist act."
Director Derrel continued "And that is what makes the bloody agency such a nightmare to deal with at all levels. They are like a bi-cephalic, bipolar ettin whose heads don't talk to each other. When we call them, we are sent to their director but have no idea who will actually make the decisions, nor what they all imply. We certainly can't predict the scope of what they will do, or the fallout when it's done."
President Trump wondered aloud "If their charter is so old, surely it has a few obsolete clauses that we could use? A few antiquated paragraphs that make them answerable to the presidency, or at least one of the permanent departments written into the US Constitution? Nobody would have been dumb enough to create an intel agency that was that disconnected from all political reality in the country?"
Sighing deeply, director Uthenberg replied "Back in 1863 when they were incorporated, it was the depth of the US Civil War, and the Union President of the day, Abraham Lincoln, had a very strong belief that what brought about the war was a generalized lack of civility and education on both sides of the great divide. The solution he imagined was to create a legally autonomous entity that would focus mostly on analyzing and vetting the know-how, technologies and higher sciences being talked about around the world, then produce a standardized abstract that all branches and levels of American state and governance could use for maximum understanding and efficiency. That is why they were named the department of 'External Services', because they were outside all the established agencies and armed services that existed in the day. They served everybody equally, but answered to none so as to remain apolitical and non-partisan throughout their interactions with the rest of the country. And I have to say that their first fifty-odd years of existence had in fact proven Lincoln's idea functional."
Horatio Derrel waved a hand towards the Resolute Desk, specifically at the telephone. "And then these damned things began to happen all over the landscape. When information was carried around in newspapers, books or photographs, it was easy enough to delimitate the job description and authority of a worker to a few items that never changed. But come the end of the 1800's and the arrival of electricity for public usage, and things change radically for the worse. Now, the telegraph is invented and information crosses the country faster than the best steam train could dream of. That gets worse when the telephone is invented, with the Telex remote-writer soon after. Spies now had micro-fiches, and even bloody micro-dots, to hide large batches of information out of sight. Plus, written ciphers were becoming so complex that the best human minds could no longer cope. And that is when the DXS lost its path to become the wild beast of today."
Director Uthenberg explained "As long as there was a very simple and clear distinction between the scientists working in laboratories and the spies in the field, each agency had a firmly determined job and identity they held to. Now, as the very limited but potent telegraph and phonograph gave way to telephones and tape recorders, the order of things changed. Now, a simple measly scientist who never went to boot-camp or any agency training facility could commit active espionage, sabotage, or influence the decisions of foreign governments, just by dropping off a quick call or recorded message at the local consulate. Likewise, our agents abroad had a much easier time of smuggling tapes out of hostile countries than they did living humans, especially since you never knew if the person would not bolt at the first chance, be it from fear or because they had been a spy all along. In any case, the turn of the 1900's and all the technological evolutions they brought scrambled the cards at all levels for the agencies. Now, the DXS no longer just made army training manuals or USDA equipment guides, now they actually put men in the field to get the information first-hand, before anybody else, and then they parsed, edited and formatted this precious data so it would fit what they expected from the agency they would send it to. In essence, they stopped being an 'External Service', becoming an 'External Boss' who controlled what actions and results the other agencies did, regardless of their own mandates or needs."
Director Derrel added in a nasty tone "This movement has gotten worse since the creation of computers, and gone out of any control with the apparition of touch-screen smartphones, because those devices make even a child a potent threat. The case of Lucas Wolenczak being a medical prodigy is bad, his owning a cybernetics company since age 9 is a folly, but him being a director in The World Bank with DP attached at age 13 is inhuman madness. I would even go so far as to say that it could be declared an anti-American act, if he weren't one of our citizens by birth, as his parents. But still, that kid's case is a bloody clusterfuck, and the fact he's neck-deep into this shyte with the DXS just goes to prove our point. The separation of powers, jurisdictions, jobs and responsibilities has been erased by technology because you no longer need decades of specialized studies to have the capacity to get a result. You can now take a child with a phone, download an app into the phone, and the kid becomes an invisible spy who's wiretapping everything around as he walks to school. How then, are we to keep the personnel of an agency on track, inside their boundaries, when their limits and mandate were so damned blurry to begin with?"
The president took his porcelain cup to sip some coffee as he thought through the morass of information he had just been given. Sighing deeply, he asked "You two seem to have given this a lot of thought already. What do you suggest we do to corral the DXS back into their more limited role, like back when they were chartered?"
The CIA director shrugged "It's too late to change. My agency started affranchising itself of DXS many decades ago, when we created our own laboratories and equipment design workshops. Unfortunately, that may have been the trigger that made the DXS decide that since their documentation and tools were no longer the standard for everybody, they would go out and do things themselves, thusly skipping over the uneducated peons that were supposed to depend on them. Honestly, the relationship broke on both sides at the same time."
Attorney general Barr wondered aloud "Could we not then emit an order or decree that forces that agency to limit itself to only analyze what it is given and produce reports, like it was incorporated to do, at the very beginning? If that is their written charter, then we should be able to constrain them to it, or else disband due to willful disobedience against the presidency and Congress. In any ways, the idea you had about making Congress vote away their budget is a good start, but it will be very slow."
Leon Vance offered "Perhaps, mister president, there would be a simpler way. Maybe you could make it mandatory that the DXS disbands all military or spying activities, while in counterpart the other agencies transfer all their laboratory and design work back to the DXS as it should have been. It would make all the agencies involved much slimmer, faster to react, and far better at their jobs as they would then concentrate only on their core mission, instead of fattening and sprawling into fields not theirs."
Trump drained his cup, putting it back on the low coffee table as he juggled the suggestion in his mind, not seeing the result he wanted. Nobody really knew what he wanted, and it would stay that way since he had too much to lose if he shared his secrets with others. It was already far too obvious he had sweet deals with several world leaders, and a few gifts waiting for him when he left office, that he could not afford to let anything else be discovered.
Sighing deeply, the president declared "Well, then. If we can't do anything quick, we kill them like the chinese do; with a thousand paper cuts. But mark my words, I want that damned group of wild beasts corralled and culled! I won't tolerate them galloping all around the planet, causing chaos and mayhem between our allies. Especially since those allies are pretty shady, unstable people to begin with! Our men in Congress will try to cut them at the legs, to defund them legally. But it won't be enough, not with these bastards! I want all of your agencies to work on finding me a way to either shutter, sell-off, or bind them to follow presidential decrees like everybody else in the country! Dismissed!"
The exalted directors and military officers all nodded and left the room in silence as Trump and Barr stayed sitting in the conversation cluster, continuing the sterile discussion about something that wasn't a real problem. Not for anybody who wasn't Donald J. Trump or his family, anyways.
Leon Vance took out his phone and texted a brief message that he sent to a short list of a dozen names, making certain that those who mattered knew what was in the works. This entire power trip about closing the DXS and disbanding their agents stunk of foreign interference, but whether it was Russian or Chinese was still up in the air. Both countries would have reasons to want to get rid of the spies that made fools of them repeatedly in the last three years, and it was known Trump loved dictators more than he did his own soldiers and intel agencies. Now, it was simply a matter who finding out who was offering to stroke his vapid ego to know who would benefit from DXS going out of business.
The rebirth of Lucas Andrew Holtzenstein Wolenczak
(Star Wars – The Imperial March)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 16:00pm
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 13:00pm
SeaQuest, in UEO Drydock 1500-A
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
Angus MacGyver stood at the head of the life sustention pod, working diligently on removing the proprietary security screws from the retention rim so that the articulated lid could pivot open, thus allowing the medics to extract the child. Lucas had designed the screws as self-locking stem-bolts with a very particular head, and the internal mechanisms inside the bolts were more akin to watch-making than industrial tools.
Wiping sweat off his brow, the young technician wondered how many people on Earth could force their way through these locking systems, and if it was even possible without damaging the pod or the person inside. The genius-kid had built safeties into the frame, crystal panels and each machine attached to the sustention pod, plus all the motors and pistons that allowed it to lift and roll like a primitive battle-bot.
Well, primitive if you compared it to the Gundams or Transformers from the cartoons.
Angus would have sold his soul to have a powered armor at that age!
The young man had to suppress a snort of amusement as he remembered the faces that James and the boy's parents had made when he had moved his pod into 'activity' position. Even Bozer and Riley had looked pale for a second before their innate geekness took over. Riles certainly took a lot of time to calm down from her cyber-spatz, and Wilt still looked like he wanted to write a whole movie around the sweetest piece of gadgetry he'd seen since joining Phoenix.
Mac couldn't disagree with either of them.
Still, these damned stem-bolts were a headache to unlock, even with the right tool. Who the Hells had ever thought to integrate circuitry inside the blasted things to make certain they were unlocked only by an authorized technician, with the original tool, in the correct sequence? This kid was paranoid...
