Sparks of Chaos (13 page)

“Hold out your hand Chase, so that we can access your ring and the stasis box,” Armstrong ordered. Without argument Chase complied and held out his hand. He cringed as they removed the box from his ring and initially increased its size to a loaf of bread and placed it on the black slab. This was the moment he was dreading as they opened the box.

“Oh Chase, what have you done?” Tedford said as they saw Birgit’s bloodied, broken body.

“It’s not my fault, it was an accident.”

“Who is this?”

Angrily Armstrong demanded, “Where is the Professor?”

“Please, just give me a chance to explain,” Chase pleaded. “First you have to tell me if she’s still alive.”

“I find it hard to believe there can be any suitable explanation for this fiasco,” Armstrong said shaking his head. “Mr. King is going to be furious; I don’t know how we can tell him you failed to retrieve the Professor.”

“He will explode when he sees that you’ve brought a female to the island.” Tedford added.

“Is she alive?” Chase yelled angrily at them.

“It appears you care for this girl, let’s see what the situation is,” Tedford said carefully taking the small body out of the box and tenderly setting it on the slab. The smooth black surface instantly came to life with a wild array of diagnostic information lighting up all over it. Using a variety of quick hand signal commands Tedford brought the girl’s small body back to normal size and evoked 3D displays of medical information floating above her and along the white walls. “Just exactly who is this girl?”

“Her name is Birgit, she was the Professor’s secretary,” Chase answered. Seeing the dried blood all over her body sent an icy shiver through him and a sudden blast of horrible memories from earlier in the day. “It was an accident; she burst in while I was preparing to take the Professor. She was going to get security and we struggled.”

“So you killed her?” Armstrong asked.

“No, of course not, she fell and hit her head on the desk. I liked her; I would never have hurt her. What does this all mean, is she alright?” he asked pointing to the numerous displays.

“She is alive but beyond that I can’t really say until we review more of the diagnostics. You said she hit her head, is that where all the blood came from?” Tedford asked.

“Yes, the back of her skull was broken in several places, which is why I put her in the box.”

Pointing to a display of her skull shown on the wall, Armstrong asked “Then why is there no sign of it now? The stasis box would maintain her life but has no abilities to repair.”

“I gave her a dose of biobots, I guess it worked then.”

“You did what?” Tedford asked incredulously.

“We never supplied you with any biobots, where did you get them?” Tedford questioned.

“I used the ones in my body.”

“Why would you have done that? They weren’t made to be used that way; the ones we placed in your body were manufactured specifically for you. We never anticipated they would be used in that manner,” Tedford said.

“It was my only choice, if I hadn’t done it she would have died. You would not have wanted me to allow her to die, would you rather I left her body to be found in the Professor’s office? Why don’t you just try and make some biobots that can be used in everybody?”

“No you shouldn’t have allowed her to die but we don’t know what the effects are going to be on this girl from your improvised procedure,” Armstrong told him. “You still have not explained your failure to collect the Professor, the emergency of dealing with this girl has distracted from the debriefing of your mission. All I know is we were expecting a respected Nobel Prize winning scientist and instead you bring us a teenage girl.”

“My failure, my failure, you have got to be kidding me. The failure was completely yours. If you had done a proper surveillance of our target none of this would have happened. Your wonderful Professor was completely bat crazy out of his mind. Did you know that?” Chase screamed at them.

“What do you mean he was crazy?”

“He was like totally senile, no idea where he was or more importantly what year it was. He thought I was someone named Peter and kept apologizing and asking about his mommy.”

“There were rumors that he may have the beginnings of dementia but we had no way to safely confirm it. They may have been trying to protect his reputation or his situation rapidly deteriorated,” Armstrong reluctantly admitted.

“You could have better prepared me for that possibility. It took me a week to get close enough to arrange a plan and get some time alone with the old man. If he had been in his right mind, he would be here with us right now. Even with all that nonsense he was spouting I still would have been able to get him. Unfortunately he went mental and violent right when I was preparing to take him and that is what alerted her and ruined everything. So I don’t want to hear another word about it being my fault.”

“We will have plenty of time to assign the blame for this fiasco. Right now the focus has to be on dealing with this girl. That doesn’t even begin to mention the damages you may have caused from bringing that girl here.”

“Damages, what damages are you talking about?”

“Did you think you could effectively kidnap a teenage girl and no one would notice? There will certainly be repercussions to your actions. That may be mild to what happens when Mr. King finds out about all of this,” Armstrong admonished.

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Of course you didn’t, now I must begin to work on solving the problem of this girl. Tedford will escort you back to your home; you are to stay there until further notice.”

Chapter 24

Armstrong sat in his suite of rooms awaiting Tedford’s return. The BLI’s ability to survive without the need for sleep or food provided them immensely more opportunity to work. They had been built to be productive and it gave them pleasure to do so. They never tired and could work flat out without stopping for long periods. Since all power on the island was delivered wirelessly, their bodies had its own internal power sources and were also engineered to tap automatically into this ready source of power. The movement of their bodies also generated a source of energy within them, effectively making them what could be described as ‘self-winding’.

As much as he enjoyed hard work, Armstrong found it extremely helpful at times to sit and contemplate. It was in this time that he reviewed the situation and reviewed strategies and future actions. It was this ability that allowed him to plan short term moves based upon a very well thought out strategy that looked far into the future. He felt he had the ability to think many moves ahead and be prepared for many possible outcomes.

The BLI actually enjoyed having their quarters below ground. By not sleeping they had no natural circadian rhythms to regulate their body and as such had no requirement for sunlight to differentiate night and day. For them, the demarcations of hours in a day were more of an accounting necessity than a guideline for daily activity. He loved the privacy the location provided them. They had complete and free reign over their environment and had the resources and freedom to do with it whatever they chose.

