Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

November 2099 – Five years later

Adrian uncrossed
his legs and looked towards the office door for the hundredth time in the last five minutes. He was nervous, the meeting he was about to have would be another turning point in his life. He was now sixteen years old, and had already finished the elementary schooling provided by Olympus, he learned fast and had surpassed his classmates a long time ago, the only one who stayed with him was his best friend Sahib. They finished the eight yearlong schooling program in half the time, there were other kids who finished the course earlier, but they already had schooling and were close to graduating anyway. After they passed the final test they chose the area in which they wanted to specialize, there were no restrictions other than that you had to pass the course entrance exam, and you could always switch afterwards if you wanted to study something else instead. Now that Adrian finished the first part of his education, he was ready to start the next. Which brought him to waiting in front of the office for the Olympus military. Adrian chose to join the military, though he still didn’t know whether he was accepted. The Olympus military was different than the ones on Earth about which they studied in history class. The Olympus military was originally a security force, and at first only members which had higher education were accepted, back before Olympus seceded from the Earth governments. Now on the other hand, times were changed. Now they accepted also those who went through Olympus education system, and even after getting in you wouldn’t be accepted in the military just like that, you again went to school, military school, where you learned advanced subjects, like politics, advanced math, they studied tactics and strategy, there was some physical training, but nothing like what came after one graduated from military school and joined the army. There were many jobs in the military, from infantry to technicians. The entrance exam differed from those to other schools as well, it was a series of test, from logic, math, common sense to physical fitness, reflexes, problem solving, and military puzzles. He had already taken the test two weeks ago, and had gotten a message instructing him to check in at the military office on the Minos space station orbiting the moon. Adrian had friends who had applied to the military as well, and all of them got their acceptance letters a week ago, and all were supposed to attend the military school at Sedna on Earth. While Adrian alone was asked to come to the Moon station. Which was one of the reasons why Adrian felt very nervous. He wasn’t sure why he needed to come all the way here for a simple acceptance, so did that mean that he did something wrong? Was he to be rejected? But again why ask him to come all the way here for a simple rejection.

Adrian continued to stare at the door every few minutes
, until finally the secretary at the desk in front of the office gestured for him to enter. Adrian took a deep breath walked over to the door and entered. The office was sparsely furnished, there was a single couch on the side and small table in front of it, and a desk at the end of the room. The desk was one of the new designs, it was completely transparent, and on it and in the air above it many files were opened, texts, images and videos, all shown as if on a screen. The hologram technology had advanced a lot, and the images were clear. The woman sitting behind the desk had short black hair, and a firm expression. Adrian recognized her immediately, he saw her on the news frequently. General Laura Reiss, right hand of Elias Bakas, and second in charge of Olympus military. She motioned from him to sit in the chair in front of her desk and looked at him steadily, as if she was weighing his worth.

“
You must be wondering why you were asked to come here.” She said.

“Yes, sir- ah- ma’
am” Adrian said, he felt his cheeks redden. General’s lips turned upwards for a moment in a half smile before her face assumed a stern mask again, though her eyes still had a hint of smile in them.

“Ma’am is fine, and as for why you are here.” She
brought up some kind of list and gazed at it for a minute, before she sighed and turned back towards Adrian. “In normal circumstances we wouldn’t be talking at all, you would have gotten your acceptance letter and continued on to your studies. But, the reality is that your tests were unusual.”

“Unusual how?” Adrian asked fearfully, did they think he cheated?

“You scored above any other applicant. Not just that, you managed to find solutions to some puzzles that were frankly believed to be far above your level.” She said slowly watching him steadily.

“I-I didn’t cheat, I swear!” Adrian said quickly.

General smiled softly. “No, you didn’t, we checked. After we studied your tests we went back and went through all your records, from the moment you came to Olympus. We saw that you exceled in every area you were in. You advanced ahead of your class, you advanced to the level far ahead of your age in the martial arts, all that with relative ease. Now I want you to tell me honestly, did you really feel challenged in your studies?”

Adrian looked down at his hands, and fidgeted uncomfortably
. “No, not really it was easy, I have been slowing down on purpose.” He said softly, he didn’t say anything before, he had figured out early on that for the rest of the kids the studies were difficult or at least challenging, and not wanting to be separated from them he adjusted his responses to match their level, only later when Sahib started to advance ahead of the rest of the class did Adrian raise his own level to match his, he didn’t want to lose his first real friend.

General smiled widely now.
“Yes, we thought as much, you did a really good job hiding your intellect, you always did just enough to pass the test with sufficient score to stay in the same class as your friend, only exceeding the score a few times so you would not raise suspicion, if you didn’t score as high as you did on the military tests we wouldn’t have figured it out. Your friend, Sahib, he chose to apply to military school as well, did you apply just because he did?” She asked.

