The God Wave (22 page)

“No, it's fine. I wanted to go grab a cup of tea anyway.” She nodded back toward the lab. “They've been at that for a couple of hours in one form or another.”

“Did you think that exercise up yourself?” Chuck asked her as they fell into step.

“Yes.”

“I'm impressed. How are they doing really?”

“They're doing well. Really. Some more than others, of course. Mr. Flores has a bit of a problem, as does his lieutenant.”

“Reynolds? That bothers him a great deal, I imagine.”

“I don't judge. We just keep running the drills until everyone is either locked in or ready to collapse. If they're ready to collapse, I have a backup exercise that's not quite as hard, so they can succeed at something.”

They turned in to Steampunk Alley. “You're good at this,” Chuck told her. “And you just made my day.”

She shot him a sidewise glance. “How so?”

“I was moping around the halls, feeling like our organizational creativity is just seeping away, and here you are inventing a program to teach multitasking.”

Lanfen laughed. “Necessity is a mother, I guess. Dr. Streegman made it pretty clear that if we couldn't teach them how to interface directly with the bot's VR unit, it could blow up the whole deal. Or someone could get themselves blown up.”

“Latency,” Chuck murmured. “The slip betwixt the cup and the lip, the thought and the action.”

“In a word, yes.”

Chuck watched Lanfen pour herself a cup of hot water and deposit a tea bag in it. “Do you think teaching them to multitask will facilitate their learning to throw themselves?”

“You know, Matt asked me the same thing. You two are a lot alike.”

“True,” he said. “Except in every way.”

Lanfen laughed. “I know what you mean on the surface. But you're both equally driven, just by different things. Two true believers. You'd see it if you were standing outside yourself. Maybe through Bilbo's eyes.”

Chuck smiled but tried not to think too much about the comparison—or its implications. “You didn't answer my question.”

“The new recruits? They're certainly disciplined enough to throw themselves. A couple of them even meditate.”

He pounced on that. “Are the ones who practice meditation doing better than the ones who don't?”

“Yes. To different degrees, though. I'm starting to think the real essential element is self-awareness. Meditation isn't just about emptying your mind. It's about connecting with your self, becoming aware of all the processes happening in your body, mind, and spirit. Your breathing, your heartbeat, your senses, your inner climate and thoughts. It's like . . . you can't throw a ball unless you can feel the ball in your hands. You can't throw your voice unless you have an awareness of where it comes from and what shapes it—diaphragm, throat, vocal cords, everything. If you're uncertain that there's anything to sense, you might be less than effective in doing much more than achieving a resting state. Do you understand?”

“You can't throw your point of view—your
self
—unless you have some grasp on what that is or at least a belief that there's something there to throw.”

“Exactly. And my recruits are each coming at that from a different set of experiences and beliefs. I think Sergeant Masterson has the best grasp on it. She's done yoga and meditation, and she has a sort of . . . well, a spiritual foundation.”

She was blushing, which suffused her golden skin with subtle shades of rose.

“What?” he said. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“Not at all. I was afraid . . . well, you're a scientist. You probably find all that spirituality talk silly. Or at least irrelevant. I know Dr. Streegman does.”

“That's Matt. And that's where we're not actually alike. He's a mathematician. I'm a neurologist. The human processes—the processes that make us human—are my whole focus. I'm not at all uncomfortable with the idea of a spiritual reality. In fact I accept it as a given.”

“Oh. Then maybe it's you and me that are alike.”

Chuck grinned. “Has Matt given you any milestones for teaching your students to know themselves well enough to throw their selves?”

She groaned at the play on words—something he found immensely satisfying. He was not known for his sense of humor.

“I need to show results in ten days, and I don't think Matt's going to accept a fast and furious game of Trivial Pursuit: Beanbag Edition as results.” Her brow furrowed. “What do you think will happen if I can't do it?”

He opened his mouth to say, “I don't know,” but what came out was, “You'll do it. I have no doubt.” He was surprised to realize that was the absolute truth.