Okay, he got kidnapped and mind-raped for a month, so maybe it was reasonable precautions...
Angus sighed in relief as the last of 12 security bolts fell into his eager hands, holding them aloft like trophies from a hard hunt. He was then able to remove the metallic retention washer, only to stop when he saw that there was a secondary sealing circle made of thick rubber underneath, and it also had 12 safety stem-bolts to lock it in place.
Glaring malevolently and mumbling nasty imprecations under his breath at the chuckling child inside the pod, Angus got to work on those. They didn't have all day to veg around in their own juice, unlike some rich, entitled, pickled albino runt he could point at.
x-x
Another hour later, Angus could finally remove the inner sealing ring to reveal the actual locking mechanism for the lid. The spy didn't need to do anything as the locks began to move on their own, loudly clicking open in an odd sequence until they all popped out of their recessed nooks, showing the thick steel-&-crystal cap was fully released for movement.
Seeing that the entire lid assembly was loose but still firmly fitted to the tube, Angus signaled Riley to trigger the fluid purge cycle. They had kept the cylinder full as a precaution, in case they failed to open the machinery causing Lucas to need to stay inside longer. The fluid had many healing properties, as well as a soothing effect, so it was no trouble for the boy to stay immersed. Also, it was Lucas himself that had suggested they wait until the lid was unlocked to drain his temporary domain, as he would quickly start to feel a chill, once out of the warm blue liquid.
x-x
Cynthia and Lawrence stood well apart, to avoid being in the way when the heavy machines moved to position for the final extraction of their son. It had taken almost three hours of slow, capricious work to get here because Lucas had built so many protections into his pod. Apparently, McGrath's techs had put him in straight, using the procedure written in the 'emergency activation & resuscitation' PDF file that was in the array's OS the moment it activated. This meant that the felons had integrated their son to the machinery without causing him physical damages. Thank Yahweh for small miracles.
On the other hand, their 13 year old boy had pipes stuck into places they did not want to imagine, let alone have to see. To their misery, they saw everything -and more- when the upper lid opened.
With the tube horizontal, the top cupola pivoted so as to be under the support cradle when it trundled out of the sustention chamber. The harsh-white color of the mobile frame that held their son contrasted very badly with his luminous blond hair and glowing flint-blue eyes. However, his skin was such a milky white complexion that he was almost indistinguishable from the holding bed under the cold, harsh lighting of the fluorescent tubes affixed to the sea-deck's ceiling.
With a shiver of mixed dread and disgust, the two parents saw that the breathing mask on their son's face was separated in two sections. The upper cavity removed the stale air exhaled from the nose while the lower cavity protected the tube that was snaking down his throat and into his trachea to forcibly keep him oxygenated. Then they saw the sets of thin intravenous tubules that were connected at each wrist, allowing for constant hemo-dialysis and IV feeding. Then they saw the thin pipe that attached to his penis for urine, and the larger pipe that was penetrated into his anus for feces.
Everything was put in place to be permanently installed, with a thick line of white medical cement to insure a lasting watertight seal that would not wear out in the medical fluid of the pod.
Then, as Angus and Wilt worked in tandem to help the boy sit in the hard thermoplastic frame, the parents saw their worse nightmares made material: the glowing blue neural interface wires that were connecting to recessed sockets in the boy's nape. The two adults could not begin to image what kinds of torture their son had endured to have those things implanted in his neck. That bastard McGrath had tons of depravities to answer for!
Or so they thought...
x-x
Lucas gestured for the two young men to stop moving him, his voice echoing through the speakers around the neuroplexic array; "Luxis, disconnect the wires but maintain the induction signals. Thank you for your help. I will speak with you again soon."
An ethereal voice answered from the speakers built into the frame of the cylinder "As you wish, Lucas. I will always be waiting for you."
The 48 glowing fiber-optics wires that connected the teenager to the machinery went dark and unlocked from their sockets with a soft hiss as the seals depressurized. Ignoring the interrogative glances from the crowd, Lucas slowly moved his right arm to reach behind his neck to delicately remove each wire, one at a time, telling Wilt which colored cap to put on it once Angus was done wiping and drying the connector.
Addressing the two DXS techs through the speakers, Lucas explained "Be careful when you clean and cap the neuroplexic wires, those are exclusive to my use. I worked long and hard to craft them, and I'll be needing them again at some point soon. Honestly, it's a miracle that those felon soldiers had any idea how to connect me without damaging the plugs or sockets. It would have taken weeks to build new joints, plus days of surgeries to replace the damaged parts out of my neck."
Angus asked, out of simple curiosity, "How and where did you get those things put into you? It's not like neural implants are common surgeries, unlike a hip or knee replacement."
Shrugging carelessly, the teenager replied "Stanford actually has a host of very innovative and skillful medical personnel, if you know how to propose the project or experiment. In my case, I was at the bleeding edge of all neurology tech, so I just skipped the middle-men to talk directly with the department or specialty heads. The fact I already had the implants physically built in my hands helped the older folks to make up their minds about helping."
Nodding in acceptance at the answer, Angus followed up "How long have you worn these? I can't see any scars on your nape, but these implants are solid blocks buried into the vertebra's solid bone. You can't put those things in there by catheter. Even direct 3D printing would have irregularities, and these units are all perfectly smooth and shaped symmetrically. Exact copies for each quad-port segment."
Humming softly, the boy replied "I designed everything late last year, built everything in January, and got the implantation surgery around late February this year. I had a very good team of nine surgeons and six nurses in the room, so most of the variables were well controlled. As for the clear, smooth skin, that was the work of musculature micro-surgery coupled with prototype dermatological shaping, both using some brand-new biochemical glue and other compounds that I had developed in the previous years."
Making a moue of annoyance, Lucas griped "People focus on my computers and programs all the time. They keep forgetting that my basic fields of specialty are actually medical molecules and devices. I didn't get those DP and MD diplomas just to spite my dad to say I'm a real 'doctor' unlike him, with all his engineering and geology stuff. -Snort!- My dad's a confirmed ground-pounder, in case you were wondering."
The boy and his helpers shared a chuckle at Lawrence's expense while the last of the 48 neural wires were removed, cleaned and capped, then spooled back into their holder in the support frame.
The parents watched in silence as their fully naked boy was actually doing some of the work needed to liberate him from the gawd-awful machinery. While Lawrence was trying to analyze the diverse parts and functions that were exposed, Cynthia was trying to plot a way to keep her boy away from the devilish thing for the rest of his life, despite that it was revealed he had built everything for his own use just as much as external patients. Both adults would be surprised in a bad way soon.
Without much emotion visible on his placid features, the young boy then began to help the spies to remove the facial mask and breathing tube that occupied his throat. Making a face of relief as his upper pipes and tongue were finally free to move on their own, the teen gently patted Angus' forearm in thanks as the older male followed instructions to wash, wipe and cap the pipes for later use. Then came the 'fun' part of removing the lower plumbing from between his legs. Lucas griped a bit in a hoarse voice that was coming from both his mouth and the speakers in two different tones, then lay back down on the hard plastic cradle, closing his eyes in resignation of things to come. His parents were aghast anew as the 13 year old guided the two agents (not real medics, dammit!) to use a special solvent to liquefy the medical cement then carefully shimmy the offending tubes off his juvenile body.
Once the last pipe was removed, Lucas couldn't help but snark aloud "30 fucking days! That had to be the longest blow-job in the books! Make sure I have the girl's number, I definitely want to call her back when I feel better!"
The crass joke caused a few of the adults to chuckle or cough behind their hand, while the team of spies actually snorted in dark amusement at the boy's take on his situation. Even the closed-off asian woman flashed a toothy smirk for a second, before retreating to her detached professional demeanor.
Lucas surprised his caregivers yet again when he ordered "Corpsman Hanvers! Get my cane from the equipment rack! I want to walk by my own power."
The twenty-something sailor puttered inside the tall wheeled cabinet that had been positioned next to the neuroplexic array, removing a long metallic tube that he brought over for Lucas to grasp in his firm, steady right hand. Gently pushing aside the two agents who were supporting him, the young teen stood from the medical cradle and stayed upright without assistance other than the armament-cane, a weapon nobody knew anything about. Despite being naked and exposed, the boy looked around at the faces of the people gathered in the vast room, his own features set into a hard, impenetrable mask.
Gesturing at the corpsman with his left hand, the genial child commanded with a snap in his whispery voice, still rough from the prolonged intubation; "Get me a wheelchair so the blood-letters can transport me to med-bay like a human, instead of carting me around like some lab-rat. And, sailor! While you're at it, you could also think of handing me the bloody bathrobe that NOBODY thought of offering me yet!" Glaring mightily at the assembled crowd, the boy griped "I hope you all got your jollies nice and hard, cuz you'll never be seeing this much manliness again in your lives! Now get me somewhere warm instead of staring like stupid seagulls on a beach! Dumb-asses!"
