Night had come to the Stangin Research facility. On the surface, a blizzard was in full force. Gale force winds blew across the frozen tundra. Snow and hale the size of softballs battered the exterior of the motor-pool. The temperature had dropped to more than forty below.
Three hundred feet below the surface, there was a completely different tale.
Most of the inhabitants where fast asleep, the lights had almost all been turned off, most of the automated systems had been set to stand-by; the ambient noises down to a minimum.
Jeremiah wandered the halls alone.
He made his way down the long hall with the slight downgrade. He turned left, then right, and approached the large steel-double doors that led to the labs. He cautiously eyed the green lit DNA reader.
He knew it wasn't going to work, but pressed his palm against it anyway. There was a burst of green light, followed by the beeps.
"Good evening, Jeremiah." Alisa said. "Lab access granted."
Jeremiah stood astonished as the sound of metal on metal could be heard and the doors began to slide apart. Jeremiah swallowed hard and made his way into the lab. He took, slow, cautious steps towards the black column with the amber LED lights. He looked at it, as if not entirely seeing it. We watched the amber lights pulse rhythmically.
"Lisa…" he whispered.
And as before, the amber lights reformed into the shape of a woman; a woman with beautiful green eyes, full lips, long flowing hair. This time, however, the hair was lose and cascaded around her upper body.
"Hello, Jeremiah." Alisa said softly.
Jeremiahs heart was pounding and he was having a hard time remembering how to breathe. His eyes suddenly felt as if they were on fire and the first tears began to form and fall down his cheeks. He took a slow step forward, his hand reaching out towards the image seemingly on its own. He touched the smooth surface of the black column, his hand tracing the lights that made up Alisa's cheek and lips.
"Lisa…" he sobbed. "Oh God. I miss you so much…" he cried.
He was on his knees a moment later, tears flowing freely from his eyes, his body shaking with sobs.
"Do you require assistance, Jeremiah?" Alisa asked.
He didn't answer. He just cried.
He wasn't sure how much time had passes before the gentle hand touched his shoulder. And for the briefest moment, he allowed himself to believe that his silent prayers had been answered.
"Lisa?" he whispered as he looked up with bloodshot eyes.
But instead of his wife standing over him, Dr. Peter Stangin looked down at him, his own eyes red and teary.
"It's alright, Jeremiah." Stangin whispered. "It's alright."
Jeremiah looked up at him, his eyes full of pain. Stangin knelt beside him and draped his arm his shoulders.
They both knelt and looked up at the vision before them; a collection of blinking LEDS all perfectly synced into an image of Lisa Ann Kuttler, Jeremiahs now dead wife.
Jeremiah was sitting on the floor in the lowest level of the labs. The transparent window in front of him was still open to show the steady red glow from the reactor beyond. He was holding a mug filled with coffee; taking slow steady sips. Dr. Stangin was sitting beside him. Neither spoke. The only sound in the room was the steady hum and pulse of the reactor.
He looked at the swirling energy contained just a few dozen yards in front of him. Energy that had the power to change the world and everyone in it. Energy with the power to change his world.
"Does she know?" he said almost absentmindedly.
"Does who know what?" Stangin replied.
"Natasha. Does she know about Lisa…? Alisa."
Stangin smiled to himself. "No. However she did once ask me who she was modeled after. I told her it was one the actresses from television."
Jeremiah allowed himself a small smile. He took another sip of his coffee and continued to stare into the red pulsing mass.
"Why?" he asked finally.
Stangin took in a deep breathe and let it out slowly. "Because I loved her as well." He admitted.
Jeremiah looked at him. Stangin returned his gaze. Both could see the raw emotion in the eyes of the other. Stangin offered a weak smile and turned away.
"You remember how we were back when we were in school?" Stangin began. "The only thing that mattered to us was the math; the equations and the theories. Solving the mysteries! Finding the solutions! Answering one question and unlocking the door to a dozen others. That was the only thing we lived for."
He took a long sip of his own cup of coffee before continuing. "And then we met Lisa."
"I remember the first time we saw her…" Jeremiah entered. "She came into the math lab, wearing those brown overalls she loved, covered in paint, but carrying herself as if she was wearing a formal night gown. God she was so beautiful…" he whispered.
"She needed a math tutor." Stangin went on.
"She needed a math miracle, with her grades." Jeremiah joked.
