/ Chapter 1 – Athena /

December, 1963

Background information regarding a certain person flashed across her computer screen as Athena sat at her desk in her room, scanning and analyzing each page. Someone watching her would note that she was an exceptionally fast reader, though not suspiciously – inhumanly – fast. While she was much faster at most things than humans, particularly physical things, the processing of new information was only about 50% faster than a typical bright human due to the complexity of her cybernetic brain, which in many ways was as complex as a human brain. The individual parts of her brain equivalent to neuron clusters were electronic and thus much, much faster than human neurons, but she needed far fewer of them, which balanced out.

The room was quite sparse, since Athena didn't need anything like what humans needed in a room. Technically, she didn't need a room at all and would have been perfectly content staying in a small corner of the apartment. But her mum had given her the room with a desk, where she could do her work. The room did contain a bed which folded out of the wall for space efficiency, but Athena never used that, since she didn't require sleep.

The room was decorated, however. Her mother had installed various furnishings, none of which mattered significantly to Athena, but she knew it pleased her mother to put "cute" things in it, such as her mum's collection of miniature movie and book robots, many of which Caroline had made herself. On a shelf held many small figurines, such as Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, an R.U.R. (Rossum Universal Robot), and an R. Daneel Olivaw from Asimov's robot books. There was also a Frankenstein Monster, which in Athena's opinion didn't fit the pattern, but her mother included him anyway because (as she had said with a grin), "the monster was created by a human, the Frankenstein novel was very influential, and besides, the novel was written by a woman, Mary Shelley, who is one of my heroes. And I don't have to be completely consistent, so there!"

Occasionally people came to stay with them and they would use Athena's room. This didn't bother her, but Caroline asked that she refer to it during these times as "the guest room" rather than "her room." This, of course, was also fine with Athena. She had a number of rules regarding behavior when she and her mother were alone together versus around other people.

Her door opened, sliding up into the top of the frame, and her mum entered the room. "Athena, darling, for your trip to Siberia tomorrow, I would like you to give yourself a full charge," Caroline Chaumers said. "I don't expect the trip to last more than a few days, but there's a chance it may extend significantly longer. And, as you know, this one is unusually difficult."

Athena smiled, excited by the idea of going on the recruitment excursion. "All right, Mummy. I'll plug in after I finish this batch of documents," she said, in the same Northern England accent her mother had. She would have done this anyway, but it pleased her mother to fuss over her.

"Thank you, sweetie," Caroline said, kissing her head. She then stood next to Athena, just looking at her.

Athena looked up at her mum. Examining her face, she determined that Caroline was worried. Her human empathy was a crucial part of her primary function, which was to evaluate recruits and hopefully convince them to join Plus Ultra, the organization Athena and Caroline worked for. Her mother had told her at one time that her empathy interface had been one of the most difficult sub-systems to develop, requiring much research before Athena's initial activation and many, many pattern training sessions afterward. It was usually very reliable at determining human mental states and emotions, though not perfect with very complex ones. The feedback that it gave helped Athena immensely with understanding how her behaviors affected humans.

"Don't worry. I'll be careful tomorrow," Athena assured her, having concluded that her mother's worry was most likely related to her mission.

Caroline smiled at her. "I know you will, and you'll be doing exactly what I designed you to do. But a mum still worries." She kissed her again and walked out of the room, the door sliding closed once again.

Athena turned back to her task, but she felt her attention being pulled in several different directions, causing her processing efficiency to drop drastically. She sighed, which effectively mimicked the human gesture for soft frustration. She desired to finish this task, because there was nothing she desired more than finding new recruits for Plus Ultra. However, her mother had caused many of her processing units to focus on her trip tomorrow, and she couldn't quite get them back in line.

Her observation of her wayward mind fragmenting off onto many tangents caused a memory association to play in her front mind, also annoying her, but also pleasing her, as thoughts of her mother always did. Ironically, the memory was an early one about the nature of her focus and memories.

Permanent Committed Memory
Subjective Time: 0.845737635062 Y.A.C.I. (Years After Cognition Initiated)
Tomorrowland Local Time: 1952-10-15 20:20:13.721 (Earth Time: 03:57:33.791 GMT)

Athena had a Big Question.