MATT WAS A FUNNY GUY.
He seemed to be the most laid-back and casual when he was really the most nervous or ill at ease. When he strolled into the robotics lab with his hands shoved deep into
the pockets of his khakis and a smile on his face, every alarm bell in Dice's head went off.

“Hey, Dice, how're things going?”

Dice glanced sidewise at Brenda, who was helping him test a new appendage design for the ninja bots. The rest of the crew had gone to lunch. “Uh, things are going really well. We'll have two units ready for testing tomorrow morning.”

Matt stopped in the middle of the lab, looked off into the middle distance, and scratched behind one ear. “Yeah, about that. You're pushing the limits of our facility here to get two of these done in a week's time, aren't you?”

That wasn't a question.

“Pretty much. But we really don't have the resources to do more than that.”

“We could get more manpower . . .”

Dice shook his head. “That won't do it. Even if I had twice as many people, we don't have the workspace. We could retool our space to create an assembly line, but these things aren't cookie-cutter constructs. The other option is to move, which would take time away from—” He gestured at the bot.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Matt looked around the lab as if he were seeing it for the first time. “Well, looks like there's only one solution, then. We'll send a couple of the bots over to Deep Shield with schematics for them to assess. Then you and some of your trainees can go over there and teach more of their folks to assemble them.”

“O-okay. When—”

“I don't know. Tomorrow maybe. That'll give them the rest of the week to look the units over and have some idea of who's going to be taking your class. You can go over next Monday. They'll be—well, they ought to be ready by then.” He smiled.
“Great. I'll tell General Howard.” He sketched a salute and sauntered back out of the lab.

Beside Dice, Brenda made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “What was that?”

“That,” said Dice, “was me being thoroughly manipulated. He came in here to tell me that Deep Shield was demanding access to the bots in their own labs. He ended up asking if they could take some of the work off my hands.”

“Wow,” said Bren. “He's good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is. Scary, isn't it?”

Two days after Lanfen was able to get all but one of her first class to throw with some level of success, she arrived at Forward Kinetics to find her classroom lab empty. None of her charges were in evidence; there was no message explaining their absence; there was nothing on the organizational calendar to clarify it.

Puzzled, she headed for Matt's office to see if he knew what was up. She was reaching out to tap on his door when someone called to her.

“Ms. Chen?”

She turned to see Brian Reynolds standing up the hall, toward the foyer. As always he was wearing an unadorned, navy blue uniform.

“Hi, Brian. Where is everybody?”

“They're waiting for us at the facility. We'll be working from there from now on.”

Lanfen was an even-tempered soul, but the cavalier attitude this last-minute change suggested raised her usually slumber
ing ire. She took a deep breath and exhaled, wondering if she should just fling open Matt's office door and find out what this was about.

“Ma'am?” Reynolds was watching her with that air of well-tested patience she'd begun to suspect was taught—no, mandated—by the military.

Fine. She'd take this up with Matt when she got back. She nodded and followed Brian out to the government-issued car that waited for them in the parking lot.

The Deep Shield kinetics facility was impressive, or at least the part of it that Lanfen saw. The working space was large, well laid out, and fitted with everything a kung fu workout required and then some. The main floor area was taken up by a huge, blue mat; around its perimeter stood the members of her class, each accompanied by a gleaming new robot.

It took a moment for Lanfen to realize there was a lone robot standing sentry to one side of the large double doors: Bilbo.

The anger she'd felt earlier rekindled. That they had simply swept her away without warning was bad enough, but that they had come into her domain and taken Bilbo without so much as a word to her . . .

She wasn't sure where to direct the anger—at Howard and his team for absconding with her, her class, and her robot or at Matt and Chuck for letting Howard do it in the first place.

Except, of course, that Bilbo wasn't really her robot.

She gently reined the anger in again. It would do her no good here and would only hamper her training efforts and her personal progress. Nor was it fair to her students to hold them accountable for their masters' behavior. For not the first time today, she promised herself she would have a serious discussion with Matt Streegman when she got back to FK. She took a deep, cleansing breath, let it out, and inspected her class and their metal counterparts.