Adrian thought about it for a moment before answering
. “I didn’t, well maybe at first. Sahib is my best friend, I was afraid that I would lose my first real friend, now I know better, we will always be friends.”

“But if you knew that
, why didn’t you show your true capabilities to your teachers?”

Adrian scratched his head
. “Habit I guess, I have been hiding my intellect and adjusting my test for so long it just came naturally.”

“I want you to promise me that you will never do that
again. Olympus needs minds like yours.” She said seriously.

Adrian nodded eagerly
. “Yes ma’am.”

“Good. Now there are a few other things I need to talk to you about.” She said continuing in a serious tone
. “First, Olympus military is young, and as such we still have a lot of things to figure out, one of which is how to keep a military in space, as most of our people and property is in space. There are also other things like how does one operate in space. We have managed to fumble our way until now, but that needs to change, and as such we have other programs we started, one of which is Fleet. I want to send you there, it is branch of the military that has been officially formed just a couple months ago, we have been selecting promising people from all the other branches of Olympus, from techs to security, people who are capable to build a new branch from the ground up.”

Adrian looked at her bewildered
. “But I don’t have the education nor anything close to the expertise I need to be able to help!” He said.

“You will learn, now that you don’t need to limit yourself, I have no doubt that you will catch up on everything you need to know. And as for expertise, the truth is that no one has the expertise. The closest thing we have to a space fleet models are in science fiction books and movies. We will need to learn as we go.”

“But why me? What would I be able to add that someone older couldn’t?”

“The truth is that they are already tainted by their experiences, we need someone with no such background, whose imagination is not limited by past experiences.” She said
. “Also there is one other reason why we want you, first you have already been on the list of the potential recruits for the fleet, and regardless of the area you chose to study you would have eventually been offered a chance to transfer. Of course if we didn’t found out about your tests the offer would have come much later when you were older.”

“Why was I on the list?” Adrian asked.

“Years ago, before we finally started this department, we started several programs to find people who would be qualified. One of the programs we used was in form of a game. I believe you are familiar with the one.” She said with a smile, it seemed to Adrian that General liked to smile a lot.

Adrian looked at her smile before it finally came to him
.

“Fleet Commander?” he asked.

“Yes. The game was in fact a very sophisticated simulation, all “levels” were designed as a possible real life problems, all technology was real, ships were the ones we had plans to build, some of which were scrapped after we saw how they showed themselves in the game. So you see, you already have the required knowledge for the Fleet, you just didn’t know it yet.”

Adrian thought on the information he just received for a minute or so, General remained quiet as he was lost in his own thoughts, he immediately realized the importance of what he was just told, if the game was a simulation of the real fleet actions, he knew that he had all the knowledge he needed, he also knew the many faults that the game had, which meant that the real fleet had the
same ones, suddenly it didn’t feel like he was as unqualified as he initially thought. “Alright I will join.” Adrian said coming to a decision.

“Good, I must warn you that it will not be easy, you will have a lot of problems, most everyone will be older than you,
and you will have to learn fast.” She said.

“I know.” And he really did.

Chapter Twelve

December 2099

Adrian sat on a comfortable medical bed, he rubbed his palms trying to warm his chilled fingers, he was wearing only a medical gown and the room he was in was a bit cold. The room
was small about four meters across, and most of the room was filled with medical cabinets and the rest by the bed he was sitting on, there weren’t any medical machines inside of the room, so it closely resembled an exam room from the Earth hospitals. Adrian thought about how much he learned since he accepted the Generals offer, he was assigned to her team. General Laura Reiss was put in charge of the still forming Fleet, well, she wasn’t a General anymore, one of the jobs they had, was to form a whole new organization, along with a new ranking names and structure. Their team was based on the station orbiting Mars. The station itself was a secret, only those with high level clearance knew about it, as Tomas Klein didn’t want to antagonize the governments of Earth any more than necessary by letting them know that they already had a presence on Mars. The relations between Olympus and Earth had been deteriorating for years, ever since they found out that Tomas put a fast one on them and started colonizing and mining the Moon before them. And to add the fuel to the fire, Tomas strongly refused selling any of Olympus technologies, which Earth wanted badly, especially the Coalition, since they were the ones with the biggest technological gap between Olympus and them. Since Olympus’s secession most of the other countries had started mining or colonizing the Moon, even the South American countries managed to come to a deal were they worked together to mine the Moon. But the truth was that all of them still fell behind Olympus technologically, the League and Concordis were closest, but even they were a long way from matching Olympus technology. Even though Olympus was now officially a country, they still operated as a company, there wasn’t yet a name for their structure but it worked, and it constantly evolved, their laws were simple and short, they had many characteristics of different forms of government, they were “ruled” by Tomas Klein, and there wasn’t any animosity towards him, all had the choice of joining Olympus or going back to their previous countries. Most all chose to stay, they trusted Tomas, he was always fair to all his employees, and everyone had much better lives than the people on Earth, they had the choice to do whatever they wanted, if someone wanted to go to school and study, he could with no obligation to pay anything to Olympus other than a promise that he would use the knowledge for Olympus. There was also no monetary system in Olympus, which was very strange to Adrian when it was implemented, instead everything from food to a place to live was provided to people free of charge, people instead of money earned points, that they could then exchange for commodities, even though they had everything they needed to live provided to them, if one wanted something extra they exchanged their points, and the thing they wanted was delivered to them. Adrian always wondered how this system worked until he gained enough clearance, he had clearance equivalent of a tier 5 employee, and learned that Olympus had fabricator technology. They could literally fabricate anything they wanted, and the points people exchanged were in fact for the fabricator time. Adrian theorized that in the future when the technology became public there wouldn’t even be a need for the points, as everyone would have their own fabricator. Though he understood that for now they kept it hidden to minimize the chance of the technology falling into Earths hands.