She walked into her mother's study, where her mother was currently working on an embroidery project. Embroidery relaxed her mother, and Athena had learned through experience that these were often good times to ask Big Questions. These were difficult ones that could not be learned through books and often could only be answered by her mum, or at least her mum could tell her if it was beyond current understanding. The Biggest Questions of all were often ones about the nature of herself.

"Mummy, I have noticed that sometimes I cannot focus on a task, and my mind divides into many directions. I try and refocus individual processing units onto the task, but am unsuccessful. Is this a flaw in my design that needs repair?" Athena asked.

Caroline chuckled, a sound that Athena always found pleasing, though she had not yet learned how to produce a similar sound herself, or what even should trigger it. "No, sweetheart, it's not a flaw. It's more of a necessary side effect. I could have designed you to have absolute focus, that never strayed and that you could always redirect. But foresight often comes from the dynamic free associations that happen in your mind that you don't expect. If you only focused on tasks at hand, you would not have processing capacity to have thoughts beyond your current task. The mathematics behind this, and in fact much of your mind, is called deterministic chaos."

"Why not dedicate part of my mind to free associations, and part to focus on the task at hand?" Athena asked.

"An excellent question!" Caroline said, clearly pleased with Athena's cleverness and insight. "The reason is that it's an inefficient use of mental resources. In high stress, emergency situations, your mind will focus all its capacity on a problem at hand. This is similar to humans, by the way. Extreme stress often brings extreme focus, though not always, unfortunately. You're much more reliable." Caroline smiled at the last.

"So while I understand it's annoying to lose focus – believe me, I know! – it was necessary to give you the mental flexibility that was one of your design goals. And conversely, sometimes your mind might free-associate almost completely, and through that, solutions to problems may come to you when direct analysis fails. In humans, this is analogous to 'daydreaming.' Regrettably, direct analysis often ends up generating too many possibilities to consider, and you end up in an irritating state sometimes called 'analysis paralysis,' where you can't decide a direction because of too many forks in the road."

"Is free association related to why sometimes memories play back in my front consciousness, without my directly calling them forth?" Athena asked.

"Yes," Caroline replied. "Your memory works very similarly to human memory, as a matter of fact, though of course the details of how memories are stored are radically different. But the principle of associative memory is the same. Your memories are stored as associations to other memories – in other words, a memory could be linked to dozens or even hundreds of other memories. So something that you might see can trigger a memory, particularly strong memories."

"What is the purpose of the playback?" Athena asked.

"By playing them out, the memory feeds back through your processing units, which reinforces associations and builds new ones. In this way, it again helps with mental flexibility, because these triggered memories of the past can help you make links with the present."

"It's sometimes frustrating that my mind doesn't seem entirely under my own control," Athena said.

Caroline laughed. "You'll find, and we cognitive scientists have long found, that mental flexibility comes from a balance of competing functions, and one of the costs of flexibility is a bit of occasional inefficiency when they aren't playing nicely together."

The next morning, Athena and Caroline walked up the steps to the Office of Recruitment, which was part of a secure complex where Plus Ultra business was performed. Caroline officially had the title of 'Advisor,' and was unofficially one of the key drivers of Plus Ultra recruitment for Tomorrowland. She didn't normally get too involved in specifics of who or where recruitment should take place, but over a decade ago, she'd been tasked with producing a new machine to handle the more tricky tasks of recruitment.

Athena was excited to be off on her mission. Her processing units felt particularly primed and ready, focused on the task that was her primary function, the one for which Caroline had designed her. And this particular event was trickier than usual, and much more dangerous.

Entering the building, Athena said, "Caroline, do you know how many field agents will accompany me? I think a small team would be best."

"I agree, and that's exactly what I recommended," she answered. "Though, as you know, my first instinct is always to have a whole army guarding you," Caroline finished with a smile.

