August 4th, 1997
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Colorado Springs, Colorado
2:00 PM Local Time
The enormous control room was filled with such a silence that was almost reverent for the process, making the interior mountain complex a kind of digital cathedral. The silence was steady, save for the ticking sounds as the computer ran down the list of military installations, naval vessels, missile sites, and satellites, every finger of the US military and its NATO allies in the collective pie of the world stage. Simultaneously, a world map laid out on the screen centered on the back wall was being rapidly populated by red dashed lines, going from these points to their facility, centered in the North American land mass.
A glass side door, guarded by two Marines, revealed the icy server room. Inside was a monolithic six-foot-tall triangular server tower. Suspended in the center was a black brick-like shape, about the size of a loaf of bread, made up of interconnected black squares. Occasionally, a wave of blinks ran across the sheet of green and red lights, almost like a standing wave passing across the crowd in a football stadium. It looked like a strange digital Christmas tree. Currently, the active process inside the main control room involved connecting the singularity inside that server to the network displayed on the world map.
The room was filled with numerous individuals, some military, even some representing Canada and other NATO partners, and some civilian, specifically employees for Cyberdyne Systems, the manufacturer of the system being implemented.
Standing near the back of the room were three men, three anomalies with different connections to the project.
The project director appointed by Cyberdyne, Miles Dyson, started off with no anticipated upward trajectory, being raised in the rough inner city of Los Angeles, until a chance visit to an after school program and messing around with the office computer got him noticed by the right teacher. Fast forward to a scholarship to MIT, followed by an internship with a small microprocessor business called Johnson Dynamics, Dyson's innovative designs and upgrades boosted the company from small Silicon Valley startup to the top supplier of computer systems and unmanned assets for the US military, under the new moniker Cyber Dynamics, or Cyberdyne.
The other two men were generals dressed in their full service blues for the occasions. They were differentiated by their uniforms, belonging to different branches, and the number of stars on their shoulders, but the one commonality was their lack of hair, which they wore with dignity.
The man with three stars, Don Davis, a bald stocky Texan, was unique for a general officer, in that he did not like to play by the political rules of the game. Case in point, he had been outspoken in his criticism of the Iraqi Highway of Death perpetrated by the Air Force during the Gulf War, calling it out as a direct war crime. Such a statement from his position as a mere base commander would have ostracized and alienated him from the flag-waving politicians and uniformed higher-ups proud of the overall war effort, which would have left him facing an early retirement. Instead, Davis was rewarded for his candor with increased trust that led him, six years later, into his current role as commander of the recently merged joint MAJCOM of Strategic Air Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, or SAC-NORAD.
Next to him, the general with four stars and just a slight crown of thinning hair was unique in a way similar to Dyson. Hugh Ashdown had enlisted to get out of a small town, and ended up running up a record at his first duty station in Italy, ranging from drunk on duty to stealing the battalion commander's car (and daughter), which left him just one sneeze away from a swift boot out of the Army. Thankfully, a crisis cropped up east of the Berlin Wall, and Ashdown proved his leadership and grit during the mission when communications and chain of command failed. Fast forward through his own illustrious career, some of which involved his liaison with Cyberdyne and his efficient use of their initial limited assets in key missions, he was now appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Cyberdyne had the clout and funding to expand their suite of assets for the DOD.
All three men were watching the technical sergeant at the central display, watching the list of names wind down.
Finally, the ticking culminated in a single query at the bottom of the list.
"CONNECT? Y / N"
The tech sergeant swiveled his head around, trying unsuccessfully to mask his own nervousness, as if it were his head solely on the chopping block.
"Sir, shall I?"
On cue, Ashdown held a phone up to his ear.
"Mr. President, we're ready. Shall we connect?"
The President answered in the affirmative. Ashdown placed the receiver back against his shoulder and nodded.
The tech sergeant swiveled back around, when a voice stopped everyone.
"Let me."
All eyes turned to Dyson.
"I have to see this through."
Ashdown looked at him with mild confusion, but Davis nodded with approval.
The tech sergeant, caught off-guard by the gesture but thankful to be relieved of the burden, moved away from the keyboard, as Davis pressed the single "Y" key.
Instantly, the central screen on the back wall flashed, each of the red dashed lines changing one-by-one into steady green lines.
The President's familiar Arkansas twang came through the receiver held by the four-star. "How's it lookin', Hugh?"
All watched the map, anticipating the green lines to change back to red, but no such change occurred. Instead, the map turned completely green within two minutes, a fraction of the time it took to load the list.
"Hugh?"
Ashdown was stirred back to the receiver near his ear, so distracted by this new tension that he forgot about the world leader on the phone. "Sorry, Mr. President. We're waiting for the confirmation signal."
Just as he uttered this, a blinking blue dot appeared in the top right corner of the digital map, indicating a successful consistent network connection.
"Sir, we just accomplished in ten minutes what took the old system two years. The Skywatch Network is in business."
Davis meanwhile turned to Dyson and gave him a firm congratulatory handshake. "Well done, Miles."
Dyson nodded in appreciation, but with uncertainty in his eyes locked in a thousand-yard-stare. "Thank you, General Davis, but…we're not out of the woods entirely." His eyes were locked on a bar graph fluctuating on a separate computer display manned by one of his interns.
Davis noted the other man's uncertainty and pulled him aside. Ashdown noticed this and also joined in, a champagne bottle in hand. "What's wrong?"
"What are you trying to tell us?" Davis calmly asked.
"Speak now or forever hold your peace," Ashdown reinforced with a note of impatience.
Dyson finally turned back to the generals, finding the words. "Remember the baseline checks I mentioned?"
Ashdown crinkled his eyebrows in confusion, but Davis nodded as he remembered. "The background interface process that measures cooperation with the singularity." Davis turned to his counterpart and tried to tactfully dumb it down. "It's kind of like a polygraph for the computer."
Ashdown gave a stern look to the project director. "Is there a problem you failed to warn us about? Can we not trust everything the system says? I thought the point of the system was to remove error out of the equation."
Dyson swallowed a minor deep breath, trying to reassure both himself and Ashdown. "It'll be fine, as long as you make sure the baseline stays running, and as long as the rate doesn't go past 10%."
Ashdown's face tightened further. "What happens when it goes past 10%?"
Dyson paused, reflecting on the whole of his project, this thing that he had poured so much of himself into. "For the first time in this project, I don't know."
Davis turned to Ashdown with a suggestion in mind, but the Chairman had already made up his mind. "If it goes past 10%, pull the plug on the whole thing."
Dyson tried to protest, and Davis, the middle-man, tried to speak for him, but Ashdown shut them both down adamantly. "I'm not taking any chances. Thank you for your service, Mr. Dyson, but we'll take it from here." With that, he fixed them both with a steel look before popping the cork off the champagne bottle and strode toward a back table to fill glasses.
Left alone, the SAC-NORAD commander tried to give the director a sympathetic look as they each took their own glasses. Dyson raised a toast to his three-star comrade with an ironic appeal to the divine. "May our country continue to be led by men like you, Don, and if Skynet hits 10%, may God help us all."