"'I don't understand why I need to take physics anyway!' she said. 'I'm an art history major. When will I need to know the square root of PI?'" Stangin mimicked. "I tried my best to explain to her that math helps us to better understand the universe…"
"And art helps us to connect with it…" Jeremiah breathed.
Stangin glanced at him. "Yes… that's what she'd always say."
The two men sat in silence for a long moment then.
"You know I never meant for anything to happen, Peter. Lisa and I… We just..."
"You were better for her than I was." Stangin admitted, interrupting. "I could never see past the math. The equations always came first. She deserved better than that. You gave her what I couldn't. You put her first."
Silence again; long and thick with unspoken words.
"Why did you do it?" Jeremiah asked finally. "Alisa, I mean."
Stangin smiled at him. "Isn't it obvious?"
Jeremiah only looked at him.
Stangin laughed softly. "For you, old friend. I did it for you."
Jeremiah just looked at him, not knowing what to say.
Stangin stood and dusted himself off absently. "We don't get much news here. The research we do generates an electromagnetic field. That, and the severe storms, makes connecting with the outside world a bit difficult at times. In fact, there are only a few months out of the year that we can get a clear signal to our satellite system. It was during that time, last year, when I heard of Lisa's tragic accident. I tried to contact you, but I realized that in your state of mourning, you most likely wouldn't want to talk to anyone, let alone me.
"We were working on Alisa then; early stages of A.I. development; playing chess, solving random theoretical scenarios, answering questions of morality, and testing her reasoning skills. One afternoon, when we went to back up her operating system, we found a file that wasn't there before, and no one on my staff was aware of. It was a picture. A piece of art, actually; the landscape painting hanging in the entryway. It was beautiful…"
"When I asked her why she had created it, she answered simply: 'I just wanted to express myself.' That's when I realized two things: Alisa was a fully functional artificial intelligence, and I was going to imprint her with as much of Lisa as possible… visually that is."
"She's amazing." Jeremiah said softly, eyeing the black column.
"Once she was completed, I knew it was just a matter of time before I got you out here." Stangin admitted. "When I contacted LexCorp about this demonstration, I requested he send his best and brightest Nuclear Physicist. I wasn't disappointed when you showed up."
"But how'd you get my DNA for the door?" Jeremiah asked.
Stangin smiled brightly. "Remember freshman year? We had to build a scale model of our own DNA double-helix. But we had to get our DNA scanned first…"
"You kept the files from way back then?"
"I kept everything from our college years." Stangin crossed the room, beaming down at him. He knelt down and placed a hand on Jeremiahs shoulder. "I meant everything I said before." He began. "The work we are doing here is just as much mine as it is yours. I want you to be a full partner; and I want you to enjoy all the benefits that come with it, Jeremiah."
"That's a generous offer, Peter."
"It's not an offer. It's an old friend making amends for sins of the past."
Jeremiah was quiet then. He pushed himself to his feet, looked Peter Stangin in his eyes, then wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tight.
"Thank you." He whispered. "Thank you so much. You don't know what this means to me."
"Just don't hog all the interviews and we'll be even, my friend." Stangin whispered back.
With a pat on the back, Jeremiah pulled away, a smile on his face.
He looked over at the reactor.
"Well…" he began. "If were going to be partners, you better explain to me how all this works."
Stangin smiled back. "Of course. What do you want to know?"
"The energy…" Jeremiah began. "Based on the readouts we saw earlier, you set a new president for energy output! What kind of storage unit did you devise to handle it all?"
Stangin looked like a kid at Christmas. "You know…" he began. "That did give us quite a headache in the initial stages of development. It was actually Natasha that developed a reverse fusion battery for containment, storage and transfer!" He went to the transparent wall and pressed the small amber light floating before it. The Virtual-console flashed to life. He quickly pressed a series of buttons and the transparent screen changed into a virtual display screen. After another series of button presses, the screen changed to show six large colored cylinders, each marked and numbered, with capacity levels listed beside them.
"Reverse fusion?" Jeremiah asked. "Of course! Change the plasma inside the Tokomak into a condensed gas using reverse fusion and store it in an inert state."
"Exactly!" Stangin smiled. "The inert gas reduces the plasmas mass by more than eighty percent. It's safe and stable, and using a simple re-igniting technique, we are able to transmute the gas back into fusion and siphon the energy, with zero loss in output."