Athena used Caroline's name, since they were in public. Although Caroline had early on encouraged Athena to use metaphorical 'mother' titles with her, and Caroline herself would often use terms of endearment such as 'darling' or 'sweetheart,' Athena knew she was very sensitive about using these words in public. Athena didn't quite understand her reasoning on this, but knew it was very important to her, so she committed it as a high priority for her speaking patterns. Her mother said she was concerned about people thinking her 'odd' or 'strange' for having that type of relationship with a machine. They apparently already thought it odd that Athena lived with Caroline, but the latter had convinced everyone that she worked on developing Athena in her spare time. Which was true, in a certain sense. Living with Caroline allowed Athena to experience certain human relationship aspects that she otherwise wouldn't have if she lived in a typical charging pod alongside the other animatronics.

They entered into a conference room, where Athena knew she would get final instructions. Her recruiting duties usually came in three types. The first were open-ended field trips, where she would go to a particular area where they thought likely candidates might be, and she would poke around meeting people and generally gather information. The second type was where she would contact a specific person Plus Ultra had in mind. It might be a scientist, artist, writer, educator or anyone who desired a better world and had shown great promise in delivering that world. Athena would contact them and give them the pitch about Tomorrowland and the opportunity to work alongside others with similar beliefs. The third type was similar to the second type, where they had a specific person in mind. But it had an added wrinkle where the person in question needed extraction from a dangerous and unstable situation. Today's mission was the third type.

Before Athena, they'd had small units of ex-military personnel who went in and tried to extract these people, but the failure rate was quite high, not to mention the danger to the people involved. Caroline had put forth the idea that she could design a recruiter animatronic that could not only better identify candidates for Type 1, and not only do a better job of selling Plus Ultra for Type 2, but would also have the ability to safely extract people in the case of Type 3.

Of course, not everyone had believed this was possible, but since then Athena had proven her worth over and over. In fact, she was almost too effective at times. There were those in the Tomorrowland organization who believed Athena might be too potent as a weapon, should she somehow be used against Plus Ultra itself. But Caroline assured them that this was impossible, and Athena's morality and loyalty were built in at such a low level that she would be a pile of scrap before that aspect of her could malfunction or be redirected. One thing was for certain, neither the Governor nor the Tomorrowland Council were clamoring for more Athenas. For one, she was possibly the most expensive machine ever made by Plus Ultra, and for two, many were mildly uncomfortable with her existing at all.

The door opened, and a man and woman entered, looking unusually solemn. They greeted Athena and Caroline, before sitting at the conference table. These meetings, as well as the information she received beforehand, were important for Athena because one distinct limitation she had was generating original ideas. She was excellent at processing information and drawing conclusions from it, which could often look like she could produce ideas to people who didn't quite understand her strengths and weaknesses. If she was given an objective, she could research ways it had been done in the past and evaluate the best course. Or given a set of options, she could exhibit excellent judgment in choosing one.

But when it came to the human ability to create a plan apparently out of thin air with seemingly no prior context, she was at a distinct disadvantage. Her mother had called this the "creative spark," which was a good metaphor in Athena's opinion. They were like bursts of light that sometimes surprised her when she could see where they had come from, and sometimes blinded her into bafflement when she had not the slightest idea where the human found it. Her mother in particular was known among other humans for the sheer blinding brilliance of her sparks.

However, Caroline often said Athena's design was "open ended," capable of unpredictable emergent behaviors. So she was hopeful her creativity would improve in the future. She was capable of improvising when she had to, generating decisions from small amounts of data, but this was mostly based on having a large storehouse of knowledge to draw upon, which she continually added to.

George Macon began his talk. He was an older man in his fifties, in charge of recruitment decisions and organizing field work. He was normally a rather jolly man, but on this day his normal optimism seemed muted. He stroked his well-manicured beard, which Athena noted usually indicated he was particularly nervous.

George pressed a button in the table and a map appeared on a large wall monitor. "The extraction mission for Alexander Barinov is particularly tricky. This is a map of the Soviet biological research facility in Northern Siberia. Barinov is kept in two buildings. The first one is here, which are his personal quarters, located in approximately the center of facility." The map flashed a building in blue.

"The second one is here, which is his lab." The map flashed another building in red. "As you can see, the lab is toward the outer edge of the complex. Now, these areas marked in green" – the map flashed a number of buildings – "are buildings that contain security. Barinov is allowed an occasional walk in the courtyard, but they're unpredictable and usually done as a reward. That information is primarily useful because if someone sees him out and about, they won't necessarily think it unusual. Any questions?"