A sudden, great lot of activity occurred to have the teenager covered in a thick terrycloth robe and sitting in a wheelchair that had been waiting for just that situation, ready to move out of the sea-deck so that he could be brought to the ship's infirmary for a thorough check-up.
As Bozer got ready to push his 'charge' out of the boat's dedicated science hall, Lucas called over his shoulder "Luxis, be a dear and pack-up the cylinder. Put it in sentry mode, just so nobody fiddles with my array while the doctors try to teach me what I already learned a few years back. Thanks, bro."
Surprising all the adults badly, the massive three-ton cylinder rumbled to life, several parts glowing with energy as the support cradle retracted into the sustention chamber and the cupola pivoted closed, allowing the great tube to extend its eight wheels to stand up. Once raised fully vertical, the machine unlimbered its two gripper arms and the eight small weapons arms, then rolling itself to guard stance in front of where it would normally go, if the array had a patient undergoing treatment.
{ SQ } - { Poking and prodding between could-be-friends } - { SQ }
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 19:00pm
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 16:00pm
Lawrence and Cynthia were sitting in the waiting room next to the infirmary, trying to stay calm and civil with the people around them, but two were getting on their nerves quickly.
James MacGyver was being so obtuse as to be more opaque and unresponsive than the oceanic bedrock WPP was dug from. No matter what questions the parents asked about his 'agency', job, tasks, or actual authority to be present aboard ship, they got blithe non-answers with an unwavering, bland non-smile. In a karmic event, Lawrence was finally having an idea of what Lucas felt from dealing with his father for all 13 years of his life. The geologist had often been described as 'duller than a puddle of frozen mud' by his child, but he had never before appreciated just what that could entail. Until today.
The other person was NCIS agent Jethro Gibbs. The older man was looking at both parents as if they had deep, dark, criminal secrets to hide from the rest of humanity. Maybe he thought them to be spies, just like those 'DXS' people, or whatever they truly were, when they got home after a mission. Neither husband nor wife felt at ease with how Gibbs gazed at them pensively, like a jeweler trying to find the fault-line in a gem that needed to be split asunder, then ground to small, patterned pieces. It was as if the older agent had already decided their guilt and was only waiting on the judge to confirm what he had known all along. The couple exchanged no words with the man for the whole time they were waiting, and they also ignored his team by rebound, no matter what polite overtures the younger agents tried. Especially since those overtures were actually questions about Lucas' businesses and studies.
The door finally opened, letting pass the ship's chief therapist, Mathias Foss, accompanied by the chief of surgeries, doctor Meetha Saritsatva, an older Hindi woman who specialized in trauma injuries and chemical contaminations. The woman folded her small reading glasses but held them in her hands as she spoke to the group assembled in the room.
"Miss Davis, Misters MacGyver and Bozer, and Dame Holtzenstein - esquire, all present. Plus the parents, of course. Good. And you must be the NCIS team from Washington DC? Good to have you on board, despite the harrowing circumstances."
The female medic did the rounds of the room, greeting politely each person by their job/position or relationship towards her patient. Having gotten the requisite polite (and banal) answers, she moved onwards to the health report itself.
"Now, the information that I will give you has been vetted by the patient for public consumption, and he is keeping the exact details for his family at a later date. Furthermore, he has reminded my colleagues and I about his Diplomatic Privilege, thus meaning that none of the law enforcement agencies underneath the level of The World Bank can emit a sub-pena sufficient to force divulging of the test results. Are we all clear to date?"
The doctor gave Jethro Gibbs a small smirk as he grit his teeth in annoyance at the stone wall raised in his path, but the navy cop wasn't done yet. He would learn a few things, and go digging from there.
"Now, as you have all witnessed yourselves earlier, doctor Wolenczak is functional. By that I mean that his body functions at or above the normal stats for a thirteen year old human male. However, there are some very obvious differences that we detected. Firstly, due to the prolonged and intense stimulation of his neural pathways, his entire neurological system is many times more energized than normal, and signals run along the nerves much faster. This results in perceptions, intellectualization of facts, and physical reflexes that are all greatly increased. His overall strength is unchanged from his last physical, but his overall agility and fine dexterity have improved significantly. He does have a slightly higher cardio rhythm than before, but nothing truly out of norm."
Angus asked in a soft voice "What went wrong with his mind? You were very specific about stating that he was 'physically functional', not normal, and not healed or recovered from trauma. So, what is it that happened, and how do we help him get better?"
Giving the young spy a look of sympathy, doctor Saritsatva replied "I was told that you were in the armed services, in the Explosive & Ordinance Disposal unit, before you joined the current agency, correct? Then I am certain you understand the troubles associated with PTSD, shell-shock and the occasional lapse of the mind to properly determine Friend-or-Foe during an episode. Lucas has had his mind wiped and re-written several thousand times in thirty days. It is only because he had the foresight to plan for such event that he is still with us today. For I can confirm that it is indeed Lucas Wolenczak in our diagnostic room, but at the same time, he will be far different than you knew in terms of memories, emotions, skill-sets, and even his baseline personality has changed. To a great degree."
Gibbs asked pointedly "Is he sane? Is he a danger to the country, or humanity? Can he be let out on his own, or he needs a minder of sorts?" The older agent's tone had gone gentler at the end, wondering what price would be asked of the gentle-souled boy for having been born such a prodigy, in a world where Power tolerated only mediocrity that didn't threaten it's hold on the population.
It was Wilt Bozer who replied the rough query; "You heard the lady. He's functional in body, but his mind's all over the place. It doesn't mean he's crazy or out of control, just that nobody could go through that neurological blender and get out the same way they went in. He's different, even to his own eyes and ears, so he'll need some therapy and follow-up. That's what she meant by the PTSD reference."
Doctor Foss agreed with Bozer, specifying "Our colleague, doctor Wolenczak, is a truly exceptional mind and personality. And he is functional, but, unlike Meetha, I would stipulate positively that he is not insane, unstable, or in danger of a psychotic state. None of the chemical signals of such are present in his bloodstream, and all scans of his brain and spinal column come back clean. Added to this is the fact that Lucas has himself already begun to catalog the differences between his 'initial version' and the 'current version' in order to either accept, correct or nullify those changes."
Cynthia asked fearfully "What changes could those be? When we came aboard, there was this ugly rumor that he used that rolling tube of his to kill a woman after plugging her head with a glowing blue wire. Was that true? Is that one of the changes that we have to live with, now?"
Lawrence hugged his wife from the side as she shivered in dread at the thought of what their gentle, kind, loving little boy could have become, just because some greedy bastards churned his soul to mush in their quest for easy power and money.
The two doctors exchanged a worried look between them, before the psychiatrist answered "I am in the unfortunate position of confirming the rumor. Lucas has... interrogated a prisoner... then disposed of her given that she was a present and active danger to the ship if she lived. Admiral Noyce was present on the sea-deck during the event and actively ordered the crew to stand back to let the young man work."
"Work!" Cynthia screeched in horror, "You call that sort of butchery 'working'? What kinds of maniacs are you all to consider mind-rape, torture and summary execution of humans to be simple 'work'?"
Doctor Foss countered tersely "I would ask, madam, that you contain your distemper or move outside of the waiting room for the remainder of the discussion. Your name is not in the list of requisite persons that are necessary for this meeting. This is an -official- military, policing and intel agencies conference, not a family & relatives briefing. Is the situation clear?"
Stunned by the sudden harshness in the medic's tone, both parents were worried to see that absolutely every other person in the room seemed to be backing the man's attitude and opinion. Having no choice, the two irate parents quieted, but remained undeterred in their own views.
Doctor Saritsatva took over the exposé with a calmer tone. "Lucas has tortured and killed last night, and it will not be the last time that he does. One of the first changes to his mindset that he noticed was that his voluntary determination of Friend-or-Foe has become more refined, with more categories, and now has lower/upper limits farther out than he used to. Before, he was a true purist of the medical profession who believed that we should never commit harm, torture, nor participate in the process of an execution, even if it was done legally and guilt was proven beyond all doubts. Now, he subconsciously assigns a 'value' to the 'variable' that is a human being, and acts according to that 'value'. Which means that if the person's tag ever becomes negative, he will either forcibly correct, dismiss or delete the being who has become 'un-valuable' in his cognitive system. Basically, he no longer believes in the Sanctity of Life, or the fact that we should not be trading people. He now accepts that shame, pain, fear and death are all part of the necessities of any societal management system, and will play the 'Game' as it is written and ruled, just like everybody else who has hurt him and his family."