As the BLI Prime and leader of what would eventually be a large number of his kind, it was his responsibility to design what their underground society would become. No humans other than Rex, who was the Great Creator after all, would ever be permitted to set foot in their very private world. So far Rex had never visited their living quarters but he craved for the day that he would host him here eventually.

Surveying his own personal space, he was quite pleased with the environment he had created. The space was divided into two parts, his private space and a more communal meeting area. The private area of course had no human like bedrooms, kitchens or bathrooms and consisted merely of relaxation and work rooms. To reflect his personality, he did not like anything overly ostentatious but more of a formal dignified appearance in his communal rooms. While in his personal space he chose a more aquatic theme with one large dividing wall filled with colorful tropical fish. He knew that he could have easily used a video wall to show just as realistic a view but he enjoyed having true living creatures with him in his rooms.

Reclining on a soft, sea-foam green chaise lounge in his personal chamber, it was his first opportunity to reflect on the odd turn of events that arose with Chase’s mission to Germany. For all the blustery anger that he had displayed in the medical diagnostic room, he was actually quite pleased with the recent turn of events. While he could never have predicted this exact scenario, his projections showed that there was always a high probability that some incident would occur to derail the original plan.

The more he reviewed and contemplated his options and how best to move forward, the more convinced he was that he had arrived at a perfect solution. A thought had popped into his mind of the saying ‘a disaster is a terrible opportunity to waste’ and that is precisely what he was going to take advantage of.  He had no intention of signaling his intent to others. In studying human history and successful leadership, he found that much could be accomplished if you were unconcerned with taking the credit. He had no intention of taking credit or even leaving his fingerprints on this master plan he had developed.

He knew that it would not be easy; it would require deception and manipulation on his part. It did not bother him in the least; he was firmly convinced that nothing he was doing was in any way for his own benefit. He vowed to do whatever it took to protect their new island society, Rex and the BLI, even if they didn’t like it or agree with it. He knew that his superior planning skills and strategic excellence made it absolutely essential that his vision succeed whatever the cost. Yes, now that he had set his mind on a course of action, it was full steam ahead and he would begin immediately planting the seeds of its implementation.

Precisely on time his wristband informed him that Tedford had arrived for their private debriefing and strategy session. Unlike when they were with humans, the two BLI never bothered with personal pleasantries when alone with themselves. There was no polite asking to sit, Tedford just entered and sat down facing him. It was not that they had no emotions or sensitivity; they just chose to express it differently and in their opinion more efficiently.

“I have been anxious to get your private take on the mission developments,” Tedford stated.

“I am more concerned with your reactions.”

Taking a moment to ponder his response he said, “I believe that the only important fact to this whole matter is how we manage Rex’s response. The loss of this part of his dream is not going to be easy, so how we present its replacement is going to be crucial.”

“Excellent,” his estimation of Tedford’s cognizance and reasoning skills rose measurably. It certainly was going to make his job easier with him as a strong ally.

“It is truly the only issue; everything else is a distraction to be dealt with. Our first priority is to manage Rex’s response and we must be extremely aware of his ego.” 

“We’ve known for some time now that this day would come. As we have discussed on many occasions, his plans for a scientific society were destined for failure. No matter how many ways we changed the variables of the plan we were unable to arrive at a positive outcome. We were going to have to break that news to him sometime. This does not even begin to take into consideration the medical reasons why it would not work.”

“Now we have something and someone else to fault for the failure of Rex’s plan other than blaming his own planning efforts. If we are not careful, we run the risk of causing a major animosity between Rex and Chase and we need them to get along. That is exactly the last outcome we were looking for, especially when they both eventually find out why Chase is here,” Tedford continued.

“I think we let the chips fall where they may, it is not our top priority, let’s keep our focus where it belongs. There is absolutely no reason for them to be told about that for some time.”

“I disagree; we may be setting up a major rivalry that could have long term consequences that we can’t yet comprehend. Once they both know the truth about each other that would be very awkward. When we add the unknown element of this girl into the mix, we could be playing with fire. We need to be careful in how we proceed.”

“Hmmm…, interesting point of view,” Armstrong was quickly revising his thoughts on Tedford’s alignment with his thinking. He disliked his cautious approach to everything, which went contrary to his way of acting fast and seizing control of events before they seized you.

Changing the subject, Tedford asked, “What’s happening with the girl and what is the prognosis for her recovery?”

“Oh, she will recover just fine but it required us to take some rather extreme measures to save her life. Although I don’t know if or what the consequences will be for having Chase’s biobots in her body. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the fast thinking that he displayed in coming up with a solution to that problem so quickly and effectively. I am even more convinced that Chase is exactly what we have needed. He is the grit of sand in the oyster that irritates things but eventually becomes the pearl.”

“How do you plan to break the news of the girl being brought to the island? You know his views on that subject and how negatively he will react to that.”

“I don’t believe we will have to worry about that in the long term, this is another portion of his plan that was doomed to fail. He is a genius when it comes to scientific and technical areas but not on social engineering. It is our responsibility to save him from himself,” Armstrong stated.

“We are going to have to make some very quick adjustments to Cheswick, now that we will have to pair him with that girl instead of the Professor.”

“That shouldn’t take long; I had a strong feeling that the Professor would never make it to the island and so never completed that portion of the programming. I think we were very lucky by not having Professor Hauptmann arrive here. If he did have some form of dementia as Chase proclaimed, than it would have been impossible to repair his mind from what was already gone.”