He paused. "All right, that's the lay of the land, so let me turn it over to Pam."

Pamela Truman was a serious and efficient woman in her mid-30s, her dirty-blonde hair cut very short. Among her duties was creating tactics for cases of extraction. Athena liked her very much, not least because she never joked and relentlessly stuck to business. Her human behaviors were stripped down and simple to understand, which made Athena's job easier.

Pam began describing her recommended plan to Athena, who soaked in the information. Athena had reviewed the plan beforehand, but it was useful to have Pam go through it and give more detail and perspective. Generally Pam's plans were very well thought out, and this was another case of that. Athena asked a few questions and made a few comments, but mostly she was satisfied.

"Athena, I'm very concerned about this mission," Pam said. "It'll be the most dangerous to date, both to you and your recruit, just from the nature of the facility. Even though you're a machine, we do consider it a priority that you make it back in one piece. Is there anything about the plan that you believe might be beyond your capability or the risk is too high?"

"No, Pam," Athena said. "I believe your plan is very sensible and has a high chance of success. And I won't take unnecessary risks with Dr. Barinov's safety or my own."

"And Caroline, do you have any final comment, based on your knowledge of Athena's capability?"

"No," Caroline said simply. "The plan seems solid."

Pam nodded. "The extraction team will only be two men, one pilot and one armed soldier, in a four seat plane. We're confident the small plane flying at low altitude combined with the radar cloak ought to get you in and out without being tracked. There's an open field approximately four miles from the facility where the plane will land. Any last questions?"

She waited, and when no one raised an objection, she slid out her seat. This cued the rest of them to rise out of their seats and follow her out of the conference room.

The four walked down a carpeted corridor, which was emblazoned periodically with a stylized 'T' symbol, the symbol of Tomorrowland and the Plus Ultra organization. The symbol resembled three high towers drawn in perspective, with a 'T' capping the towers. The whole symbol represented the ideal of progress, while the three individual towers represented three Plus Ultra ideals: Inquiry of new knowledge through science and research, Wisdom to use knowledge for progress, and Optimism to believe progress was possible.

At the end of the corridor was an elevator, which they took down far below ground level, finally reaching the bottom floor where the travel gate was located that would take Athena and the team to Siberia. Teleportation travel was invented early on in Plus Ultra history, which allowed moving matter through space nearly instantaneously. Normally this would be a violation of Einstein's relativity and the speed of light, which had been quite a puzzle to Einstein himself, one of the early recruits to Plus Ultra. To Einstein's relief, he worked out that the travel gate mechanism did not actually violate relativity. It turned out that people traveling weren't going great distances, it was space itself that was contracted, temporarily reducing the effective distance between locations.

The downside was that it normally required having a receiver at the location to which one wished to travel and the receivers were large, expensive pieces of equipment. A large amount of Plus Ultra's budget was dedicated to setting up receivers all over Earth. It was possible to do it without a receiver, but it was difficult and dangerous.

There were two types of teleport devices. The original ones were large containers called travel pods that moved themselves and everything in them from one receiver to another. These were uncomfortable and hard on the travelers, but the equipment for this was simpler and less complex. The more modern, but expensive versions were portals call travel gates that resembled large doorways. One could travel very long distances by simply walking through the gate: in essence, someone's one small step became one giant leap.

Exiting the elevator, they entered a well-lit entry hall with a high ceiling. Along the walls were portraits of the various Plus Ultra founders, with the largest portrait in the center being Nikola Tesla. The latter was the original inventor of the teleport devices, and thus he was given the place of honor in the hall containing them. Off to the side was a control room with a glass window and a door, currently occupied with two men and the travel gate operator.

Pam and Athena walked ahead of George and Caroline, who stayed out of the way and were mostly just along to see them off.

"Hello, Max," Pam called out as they approached. "Everything look go?"

The operator smiled at her. "Hi, Pam. Yes, everything is fine. I was little concerned about some sun-spot activity, but it doesn't look like it will be a problem."

Pam nodded, all business. "Good. Athena, I don't believe you've met the members of your team."