Adrian come back from his thoughts when
the door opened and a woman in a white coat walked inside. Doctor Mayer was in charge of the medical staff here on the station. Adrian knew that she was very busy and wondered why she was here. He went through series of test which took more than six hours to complete, he was there on Laura Reiss’s orders, though when he asked for the reason for the tests she told him only to wait and see. The doctor took a chair from the corner and carried it to his bed, she sat down and looked at him.

“Hello, young man, I see that you passed all of the required test, this is bit of an unusual request but I guess if Laura wants to try, we might as well. Do you understand the risks?” She said.

Adrian looked at her bewildered, she didn’t make any sense to him. “Risks? I don’t understand, I thought that these were just regular medical tests.”

Doctor Mayer opened her mouth in surprise, then swiftly closed
it, her eyes narrowed. “She didn’t tell you?” She said, and then before Adrian had a chance to respond she continued. “Of course she didn’t, she probably told you that it was just a checkup.” She shook her head in a disapproving manner.

“I guess that it is up to me to bring you up to speed.” She sighed
. “Tests you took, were to see if you could receive an implant, most people don’t know, but about 2% of people are not able to interact with implants, now the unusual part is that ordinarily we only give implants to people that have stopped growing, which for humans is around their twenty fourth year. Now you are only sixteen and are obviously still growing so any implant that was implanted would just need to be replaced in a year or so. That is, all but the implant we are going to put in you.”

Adrian quickly felt his excitement grow at the prospect of having his own implant, the past six hours already forgotten, he knew that most every adult had an implant, and that he would get his own when he was old enough, getting one early was unheard of, and he had studied everything he could find on implant technology. “Really
? An implant?” he asked excitedly. “But how did you get around the growing part?”

Doctor Mayer smiled
. “Well, it seems that Laura pulled some really big strings for you. She must’ve asked Professor Hyeon for a special permission, these implants are not yet released, she must have a lot of faith in you. They are a new generation and are a bit different than the older ones.”

“Different how?” He asked.

“Well for starters, the reason why we can implant it in you without the need to replace it constantly is because these implants are based on nanotechnology, meaning they have within themselves self-replicating nanites, so it can grow with you, they have all of the abilities of the previous generation implants, and as they are based on nanotech, we are able to upgrade them easily without the need to replace the implant. The nanites would eventually spread through your bloodstream and have multitudes of application, but with that much nanites there is a need for a way to control them, and that is where this implant differs greatly. You see, it has an Ai.” She said.

“An Ai? But isn’t that dangerous having a sentient computer in your brain? And how advance is it? I didn’t hear anything about Ai’s being developed.” Adrian asked.

“Oh, that’s because the project is top secret, and the Ai we plan to implement in these implants are fifth generation. We have done extensive testing on both the Ai and the implants, only thing that is left to be fixed are some minor bugs, and those can easily be fixed after the procedure. There is nothing for you to worry about.” She said.

“I’m about to have a procedure that will insert a sentient computer inside of my brain, I would say I have plenty to worry about.” Adrian retorted.
Doctor Mayer paused for a second.