Doctor Foss explained "What general McGrath's men tried to do was use his brain as an organic CPU that was specialized in war-games, meaning the simulation of diverse types of social, political, economical, religious and military conflicts. From the purely verbal jousts of TV interviews, to the harangues yelled by priests at the altar, to the shouting of rioters, to the kidnappings of deviants, to the gunfire of gangs, and the massive gas or atomic bombs of national militaries... They simulated hundreds of conflicts, from real history and some purely imagined scenarios, for a thousand repetitions on each story. In essence, they forced the young man to live through several hundred millenia of non-stop, repetitive warfare. And the truly amazing fact is that in every scenario Lucas was put, he ended finding the KEY to win the fight on all plateaus of the 'Game'. In more than 400,000 delimited attempts, McGrath's men never found a scenario he could not power through and win. Yes, he usually had hundreds or thousands of men under his command, plus sizable monetary and industrial assets to lean on, but so had his enemies. Also, he usually started each 'story' with several considerable handicaps that relented only when he discovered them and found a remedy all by himself. None of the limits or handicaps were timed, level-dependent, nor set to expire if the enemies did a particular action. The complete burden of success, and more, was solely on him and nobody else."
"Fuck!" Angus swore crassly as he bent over in his chair, to put his face in his hands, rubbing them roughly over his features as he tried to absorb what he had heard.
James turned toward the grieving parents to explain in simpler terms. "What the two doctors are telling us is that your son is mentally functional, and fits the 'classic' definition of sanity, as per the tenets of medicine in north-America today. What they are also saying is that instead of being dead, or so messed-up in the head that he couldn't even drool without help, he has survived with enough of his personality, mind, memories and emotions to still be recognizable as the son you saw on your last shared vacations. However, he has changed. Not for the worst, but maybe not for the best. It all depends on what sort of life you have. Some of us here work in the sort of dark, shadowy Reality that now colors Lucas's world view, and we are still decent, caring family persons. For others, by reasons of Faith, church influence or personal experience of trauma... They would no longer accept him in their lives. It is a long, winding, bumpy path that you will have to tread in order to decide for yourselves if you still see your son in him, or if he has become such a monster that you renege him."
Looking over at Angus with clear sadness and anguish in his eyes, James whispered hoarsely "I can tell you that even if Angus and I work in the same field, in the same agency, it does not make knowing and judging the other person any less painful, or impact our lives less bluntly. You should take the time to meet this new Lucas properly, and learn his patterns, his behaviors and emotions, before you make a quick judgment only on baseless emotions. He is probably far more like his ordinary self than you would realize from just the medical reports, as those things are conceived to be brief."
Riley Davis asked in as kind a tone as she could muster, in a very blatant attempt to move the conversation away from Angus and James' problems; "Can you tell us some of the smaller changes that Lucas has identified and chosen to accept? I think we should keep the 'I'm in the army now' kinda stuff for another time, like in a few weeks later..."
Nodding at the wisdom of the techie's words, Meetha replied with a motherly smirk "He craves red meat. By his own admission, Lucas is tall but very lean for his age, mostly because he loosely follows the Mediterranean type of diet. He normally ate fish and turkey for protein, with lots of steamed vegetables and fruits as both dessert and snacks. But now, he remembers eating things like fried bacon, or beef & barley soup, boar steak, filet mignon brochettes and so on, all in rich European cream sauces, in styles of cuisine that he never even tried before. But now, he wants those sorts of things for lunch, or for dinner at the rate this is going."
Lawrence puffed out a breath of relief, saying to his wife "If the most personal change he has to adapt to is in his food, we can surely adapt to it too. It isn't like we ever forced him to eat a special diet this way, so we shouldn't really mind. I doubt he'll try to oblige us to follow suit, anyways."
Doctor Foss gave a powerless shrug as he explained "The truly personal changes will only be visible to those who actually live with him, in the same house or at least the same work environment. As for his more mercantile, or flat-out militaristic and nihilistic view of Reality, that I'm afraid is going to stay for the rest of his life. The sheer quantity of the sims processed, and the quality of imagery and 'gameplay' for lack of a better terminology... Well, it all happened in a way that he actually 'lived' it for real. He is now like a war veteran that lived through both World Wars and all of the Cold War's secret fights, but several thousand times for each delimited event. He is different. He will remain different, but at the same time, he will keep on changing, as all humans do for as long as they live. Whether he gets better or worse, only Time will tell."
Wilt summed up "So, a whole lot of support, patience, and making the effort of getting to know the new 'him' so he can figure out how to make himself better, not worse. Got it."
Aghast, Cynthia hissed at the black-skinned young man "It can't possibly be that simple!"
Surprising everybody, it was Tim McGee who countered "Yes, it can be. And it is. For having been in the same situation a few years back, I can tell you that the best cure for surviving kidnapping, torture, PTSD and the guilt of having survived when your colleagues got killed, is family, friends, and a good caring community around you. The pills help for a few weeks, then they no longer do anything, so don't bank on those. Gird your loins people, cuz your kid's gonna need you for the long run."
Gibbs chimed in with a low, caring tone that surprised even more "Decide right away if you're in this mess or if you want out. It might seem cold hearted, cruel to a point, but it will be kinder to him to leave now than if you try to know him just to appease your moral qualms, then dump him because he can't be what he was before his abduction. What he lived, what he saw, and what the sims made him do to stay alive... War never lets anybody walk away healthy or completely sane. No human has ever walked out of a war field as civilized and stable as they were when they entered it. War makes beasts of all men, because only monsters can survive the meat grinder long enough to come out, but nobody is intact, or healthy, or sane, after a True War. Know this, and make your choice before you hurt him worse by lack of conviction, or weak efforts you don't really want to see produce a result."
James MacGyver looked down to his hands, weariness evident in his posture as he agreed with the NCIS supervisor. "Be ready to accept him as he has become, with all the faults and quirks you discover along the way, or let him go on his own as politely and quickly as you can. Because once the process of familial reconciliation begins, it could destroy what equilibrium he has achieved if you abandon him."
A loud, nasty snort resounded from the doorway behind the two doctors.
Standing in the aperture, Lucas wore the complete set of high-class militarized nobleman's suit that he had crafted through his neuroplexic array. The dark purple base, black trims and silver details made for an impressive, and oppressive, work of the clothier's art. The very visible armament-cane was not the most notable item, however, as the thick belt with several sheaths was visible under the long jacket that he wore open to showcase his vest, shirt and luxury accessories. Money and riches were a universal language, like music, mathematics and chemistry, so he would be a fool to not display his mastery of this most fundamental and useful tool.
Gobsmacked at the display, Lawrence quipped "I guess you like purple more than before. God knows we tried to make you wear something else than those purple jeans for years, and now this... We should have been careful about asking; kids are so literal sometimes..."
Angus laughed aloud at that, leaning back into his chair as he passed an arm around Riley and Wilt on each side of him. "Well, if it's only his taste of colors they're stuck on, we'll have an easy job of it!"
Riley nodded, snarking good and hard "Yeah, cuz the bloody big pistol on his hip ain't important."
Wilt came back in a snide tone with matching sneer "Egads, man! But that suit is SOOO retro! You just have to get some lace ruffles on those shirt cuffs and neckline, with a nice big jeweled cravat pin and you'll be fit for polite society. Maybe. You are a teenager, after all. I guess some allowances need, must, be made, given your DP and doctorate, though I hope your professional demeanor matches your IQ."
Several snickers answered Bozer's emulation of a snooty snob at a rich ball, with both parents finally letting out some stress as they saw their son give the older male a two-eyed blink of interrogation, with a very universal middle-finger salute right after.
"Screw you too, Bozer! I'll have you know that purple is the color of riches and governance across the world for several thousand years, now. If you had an inkling of an education in the finer things of life, you would know that already, instead of needing a -child- to inform you. Oooh, but adults aren't what they were in my time! Then again, at 27, you ain't a real adult that much either..."
Louder chuckles and giggles sounded as the boy and three young spies began trading barbs and quips in earnest, sometimes 'accidentally' splashing over the others in the room if they got too noisy. A few minutes later had Lucas tiredly sitting in a spare chair that had been brought from the medics' break room, so he could help finalize the briefing.
Now that things calmed a bit, Lawrence asked his son "How can you walk around like that? You spent a month in liquid, never moving your limbs. You should be atrophied and almost quadriplegic, if my limited knowledge of medicine is reliable."
Shrugging off the question, Lucas replied "That information is proprietary to the technology, so I won't answer you in a public gathering. In fact, many of the questions you have about my survival and health will go without an answer, simply because if I do respond, you risk the danger of being kidnapped and tortured for the informations about the devices and functions. The less you know, the less risk of being seen as useful in a plot to illegally retro-engineer my systems without the original research."