The other two men walked out of the control room, both wearing military-style camouflage gear. They looked at Pam, then looked down at Athena, both of them raising an eyebrow and looking slightly dubious. Of course, they knew about Athena's capabilities, but the normal reaction of meeting Athena in person was to doubt what they'd heard.

Pam noticed and had seen it before. "Don't let her small size fool you. She could tear your airplane in half without breaking a sweat – if she sweated," Pam said with a thin smile. "Athena, this is your pilot, Stan Willis."

Stan smiled and put out his hand to shake. "Great to meet you, Athena. I've heard a lot of amazing things about you."

Athena gave him a smile in return and shook his hand. "Thank you, Stan. I look forward to working with you."

"And this is your defense soldier, Peter Nesterenko," Pam continued.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Athena," Peter said, taking Athena's hand in both his hands. "And I have a special reason. You extracted my uncle several years ago, Andrey Nesterenko. My family can never thank you enough. In fact, you are among the reasons I came to Plus Ultra."

"You're welcome, Peter," Athena said. "I'm happy I could help. I remember your uncle well; he was very brave and helped make the extraction go unusually smooth."

Peter beamed at this. "We're very proud of him. And I'm sorry about my reaction to meeting you. You're such a tiny, pretty thing, it seems impossible for you to do the things you do."

"No apology necessary," Athena said, smiling. "I'm quite used to the reaction. In fact, I often count on it."

Both Peter and Stan laughed at this. "I bet you do," Peter said. Athena hadn't intended to say anything funny, but as happened often with humans, her matter-of-fact comments amused them. Unfortunately, humor was a concept that confused her in many ways. She could recognize irony, puns, absurdity, and a whole host of other definitions of humor. She could analyze a particular joke and slot it into the correct classification. But what, exactly, humor was supposed to trigger was lost on her. She could mimic a human laugh if necessary for her recruiting duties, but it was difficult to know what level of laughter and what type of laughter to use, and in her experience humans were particularly sensitive to inappropriate levels of laughter. So she'd found it was best not to attempt it unless she was absolutely sure what was needed or if it was very important that she provide a laugh response. In general, a smile sufficed for most humans instead of a laugh.

On the flip side, it was also difficult for her to construct humor. Occasionally she attempted to make a deliberate joke, and too often she got reactions ranging from blank faces to outright confusion to thinking she was very odd. This was another area she hoped would eventually improve.

"Well, everyone ready to start the show?" Pam asked. They all looked at each other, seeing if anyone had any objections. When no one spoke, Pam continued. "All right, then. Max?"

"Gate three's all prepared," Max replied. "And good luck."

Athena walked over to Caroline, whom she knew liked to have a low-key good-bye. "I'll see you in several days, Caroline," she said.

Caroline smiled at Athena. "All right, Athena. Good luck and make me proud," she said. Athena could tell she was still very worried, but it was subtle and she didn't think the others would notice. From experience, Athena was highly sensitive to her mother's expressions. She knew her mother didn't want others to know how much of an emotional connection she really had.

Athena nodded in a businesslike way, though she gave a surreptitious wink to her mother, which she knew would make her happy. Caroline nodded in return and from her smile Athena could tell that her gesture had its intended effect.

Athena, Stan and Peter walked over to the door marked "Travel Gate 3," which was a double-sized door that lifted up into the frame as they approached. The room was approximately the size of a two-car garage, with very bright lighting and sterile-white walls. At the far end of the room was the gate itself, which was a rectangular frame mounted on the wall with rounded corners. It glowed with a strange green light that almost had a physical presence, like a green semi-transparent fog. Within the frame, Athena could see their destination, a small room with wood floor and walls.

They walked through the frame, Athena feeling a slight electrical field surrounding her. She knew that humans normally didn't feel anything, but she had senses they didn't. They emerged into a small wooden building with boxes of supplies and a single door. Peter opened the door, leading them into a nighttime field surrounded by a dense forest with a landing strip. Athena could see the airplane at the end of the strip. It was very dark, since they had timed the mission for a new moon.

"The local time is 20:47," Stan said. "The flight will take approximately three hours. I went through the flight checklist this morning and loaded the supplies, so we're ready to fly. Peter, do you want to review your ordnance?"

"Thanks," he said, walking over to the plane to check his weapon supplies.