"Brilliant!" Jeremiah added. He looked over the screens and read the displays carefully. "What about the kryptonite?" Jeremiah noted. "Where did you get so much? I imagine you don't have and endless supply…"
"Too true" Stangin sighed. He pressed another series of keys and in the far corner of the room, a large panel slid open. A series of shelves slid into few, each holding a small collection of three foot by two inch rods; each glowing bright green. All made of kryptonite, just under tow dozen rods in all.
"This is the last of our supply," Stangin began. "But even this small cache is enough to power the entire world for the next five hundred years. We can divide it between the nations of the world, and hope we find more in the next few centuries." He joked.
"Are they stable?" Jeremiah asked.
"Perfectly." Stangin answered. He walked over to the shelves and grabbed one of the rods in his bare hands. "Although the rods do contain some latent radiation due to solar exposure, the levels are low enough that they cause no real treat or danger to normal humans. I believe only Superman is…"
Stangins'' eyes went wide with shock. The needle plunging into his neck was accompanied with a sudden pain. The chemical inside it immediately flowed into his body and a second later, Stangin found himself unable to feel anything. The room around him seemed to fall away, even as his mind tried to tell him he was falling to the floor.
He was laid to his back gently, his head turning slightly to the side; his eyes stared up at the transparent floors and the rooms above him. Jeremiahs face came into view. His mouth was moving, but the words seemed distant and hard to comprehend.
"I'm sorry." Jeremiah said softly, the syringe his hands. "I really am. You've done some truly amazing work here, Peter. I have no doubt that you would have changed the world. I could see a cold fusion reactor in nearly every country in the world. In a few years, you could have solved the energy crisis. In a few decades, maybe world hunger would have been eradicated. And how long would it take before peace followed?
"But the world doesn't have a few years. There is a treat that is greater than all those combined. A treat that must be dealt with immediately. And you Peter… you and your work here. It was the key; the key to saving the world. This is a brand new day for mankind."
Jeremiah smiled at him weakly, and then disappeared from view.
Stangin lay paralyzed on the floor of his lab. He couldn't move or speak. His arms and legs felt as if they weighed a ton apiece. His mouth felt like cookie dough, his tongue felt as if it had suddenly disappeared. His vision was beginning to blur slightly at the edges, as if he was seeing the world through a telescope. He could still hear, but the sounds floating to his ears seemed as if he was hearing them while underwater. He was completely helpless.
"Alisa." He heard faintly.
"Yes, Jeremiah." She responded.
"Disengage safety protocols in storage units one thru four."
"Safety protocols disengaged." Alisa said a moment later.
"Initiate plasma transfer to storage unit one."
"Warning." Alisa stated. "Reverse fusion process has not been initiated. Insufficient space available in storage unit one for plasma transfers. Calculating overflow to next available unit."
"Negative, Alisa." Jeremiah shouted. "Transfer all plasma into storage unit one and unit one only!"
"Unable to comply." Alisa stated. "Insufficient space available."
Stangin heard Jeremiah curse, followed by a series of beeps from the virtual console.
"Alisa, recalculate available space in storage unit one."
"One moment." Alisa responded. "Capacity in storage unit one has increased by three hundred percent."
"Initiate plasma transfer to storage unit one." Jeremiah ordered.
"Transfer initiated." Alias replied.
"Time to transfer is complete?" he asked.
"Estimated time to transfer completion is forty seven minutes and thirty two seconds." She answered.
Peter Stangin watched Jeremiah enter the edge of his field of vision. He was standing in front of the cache of kryptonite rods. He watched him carefully remove one rod and hold it before him, examining it carefully. After a moment, he turned and looked down at him.
Jeremiah slowly walked towards him, his features illuminated eerily by the green glow of the rod. He knelt down once more.
"I truly am sorry." He said softly. "But for the sake of the world… for the sake of mankind… this has to be done. Jeremiah patted Stangin's chest softly. "Goodbye, old friend."
Dr. Peter Stangin watched Jeremiah first disappear from his field of vision, only to reappear a level above him. He watched him, kryptonite rod in hand; make his way across the lab, only pausing long enough to regard the black column of amber light. He watched him run his hand over its smooth surface, and then disappear into the long corridor leading to the left of the facility.
He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't cry out for help, couldn't command Alisa to stop the fusion transfer. As the tears began to fall from the corners of his eyes, Peter Stangin realized that in less than forty-seven minutes, he, and everyone inside the Stangin Research Facility, were going to die.