Agent Gibbs agreed with the boy's decision, but with a caveat; "You're right with your family, but you know that NCIS and the FBI won't accept that kind of answer, don't you? We'll be needing the details of what happened, and why you came back the way you did, regardless of anything else."
Smirking nastily, the teenager countered "Unless my DP with the Bank has been rescinded or lowered under what Lawrence has, no, I don't have to answer your questions about anything. And you can warn the USSS and State Department of the same for them. Since I was insensate for the kidnapping, all the intel will come from other sources, and all my R&D for the neuroplexic array will remain secret. Any and all complaints will be addressed to the Wolenbahn lawyers, and what replaces the UEO courts when the defunct organization finishes dying out. So, in about four or five years, give or take..."
Ellie Bishop made a face, cutting in with "It might be faster than that. The news of what Andrea Dre was planning has leaked out to the open media during the night. Already, there are manifestations and riots clamoring for the dismantling of the 'fascist precursor' that the UEO turned out to be. So, the actual death of the system is already done, it's the tearing apart of the corpse that's going to take time."
Holding on to her husband's arm, Cynthia asked tartly "Is there a family suite in that overgrown brick hut of yours? Maybe we can dodge this mess at the bottom of the ocean. With the volcano under foot, we should at least be warm for a while. It could help our family get back together, no?" she finished imploringly towards the men in her life.
Lawrence was giving the idea some thought for real when Lucas grumbled "I have several meetings in Washington DC on the calendar, plus the WB's Board wants to see me in person to do some damage control, and I have my own companies to manage. The new line of antiviral pill won't finish designing itself all on its own, and my subordinates aren't quite up to that challenge yet. Then there are the new crystal panel servers to finish designing for the first beta-test production run in November."
Angus MacGyver blinked in surprise as he asked simultaneously with the two medics "What antiviral pill? There is almost no way to stop a virus once inside the human body, you can only limit the symptoms, and even that does very little. Bacterium and bacillus we can treat pretty easily, but viruses are still out of effective reach."
Blinking at the group Lucas replied "I shouldn't have said that. Must be more tired than I thought. Anyways, as you all guessed, it's proprietary info so no answers. Now, it's not that I don't like you folks, but I have a train to catch so I have to pack up my stuff. However, I do now realize that my body's reserves have been strained beyond reason." Looking to wards the medics he asked "Could you lend me a wheelchair for the rest of the day? It will be brought back to you when I'm done boarding my new vehicle in the triage yard next to the drydock."
Getting the rather overt message that nothing else would be discussed today, the NCIS agents mumbled between them as they filed out of the waiting room, followed surprisingly by Aharonah Holtzenstein, James MacGyver and his agent Desiree Nguyen. This Left Lawrence and Cynthia with the two medics, Angus, Wilt and Riley to discuss the rest with Lucas.
Doctor Saritsatva began in carefully moderated tones "Our young colleague here has accomplished a miracle of modern medicine. All of his current health and potential recovery are solely the result of how he designed and assembled his machines. I cannot say beyond that, of course. In the meanwhile, for all your cravings of meat and sauce, you will have to remain on a semi-liquid, very light diet for the next week as your stomach takes back its original size. Being fed by IV line for 30 days did your already thin body structures no good."
The boy told his parents "It's a normal physiological reaction to not using an organ to optimal capacity for a prolonged period. The body reduces its maintenance until it is used again, or else shuts it down. I had expected that the moment I woke up in the pod and saw how much time had passed."
Angus added "I went through this a few times, when I got hospitalized from army or agency missions gone bad. A few weeks of bland hospital food has almost the same effect on most patients. You need a few days to acclimatize back to ordinary meals when you leave the care facility. Unless you have a diet due to new meds or acquired conditions."
Shaking his head negatively, the younger genius confirmed "Nope, none of that. Just an overactive mind and a solid refusal to go to bed for the next three days. I slept on the job enough as it is."
Riley put her face in her hands, groaning aloud "Aaah gods! Not another one! Ain't one enough?"
Bozer passed his arm behind Angus to pat her shoulder in absolutely fake sympathy, grinning all the time as he quipped "Nah, Mac's not so bad. You should have known him back when we were kids. That was a right terror, I tell you!"
Crossing his arms over his chest, Angus puffed out an amused "Gees, thanks Boze! What a brother you are! Best pal ever, I tell you!"
Doctor Foss quipped mercilessly at his patient "Well, if they're used to that one for a few years already, then they should be able to handle you without any trouble. You're not that big or heavy, so they can just throw you into bed if you fall asleep at an awkward place."
Pouting most mightily at the therapist's shit-eating grin, Lucas very maturely did not respond to the low blow the bastard had sent his way, nor the laughing loons all around him. But he would remember, and he would be avenged!
Homeward bound
(Ride of the Valkyries – Wagner 1856)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 20:00pm
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 17:00pm
UEO shipyard
New Cape Quest, Florida, USA
Cynthia Holtzenstein looked over the long railway vehicle, squinting against the sun setting in the Florida sky, as she tried to perceive the details of the machine that would take them up to Buffalo by the scenic route. Her fear of flight had never been much of a detriment in her life to date, but somehow it had come back to affect her at last. The few times she had gone to visit Lawrence at WPP on the coast of South Africa, she had flown in the Project's private chartered Lear jet with Lucas, and slept on the couch the whole trip to avoid panicking in the air. Now, her young son had taken the extra steps to make certain she could travel at peace, and in style, alongside of him and her husband without fear.
The worried mother was not by any stretch a mechanical expert, nor a train aficionado, but she could see that a lot of thought and planning had gone into the choice and placement of the cars.
A locomotive at each end, then from the front were placed the crew's bunk car, the consumables cargo box, the kitchen & salon car, the Wolenczak rooming car, the house staff car, the neuroplexic array box car, the three flatbed cars with tool chests and hydraulic cranes built-on that were mobile factories. The last flatbed had three small off-road service vehicles parked on it, all based on a Bobcat-type of tread system with a cabin big enough for two plus a square open-top cargo bed similar to a small jeep, but with a mini-crane, generator, air compressor, tool chest and several canisters built-in.
"I apologize for the drab, utilitarian décor. I just bought the thing about two months before my kidnapping, and it was never meant to serve as my personal transport. I only ever envisioned workmen rolling around as they spread my new network cables and antennae so that I could physically link my bigger clients, in a crooked line from Stanford to Buffalo, then New York City at least. Eventually, I would have had to make service lines down the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, and complete the entire East Coast from Maine to New Cape Quest. Given their proximity to the USA's northern line, going up to Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Québec city and Montréal would have been the third expansion phase, with the eventual fourth being the southern US line and a sub-sea link with Puerto Rico, by rebounding the cables at the US naval base in Cuba."
Cynthia was clutching both hands to her chest as she tried desperately to keep her heart from bursting out of her thorax. She didn't think she had been that obsessed by studying the train that she could have completely not heard her son rolling around in the medical wheelchair. Even with the noise around the shipyard, and the train crew and DXS team ferrying machines and bags into the smelly contraption, the mother should have heard something. Then she looked at how the thirteen year old was manually moving around the un-powered chair without any help, seeming as if he had done this all his life.
"Euh, Son?" asked Lawrence from a few paces to the right, "Where did you learn to use a wheelchair like that? I didn't think it was mandatory for pharmacology or neurology studies? Unless the medical ethics & bedside manners classes really did get muuuch better since my time in Uni?"
Snorting in amusement, the boy stopped balancing on the rear wheels of the chair, as if he were sitting in his office or laboratory while waiting for a machine to finish doing stuff so he could work further on the stalled project. Setting the front wheels down, he gave the two larger wheels inverse spins to pivot towards his father, replying airily "I was often inflicted handicaps like damages to my spine or crippled legs during the sims. I guess it was a way to make sure the character I was playing didn't just run off instead of using his brain to work through the problems surrounding him. So, I got used to diverse levels of mobility deficiencies, and every artifice used to correct those limitations. I do believe that I did rather well, given that I aced my way through each and every sim without a single failure."
The two parents were beginning to see a pattern emerging; Lucas would mention the injuries or limits and what he did to power through the consequences, but he never said if there were causes to these ailments, or if the sim just materialized him already in that state. He never gave a full back-story of his 'player-character' nor why those stipulated early years influenced the way each sim progressed. In fact, their boy was either oblique, obtuse, or downright avaricious with his informations. Anything about his overall health, especially mental health, was being given out with a virtual drop counter, even to the people supposed to be helping him recover.
In a bout of perfectly natural parental jealousy, the two adults were quite happy to see how miffed the DXS people were getting, since all of their queries now got answered by the silence of a professional banker like the world never saw. A vault door would be more loquacious than the teenager right now!