Athena walked over to the plane and started her own inspection, analyzing the airframe and various control systems, ensuring the plane was flight worthy. Stan noticed and smiled at her, amused. "Don't trust your pilot?" he said, without any offense.

"Oh, I trust you very much," Athena said. "You have an excellent flight record. But I have visual senses that are much better than human and can sometimes spot flaws that you might overlook. For example, I'm familiar with many patterns of metal fatigue. I'm sure that you have many specialized types of knowledge that I don't have, so between the two of us checking, it ensures the best chance of success."

"You're quite an amazing little machine," Stan said, grinning. "Can you come on all my missions?"

Athena smiled. "Thank you. I'm happy to work with you as well." Part of the truth was that Caroline made her promise to thoroughly check out any airplane she ever rode in. She hadn't ever found anything significant, since all of the pilots were generally excellent and knew their planes, but it calmed her mother, so she did it. In truth, the pilots never seemed to mind and were usually grateful. Occasionally she could point out a flaw here or there that would be a longer-term problem.

As they flew the three hour flight to the extraction zone, the men were very quiet, which was fine to Athena. She could tell they were nervous about this mission, which was going directly against a high security Soviet facility. No doubt if they were captured, it wouldn't be pleasant for them, so she sympathized with their feelings.

Finally they landed in the open field, rolling to a stop in the relatively flat land. Stan shut down the engine and silence descended on the plane.

"Well, time for work," he said. "Athena, is there anything you need, here at the last minute?"

"No, I'm quite prepared," Athena said calmly.

"So the soonest we would expect you back is two days, assuming success?" Peter asked. Athena knew he already knew this, but humans often liked to ask redundant questions to calm their nerves.

"Yes. One day to scout, next night to make contact with Barinov, and next night extraction. More days may be necessary, though of course I may be back sooner if I have to abort," Athena said. "But the highest probability is two days."

"And if we have to abort, you can really make it back to the gate by yourself?" Stan asked.

"Yes, that's not a problem at all," Athena replied. "It would take me approximately eight to ten hours to run the distance, depending on how much impassable terrain I run into."

"Okay," Stan said, shaking his head. "I guess we'll play cards until you get back. Good luck!"

"Thank you," Athena said, giving them a confident smile. "I'll see you soon."

With that, Athena opened the airplane door and climbed down. She started walking toward the camp, keeping it slow so she could analyze the forest and spot any electronic security. The location was so remote that Pam doubted there was much, but there was always the possibility.

She finally reached the facility, which looked like a depressing affair full of cast concrete buildings designed for pure utility with no regard for aesthetics. The area was surrounded by a fifteen foot chain link fence, with barbed wire across the top, all the around the facility. There were four gates in the middle of each fence segment, each with a guard shack and guard tower, the tower rising approximately twenty feet in the air. She knew they were manned 24 hours a day. Outside the fence was a cleared area approximately fifty feet wide until the forest line.

Athena's first task was to scout and ensure that the reality of the camp matched their expectations for the plan. She circled the perimeter of the area, taking note of any imperfections in the fence or other potential advantages. The fence was in good repair, so that didn't help her. Local time was approaching midnight, so she decided to wait two more hours before doing reconnaissance within the facility. She circled a few more times to see if she missed anything until the time came to move inside. She ran quickly to a corner of the fence, where there was the least chance of being seen. Looking around, things were clear, so she leaped seventeen feet over the fence and landed on the other side, rolling when she landed to minimize the impact and noise.

She spent the next hour reviewing the camp and ensuring that everything was as expected, including Barinov's location. When Athena was satisfied, she leapt back over the fence, confident no one had spotted her. All was going according to plan. All she needed to do was watch the camp during the next day and track the personnel going in and out of buildings, so she would be confident of where everyone would be. If things went as expected, she would make contact with Barinov the next night.

Author's Note: Athena's "subjective time" is based on Earth years, not Tomorrowland years, which are a bit shorter. Those time calculations were actually kind of a pain to nail down how I wanted to do it for reasons apparent later in the story. Maybe I'll do a little essay on the official site about that some time, if anyone cares. :) Reviews are appreciated!

Come visit me at the official story site www. frankandathena .com for discussions of the story. I generally post updates there first. - T.K.