“Yes, I guess you do
.” She sighed. “Well let me tell you a little about the Ai. First, this generation of Ai’s aren’t given any additional information prior to their activation, other than the knowledge of what they are and what their purpose is. They have full knowledge of how to control the nanites in a human system, they know what they are, what humans are, and their knowledge is on a level of a seven year old human child, but everything else they need to know they learn on their own. They are in a way like human children. After extensive research it was discovered that Ai that go through a growth period like human children, are both more intelligent, and more, well for the lack of better word, human, over time they develop their own personalities and quirks. They also have a few restrictions, they can’t interact with human brain in such a way as to take control or instruct the nanites to harm a human being, and it was also recorded during tests that the Ai’s didn’t mind that they were barred from human “systems” seeing it as a form of privacy on humans part, and showed no desire to try and bypass the restriction. They grow with their “partner” forming a close bond, they can interact through the implant with other electronic devices around them. There is really no danger, you will still be able to use the implant in the same way as the previous generations, the nanites in your system would be controlled by the Ai, and it will be able to modify their programing to suit your desires. The nanites would increase your immunity, when they replicate enough they will be able to carry additional oxygen through your blood stream, they will repair any injuries you attain, and much more. There is a manual, which I will transfer to your datapad if you decide to go through with the procedure. Now the only risks that you need to worry about is that since you are young, there is a chance that your body will reject the implant, and you would then need surgery to remove it, though the chance of that happening is very small.” She finished, and looked at Adrian expectantly. He thought about it for a minute, but in the end the prospect of having his own implant ahead of all others won out and he accepted.

“Great.” Doctor Mayer said, she reached in her coat and produced a ten centimeter metal case, she opened it and took out a glass vial with metallic liquid inside, she then reached in her other pocket and took out a
n injection gun, and she put the vial in the gun then turned her eyes to Adrian. “Ready?” She asked. Adrian frowned at the gun. “Wait, don’t you need to put me to sleep? I thought that implants need to be surgically inserted on the inside of the skull?” he asked confused.

Doctor Mayer let out a small laugh
. “No, no, that was for the previous generations. I told you that these implants are constructed by nanites. This vial contains the nanites and the materials that will be needed to construct an implant, there is also the Ai core inside, once the nanites enter your blood they will travel to your brain and assemble the implant there, then they will enter a standby state until you let your Ai take control over them.” Adrian’s eyes widened and he looked down at the gun.

“There is no danger that it will damage my brain?” he asked hesitantly.

“None, the nanites have been extensively tested, you are not the first to get this implant, only the first outside of the project.” She assured him. Adrian took a deep breath and nodded for her to proceed. She placed the needle part of the gun at the vein in his arm, Adrian turned his head to the other side not wanting to watch, other than a small pinching sensation he didn’t feel a thing. The next thing he knew Doctor Mayer removed the needle and instructed him to hold a small gauze at the injection point.

“That’s it?” Adrian asked surprised,
she smiled. “Yes that’s it, the nanites are in your system, the implant will be operational in a few hours, I recommend that you go to your quarters and read the instruction manual until it comes online. You are free for the rest of the day, I’m sure that Laura will send you instructions for tomorrow.” Then she stood up said her goodbyes and left the room. Adrian went to one of the cabinets and retrieved his clothes, he put them on and went to his quarters, trying to sense if there was something different. But he couldn’t feel anything, so he finally gave up and took up his datapad, he accessed his mail and retrieved the manual the doctor sent him. He sat in the chair by his desk and started reading.

[Operational manual for CX-01 Advanced Integrated Systems Implant]

The next few pages concerned the manufacturer, so he scrolled down to the part that interested him.

[-when the implant
construction is finished, it will run a self-diagnostic program intent to verify the implant integrity, if a fault is found, the user will be notified, we urge the user that in this case she/he immediately contact any medical personnel available.

- In case of successful co
nstruction and integration, the user interface will notify the user that the implant was successfully activated, and a series of questions will be asked of the user, measuring hers/his responses in order to achieve maximum integration and creation of required neural pathways.]

Adrian frowned the manual repeatedly referenced that the user will be notified or asked question, but the manner in which this was to occur wasn’t stated, he tried scrolling back to see if he missed anything but when he couldn’t find anything
, he decided to continue reading.

[-after the initial setup is completed, a menu will be available to the user with a smart app software system that will help the user modify
hers/his implant interface.

-the option to activate the implant
’s Ai (Artificial intelligence) will be available after the interface is set.

-the Ai has two modes:

- Active

-P
assive

-During active mode the Ai is able to access everything the user sees and hears,
and also monitor the interaction between the implant and the user.

-During passive mode the Ai is
only able to manage data inside of its own core, including the control of the user’s nanites (also referred to as privacy mode)]

Adrian continued reading for the next couple of hours, the manual described multitude of situations and the recommended reactions to them. But there was very little in term of information about the interaction with the Ai, and the manner in which the user should interact with it. After a while he grew tired
, and since there wasn’t anything happening he decide to go to bed, so he got up and started towards his bed. He didn’t take more than two steps before letters appeared in his field of vision, he almost lost his footing before he realized that the implant was finally activated. He walked backwards and sat back down, reading the text.