"Well, there's nothing to be done for it," Lucas continued his speech to his parents as if no separate question had been asked, "We'll just have to tolerate this glorified worksite shack on wheels until we reach Buffalo. At least it has real rooms and genuine beds, even if they're all Murphy's."
Shrugging that one away, Cynthia countered "I don't rightly care if the beds are fixed or folding, or just bloody hammocks! I want to speak with you about all this... this... I don't know what to call it!"
Smirking in a smug way known to the parents of teens all over Earth, the boy quipped "It's called a train, but the principle is called organized labor, mom. Being a lawyer, you should be familiar with concepts like these, since there are labor laws, and all that. Surely it isn't that foreign, eh?"
Pouting at her son, the mother then glared at her husband's not-so-discrete huff of laughter, gesturing that she'd be having words with him later on, when they were alone in their cabin. Speaking of which...
"Hey, Lucas? You never told us how things would be aboard? How do we split? I see one family car, but how do we do things?" the woman asked, worried. She hoped he wouldn't have to sleep near the DXS team, nor bring one of them to his room for the night. Their family needed some privacy at some point, dammit all!
The teen oriented his chair to see both parents together then answered "We have two bunkies with four beds in each car, plus a common washroom and laundry. All passenger cars are set-up the same way. The train crew of four men, plus my personal waitstaff of four others, will share the front car. The DXS will no doubt split down the middle, between men and women. We will have Aharonah and you both in one room, and me alone in the other. Owner's privileges and all that tripe."
Lawrence suggested gently "Or we could put Cyn's aunt in the spare and take you in with us? If there are four separate bunks, you wouldn't have to fear witnessing PDA's between your parents." the engineer jested lightly, hoping to change the boy's mind, and spend more time with him to figure out this new son of theirs.
Lucas shook his head, the odd purple and black hat's small blue gems reflecting the last rays of the dying sun as he moved. "I have been forcibly asleep in a can for thirty days, I won't be able to sleep normally for a few days yet. Plus, I anticipate PTSD dreams, perhaps night terrors or reliving the sims while I'm senseless. I prefer to go through that in a genuine hotel with Angus or Wilt in the room next to me, not two train cars down the line. Neither of you are equipped to physically handle what I can now do if I become aggressive, and sleep-fighting means that I wouldn't recognize allies. The danger isn't worth it. I'll work on my tablet or eat small snacks in the salon car until we reach DC. Safer."
With the way the kid clammed up, his face going completely neutral like a statue, the two parents knew that the decision would not be changed, not by them. Maybe if he did sleep with the two DXS men, he could get some restful sleep, or at least a cat nap that would stabilize him?
Surprising the adults again, a young UEO sailor in his early thirties arrived with a duffel bag. He had white skin, short-cut blond hair and shifty eyes that scanned around the family as if he were afraid of them for some reason. Holding the bag on his shoulder by the bandoleer, he actually gave Lucas a military salute before standing at parade rest as he awaited orders.
The change caused in their son by the newcomer was frightening. The evil, gleeful eagerness on his face lasted a fraction of a second, but it chilled both adults to the bones.
"Well, lieutenant Denalt... I had quite the conversation about you with admiral Noyce, after I was decanted from my fluidic entombment. He assured me of your assiduous collaboration in my little side-project. All in the name of National Security for the USA, and other things I shan't say aloud."
Nodding in agreement while still having not a whit of clue as to what the boy was talking about, the sailor had the bad feeling that his career had just done a nose-dive into a ravine.
He really had no idea.
Touching the phone in his jacket pocket with a fingertip, the boy ordered "Creswell! The soldier I was expecting has arrived. Settle him in the DXS crew car and guide him to Box-2 immediately. Over."
Still wearing that unsettling bland non-smile, the boy watched eagerly from behind his bluish glasses the sailor be taken away by one of the four young men who served as his retinue of house staff, to assist with his personal needs, in case the DXS or nurses weren't present. That and doing the cooking, laundry, and all manners of household chores the teen didn't want to waste his precious time on.
The voice of the lead conductor sounded out from the speakers mounted around the exterior of the train's multiple cars, shouting "Ten minute call! All aboard! Ten minutes to roll-out! Heading to DC!"
Beginning to roll himself towards the ramp that gave access to the salon car's mid-point, Lucas griped snidely "Whelp, that's us. Better get going, or they'll leave me behind, employer or not. Something about my charming personality and not paying them enough..."
Surprising both his son and wife, Lawrence quipped playfully "You should work under-sea; a captive crew is much less prone to running away when labor or management conditions get duller."
Stopping his movement, Lucas frowned as he asked "Don't you mean 'get rough' by any chance?"
Shrugging amusedly, the father retorted "I have it on good opinion that my mannerisms are drabber than a puddle of frozen mud. Therefore, shouldn't 'get duller' be the adequate statement?" The smirk on his face was a rare sight, and actually got a short burst of stunned laughter from his ailing son.
Shaking his head in shared fun, Lucas snarked "You've been hanging around mom too long, these last few days. You actually seem to be unfreezing your personality. But don't worry, we'll have you in DC with the brown-socks and public works drones fast enough. No worries! Just sleep through the ride and you'll never see the time pass."
Now it was Cynthia giggling at her men as the father gave his boy an unimpressed mock-glare. He was not that drab or dull, dammit all! And he was not a functionary, either! He had always been on external job contracts all his life, ever since he left Stanford for the Climate Recycling Towers. Why was it that his family kept saying he was lifeless or humorless? Haaan... No respect! He just got no respect in life.
{ SQ } - { Housekeeping duties } - { SQ }
(Adrian Von Ziegler - The Sealed Kingdom)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 20:30pm
The Wolenczak family sat in the lounge section of the salon car, which was oriented towards the front of the vehicle. Lucas got out of the wheelchair without help, hobbling slowly into the regular wooden wingback chair that was in the corner, with his back to the train's movement, allowing him to have full view of the open-plan interior. He parked the wheelchair on his right side, after folding it up. Cynthia, Lawrence and Aharonah sat in three of the other six similar wingback chairs that composed the area, with a small drinks table besides each. Next to the conversation zone were four booths made of a table and two 2-seat banquettes for a total of 16 seated eating/working spaces. After that came the public lavatory composed of two stalls with a toilet & sink in each, plus the cargo-sized entry doors right in front. After that came the kitchen counters and appliances that took the rear quarter of the car facing the right-hand (sidewalks) then the pantries and glass-fronted restaurant freezers in the left rear quadrant.
The salon car was packed full of things and devices, but still comfortable enough to house twenty-two guests plus the kitchen staff and waiters. The overall quality of the furniture was industrial thickness with builder finishes, nothing luxurious or even decorative in sight. The only relief from the brown wood, brown leather and gray metal walls were the small blue electronic status panels at the doors and under each window.
As the family waited for the train to begin moving, Wilt Bozer passed by, counting people on a touch-tablet and presenting himself to new faces as he went. The young black man smiled kindly at Lucas and his parents as he surveyed them, informing the teen that all humans were accounted, and the two cargo boxes were being secured.
Nodding in acceptance, Lucas took out a thin rectangular device that looked like a smartphone, putting it on the table and unfolding four small antennae that were articulated at the corners. Once in place, the device generated a spherical field of bluish light that coalesced into a virtual copy of Lucas, but wearing much more ordinary jeans, T-shirt and open flannel shirt. The ghostly child looked around in affected disinterest, smirking at Bozer who was watching the scene in great curiosity.
Lucas folded his hands in his lap again, as he addressed the image: "Hello Luxis. As you can see, I managed to get aboard without triggering a calamity. It was a close call, if some wagging tongues are to be believed, but I'm whole and on the way."
It was strange seeing the living teenager address the virtual boy in such an ordinary, lifelike way. It was even weirder when said spectral entity replied in a regular conversational tone.
"Huuum, yeah, I can see that. I guess my predictive algorithm needs an adjustment. I was so sure you'd find a way to make a scene in front of everybody. After blasting through Fort Dempsey, I just didn't think you had any subtlety left in you." the ghostly boy teased with a wide smirk on his silvery features.
Lucas shook his head sideways in mock despair, asking Bozer "Everybody's a critic, right? No matter what you do, they'll always say they could do better. -Sigh!- Is it that way just in heavy industries or the scenic arts get it too?"
The young spy gave the medical prodigy a dreadful look, exclaiming "All the arts have it waaay worse, bro! I tried to put out a few movies in Hollywood, and let me tell you, I almost got killed by the critics before I even got to propose my draft scripts to the first production house. You got it easy. Besides, who is that kid anyways? Is that some sort of new holographic phone? Cuz I want one!"
As Wilt leaned forward to inspect the projector, the child-image turned towards him to gaze back at him, as if aware it was being scrutinized. After a few seconds of analysis, the cybernetic youth turned back towards Lucas, declaring "The train conductor is ready to proceed, Bratja."
Nodding as he settled into a restful pose, Lucas replied "Unlock the drive shafts and give permission to initiate principal mobility, heading Washington DC along the scenic route, at best speed. Advise me of any itinerary changes, delays, and especially railway obstructions."
Nodding, the silvery ghost replied "Unlimbering aerial escort drones one through four, sharp watch initiated. Authorizing motor groups. Authorizing human driver autonomy. Departure protocols."
All around the train, the cargo ramps raised and slid right under the floors, under the door rims where they were installed. All external doors and windows automatically slid closed and tested their security detection & alert connectors, before those windows that had been opened were slid back to let in the fresh evening air. The internal lights dimmed to 50% and thin fiber-optics runners lit up, at the border between the walls and the curvature of the ceiling, first red, then passing to yellow, then going green as a brass bell rang from the forward locomotive. With two blasts of an air whistle, the train began to advance, ponderously slow in the densely occupied shipyards, then picking up speed as it exited the military area for the urban zone of NCQ.
The train took to tracks that were normally express routes for cargo shipments, bypassing the populated areas of most of the Miami-Dade county, staying out of urban areas totally when it could. The navigator had plotted a truly quick, unfettered course, aiming for the triage yards at the US Navy Yards, in the south-east portion of Washington DC. The Pentagon and White House wanted to speak with Lucas ASAP, and so did NCIS, the NIA, the NSA, the PSS, the FBI, and honestly, the whole Alphabet Soup.
Giving Lucas a minute to lean back into his chair and make himself truly comfortable, Bozer asked gently, "Am I to understand that you had some sort of Lo-Jack on the train to keep it from moving without giving permission? And that you have to pass by that virtual assistant to unlock everything?"
Snorting nastily, the teenager countered harshly "The only thing virtual about Luxis is the importance of the people who arrogate themselves the right to judge his existence. I do believe that will be all for now, mister Bozer. However, my staffers will begin the dinner prep in a half-hour, if you want to help them. Your catering expertise would be appreciated by those not on a medical diet. Thank you." the genius dismissed the spy in a hard tone.
Wilt blinked both eyes in surprise, but only responded by giving the three adults a kind nod and smile before moving rear-wards, to meet his teammates in their reserved car.
Sighing deeply, Lucas passed a weary hand in his long blond hair, exhaling slowly as he tried to calm himself from the unforeseen spike of raw anger he had just suffered. Wilt was not an enemy. He may not be a firm friend yet, but he was not hostile either, and Lucas had no reason to treat him this way. The curiosity he showed was normal, especially in light of his job.
Aharonah queried gently "Hormones giving you trouble?"
Shaking his head sideways, the genial teen replied wearily "No, it was more as if my brain forgot that Wilt wasn't a two-bit ass-kisser for a minute. His team are not people I want to have as enemies, or even just be on terms of frosty civility. I need them for a plethora of reasons, and a real friendship would help with a lot of problems that I know are coming. It's not just my health at stake."
Nodding sagely, the older woman probed lightly "Legal or political? The retainer you handed over to drag me out of my well-earned retirement wasn't a quick, defensive reflex. You were thinking about this for a while already."
x-x
Lucas nodded in agreement at his great-aunt's comment, but then redirected the conversation by gesturing at the team of similarly dressed young men who had just entered the salon car on their way to the galley. "These four strapping young lads are my household staff, at least for the moment. They normally take care of things back in Stanford at the corporate office for the electronics manufacturing building, but I needed them more. They will be handling the domestic aspects of our trip like cleaning, laundry, cooking and driving me around any town we have a layover."
Lawrence looked the four males from head to toe, noticing how very young they were,all between 18 and 21 years old at the latest. They all wore beige khaki pants, white button shirt and beige waistcoat with silver details. Each young adult had a pair of square bronze pips at the points of their shirt collar, engraved with a large W and two parallel bars beneath, with a dashed line around the perimeter of the sigil. They also had a fob watch as evidenced by the bronze chains dangling from the waistcoats, and a rectangular bronze plate at each sleeve cuff that had a bar code and QR code engraved on the visible surface. The ensemble was completed by matching brown leather shoes, brown leather belt, and bronze colored eyeglasses that were too identical between the youths to be actually a medical necessity.
The curious father asked his son "Why are they dressed so pale? I can't say that I frequented the highest places in society, but all the restaurants and offices I went looking for financing in the name of WPP all had waiters or valets dressed in black. The few rich people I met at their homes did too. And I doubt that glasses were a mandatory item in their uniforms, either."
Snorting in amusement, Lucas replied blithely "They're non-combatant civilians, so they dress in pale colors. If they were in janitorial or engineering it would be brown. Medical and sciences are blue. The gardeners, landscapers and all farming are green. Security and military are gray. Domestic and waitstaff with military training are black with gold waistcoat. Any of my work force who have had to kill a human in combat to defend their self, family, or under legal command, have a set of red lines on their shirt collar and sleeves, and extra plates on their vest lapel."
Ignoring the dumbstruck looks on his parents' faces, Lucas continued unabated "The eyewear are meta-glasses that allow me to locate and communicate with them, and also see & hear what's happening around them. I had a few problems with vandalism and theft at the Stanford facilities, so I put in place an easy solution that makes my workers act like randomly roving surveillance bots. A few wearable devices in their clothing also indicates their life-signs and level of alertness, in case they get drugged or knocked-out, with automatic alerts sounding in three different security monitoring rooms at the same time."
Cynthia blinked at the explanation, then worriedly asked "Vandalism? When was that? How bad was it? Did they steal anything? Were they employees or outside men?" she queried at speed, fearing for his health. "Why did you never tell us about these events? We would have come to help you!"
Shrugging it off, the teen countered flatly "I am emancipated and bear Diplomatic Privilege from The World Bank at the directorate level. I would deserve neither if I couldn't handle a few crimes in my own buildings. And no, none was ever done by internal workers. Two times it was a crooked contractor who was actually on a subcontract from my usual building company. They never told me about him, and didn't vet him because he was their boss' nephew. He was easy enough to find, since he had a history of attacking or stealing from his clients out of jealousy at their wealth or popularity. He even had some jail time to his name. A few other events were just the little shit-heads from the Uni's Young Prodigies Program, who thought I owed them money, favors, or raged that I refused to write fake letters of thanks to their parents for imaginary services. Nothing truly hard happened until the kidnapping."
Lawrence asked in a firm tone "You just told us that you triage your workers by color-coded uniforms, including if they have experience at killing people. I can see the basic uniform codes, since almost all large companies or governments do the same. But why in Heaven's name would you visually ID those who have killed in the past? And why would they work for you if you oblige them to do this?"
The young prodigy gave his father a probing look before answering tartly "Because in case of danger or criminality, the other workers will know who to look at for leadership if they all have the same rank or authority. Likewise, they petition to work for me because I don't fear them, or shy away from admitting what they lived. I have a strict life-experience tabulation system that calculates pay grade, bonuses, pensions, and permanent monthly salary add-on's. Being combat trained, an actual veteran of police, army, firefighters or paramedics, or having killed a human in defense, trigger the system to increase the worth assigned to the postulant's application and overall value to the entire organization. And yes, I do actually favor those who live with death on their conscience over never-killed applicants, all sectors of activity being subject to the same evaluation system."
Cynthia whispered harshly "You sound like you were already building an army before the kidnapping occurred. Why?"
Giving her niece a pitiful look, Aharonah cut-in gently "Because he could feel that kidnapping coming, just like he could sense that those petty vandals would eventually devolve into worse crimes if left unchecked. You're used to working with the victims, but you rarely try to understand the inner workings of the people who committed the offenses. Honestly, Lucas was quite wise to start preparing himself this early on. If that occult military group under general McGrath hadn't made a move so soon, it's more than likely a rival company or foreign government would have. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are just the four most visible suspects, not the extent of the list. And a lot of 'legal' USA intel agencies would pay dearly to abscond him to Alaska's farthest reaches, to control his machines and research processes. There was no way that he could go on acting like an innocent child any longer."
Both parents were completely unhappy with that explanation but had no arguments to counter it as they could see that it was Reality itself. What Lucas had created was too valuable financially, and could become too powerful, to think the extreme elements of the US government and American society would never try to forcibly wrest control of the boy and his creations from them and himself.
Speaking to the only African-American in the group of workers, the juvenile medic asked "What are you preparing tonight? And did you get my food prescriptions yet?"
Nodding happily, the young male replied with a smile "Yes sir. We got your orders before you left the boat, so you're getting a clear broth chicken soup with vegetables, thinly shredded coleslaw, one slice of buttered white bread, a slice of cheddar cheese, and a glass of iced water. Nothing milky or creamy to avoid reacting with the acid in your stomach until it's back to full size."
Looking over to the three adult relatives, the cook/waiter explained "Despite the rather bland décor in the dining room, we had planned on a four course meal for you fine gentleman, and the lawyers too."
Cynthia almost chocked on her spit at the unexpected joke and Lawrence only blinked at it while trying to decide why that particular phrase made it into the conversation. Aharonah simply burst out laughing, huffing loudly as she weezed herself out of energy. Wagging a finger at both her nephew and his staffer, she declared "I'll remember that one! And I'll have you know, I'm way worse than that poor, fragile little snowflake Cynthia."
Smirking sarcastically, Lucas quipped with many innuendos "I know. That's why I hired your wrinkled old hide, instead of continuing to rely on her as representative. Can't have a kind, gentle lawyer who specializes in victims' rights going around DC; the politos would all see it as a license to exploit me."
Fists on her hips, Cynthia protested vehemently "I am not a bloody snowflake! I'm not fragile! I had a life and a strong career before either of you came into the picture, dammit all!"
Luxis snorted from the blue depths of his light field, stating cuttingly "Whelp, it's official! You didn't get your mathematical genius from her side of the family! Aharonah is twice her age, so of course she was already in the picture since before she started anything! How could she forget that? You aught to give her a neurological exam, cuz I think she's aging badly. Her memory's gone to Noyce's pigs."
As his three older relatives gawked at the virtual assistant in sheer amazement, both at it's cheek and the complexity of human behaviors it exhibited, Lucas gestured at his staffer to get on with explaining the coming meal to his parents. He wanted the guys out of his hair to have some time to himself, to finish processing the last two days make sense of things at least a bit more.
Clearing his throat, the young male pursued with a wide grin "We were planning on offering a creamy potage of chicken with vegetables, covered in grated cheese and baked in the oven, French style. This would be followed by an antipasti platter composed of a bowl of thickly cut coleslaw with extra greens, olives and pickle slices, deli cold cuts on a tray, and warm bread rolls with condiments. The main course would be either a nice Vermont wild pig flank steak with mushroom gravy, or Canadian Pacific salmon on a bed of fried bacon rashers with trimmings and hollandaise sauce. The dessert will be the usual choices of vanilla ice-cream or Jello with cookies, brown sugar pudding or chocolate cake, or any combination of them. All soft drinks and hot beverages as requested."
The young workers looked at their employer to see if he approved, but saw that he wore an aggravated mien on his features. While his relatives approved verbally of the menu and indicated their choices to the four youths who wrote down the orders, Lucas wrapped his arms around his torso as he griped in a low voice about the unfairness of it all. He was paying these guys for their talents, and he couldn't even benefit from the full service!
Life was just such a damned bitch, right now!
And yes, he was pouting, but would never admit it to save his life, no matter that Luxis had the recording to tease him with later.
{ SQ } - { Looking anywhere that isn't inside } - { SQ }
(Two Steps From Hell – Flight of the Silverbird)
Eastern America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 23:00pm
Western America; Saturday 14th of July, 2018; 20:00pm
Lucas gave his parents and great-aunt a bland, innocuous smile, wishing them a good night for their first night aboard the moving train. Gesturing towards the four members of the DXS team, he waved them off, standing up from his seat in the booth where his relatives had eaten together. Grasping his armament-cane in his right hand, he slowly walked through the kitchen and then the worker car lent to the spy agency's crew, to reach Box-car 2 and its waiting sailor.
A debased traitor-knave of the foulest kind.
The teenager unlocked the armored door, entering the cool compartment and closing it behind him to keep interlopers out. The low lights made the blue glow from the fully active neuroplexic array even more otherworldly than it usually looked in daylight. The eerie atmosphere was not improved when you noticed the human floating, insensate, in the tube full of liquid, pushed along the right-hand wall of the train carriage.
Walking to stand besides the cylinder, Lucas gazed pensively at the inert form of René Denalt, the officious, self-imbued little bastard that he had learned so much about during the sims. This man had many contacts inside the white-power and neo-nazi movements of America, and these contacts could be exploited to back-trace their shared evil all the way to its thousands of seeds.
A soft hissing noise came from the teenager's left, the door to one of the four shallow rooms having opened to let pass a walking human. The young male, barely twenty years old with healthy white skin, brown eyes and black hair, trod to stand besides his employer. He was dressed in pressed black trousers, white button shirt and black waistcoat with golden embroidery. He wore an assortment of black leather shoes, belt, bracelets, tool sheaths, and even his bow-tie was made of leather with a small blue crystal gem in the knot. He wore eyeglasses held by thin black metallic frames with a weird blue reflection in the lenses, and small blue gems dotted around the device. Above all other details, was the pair of thin red lines that decorated the collar and cuffs of the white dress shirt. This household servant had killed a man before. He was a proven survivor, a being that had looked at violence and hardship first-hand, only to refuse being victimized anymore.
Lucas would need a lot more people like him, in the coming years, given the long list of enemies that was rapidly populating itself as he became aware of their existence.
The young staffer clasped his hands behind his back, calmly waiting for orders. He had done a single tour of duty as crewman in the UEO navy starting at age 17, fresh out of his high school in Calgary, then he had gotten injured by petty criminals in a dock brawl during his first year out of boot camp. He had to kill two men to stay alive, but had been crippled from the waist down. Looking at him walking around, nobody would ever realize the extent of the damage, if it weren't for the scars near his kidneys. The young man owed his mobility and health to Lucas, who had offered him a place in experimental trials for new neurological surgeries.
The young man had been able to walk again, and a few months of physio therapy had helped regain everything he had lost. Still, it wasn't enough for the UEO Crew Fitness Board; they were weary of the surgeries the juvenile prodigy had used, and feared their sailor could relapse at any moment. They dismissed him from service, but now cut off his pitiful medical/disability pension too, since he was healthier than when he was initially put out. The only thing waiting for the young sailor had been the unemployment line and a bunk in a homeless shelter full of vagrants, addicts and untreated mentally ill.
Until Lucas Wolenczak had sent one of his aides from his Stanford laboratory to find him.
He owed everything to the genial young scientist. He owed him his life, his self-worth, and his ability to have a future worth living. So he would take his orders and keep the kid alive, to pay his debt and help others drowning in the same shit to get out and survive.
Giving a kind look to his employee, Lucas told him "We'll activate the neural interface and plumb the depths of depravity hidden inside this bastard. Then we'll see how close to me he was trying to get, before everything got derailed by McGrath's ineptitude. After that, I'll have a list of potential candidates to visit and recruit for our little organization. I trust you won't mind traveling a bit?"
The staffer shook his head negatively, accepting the plans and mission. That was another good thing about his new boss: he explained things and gave you heads-ups so you could roll with the punches instead of being a sitting duck. And if he could get a few damaged, abandoned veterans off the streets and into a good, cushy job, then yeah he'd travel and do a sales pitch, one name at a time.
Taking off his heavy jacket and rolling his shirt sleeves to reveal the armored, weaponized bracelets, the thirteen year old whispered to himself "You wanted a race war, Denalt. You're getting one."
{ SQ } - { PREVIEW: Arc 2 of the story line } - { SQ }
{ SQ } - { What if Lucas said: "What is my life about, now?" } - { SQ }
Lucas has several obligatory meetings in Washington DC, and they all go as he now expects.
Then a quick train trip up north to Buffalo is fraught with family fluff and drama. The boy-genius and his kin have to get used to a new normality, including getting back to jobs and studies. Lucas will have to return to his classes and businesses, but how many and where?
The cleanup of the raid at Fort Dempsey continues, with more dark, inhumane secrets uncovered.
Several agencies are waking up to a new world that no longer has any central, planetary government to regulate international waters, air spaces or orbital lanes. This creates headaches for many, but opportunities for others.
And Codex is slyly maneuvering in the shadows, thinking they can outwit and out-play all others who sit at the gameboard. However, they are still unaware that their much prized secrecy is pierced, nor that the game has added a croupier in the form of Luxis, who judges and sanctions all in his purview.
But Codex are woefully under-equipped to deal with an angry Angus MacGyver who will not accept that his new young friend be threatened, not when he can rectify the situation. Now that the DXS has been destroyed by the Trump administration, the team of spies are adrift, left alone and isolated against the long list of enemies they garnered, but they won't be abandoned for long.
Immediately grabbing up the DXS team on the rebound, Lucas builds a large network of friends and pseudo-family that will make the hidden institutions' plans falter, though most won't see it coming, blinded by sheer ageism and bigotry.