“I had no idea that Dice's team had built so many of these little guys,” she said, realizing only as she said it that these “little guys” were bigger than Bilbo by about a third. There were other differences as well—slightly different dimensions, thicker limbs, a different material on the torso shielding.

“Actually,” said Reynolds, “we brought over a few prototypes and built the rest of them here.”

She turned to look at him. “Does Dice know?”

Was there just the slightest reddening along his cheekbones?

“Dr. Kobayashi helped set up our operation.”

Lanfen relaxed a bit. “Fine, then. Well, let's get going, shall we? We need to put these new bots through a shakedown process, and we're running late.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Reynolds moved to his bot.

“Let me work with one of yours first, so I can see if they feel any different. That might help me if and when we shift into problem-solving mode.”

Every one of the recruits turned to look at Reynolds.

“You can use mine,” he told her.

She inspected the robot visually first, asking Reynolds questions about height and weight, noting that the hands and feet were now more like humans'. That was good. There was also a small, brass plate on the bot's right shoulder. Something was etched on it: “#DSRS04 Thorin.”

She smiled at Reynolds. “You named them?”

He smiled back. “Of course.”

“Okay. What are the essential differences?”

“They're about thirty pounds heavier and eight inches taller and have a different setup with their appendages, as you can see.”

“Their heads are larger, too,” Lanfen noted. “Any particular reason?”

“GPS system. Infrared camera. Heat sensors.”

“Heat sensors?”

“Imagine you're searching a pitch-black mine for survivors. In situations where even infrared tech won't work, heat sensors will pick up the presence of a warm body. May be the only way to find a survivor in a situation like that.”

“Cool,” she chirped. “Let's see how they work.”

Lanfen used the same method to get into Thorin's mechanism as she did with Bilbo. That part worked seamlessly. The additional weight, height, and length of the limbs took a little exercise to get accustomed to, but ultimately she adapted. The new appendages took a bit more getting used to; both hands and feet could adaptively use one of their digits as an opposable thumb. She worked at opening and closing the hands for several moments before she was happy with the result.

She put the new bot through his paces remotely, watching the way he moved from her own point of view. Finally she went into kinetoquist mode and threw herself into the bot. The world looked pretty much the same as it did from Bilbo's POV. She drove Thorin through some rolls, kicks, and postures before returning him to Reynolds, who was watching her with almost exaggerated care.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just wanted to be sure we got it right. Thorin seemed okay to you? No hiccups?”

“None,” she told him. “I am a little jealous of your new gadgets, though.”

Reynolds turned his head and tossed his classmates a look. She followed his gaze and saw that Seneca Hughes was hiding a smile . . . and looking at Bilbo.

Lanfen turned to look at her bot, only then realizing that he, too, had been outfitted with the new handy feet.

“Very nice,” she said enthusiastically. “Do I get GPS, too?”

“Sorry,” said Reynolds. “The lab didn't think he needed that. But the manipulators are Dr. Kobayashi's design.”

“Well, let's put them to use. No more lollygagging, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get moving. Have you done any practice work with them at all?”

“A little,” said Reynolds. “Just proof of concept. We haven't tried ventrilokinetics yet.”

“Kinetoquism,” she corrected him. “We don't want the bots to think we view them as dummies.”

That actually netted her a round of laughter.

Maybe this day would be all right after all.

MINI'S EXPERIENCE WITH THE DEEP
Shield people was, in her opinion, both bizarre and uncomfortable—probably as much for them as for her. She did not understand them; they did not understand her; and at first she fled each session to the grounds of the business park, where she would relax in the company of Jorge Delgado, a friend she had made among the gardeners who kept the parkland groomed.

Jorge was a man of many words, with opinions about anything that grew from the ground. She found his botanical wisdom soothing and used the opportunity to study the construction of the plants he tended. She didn't tell him everything she was working on, of course—only that she was an artist and wanted to paint the most realistic flowers possible.

“I want them to leap off the canvas,” she told him, which prompted him to supply her with small pots containing clippings from his most-vivid blooms, along with lengthy discourse on the care and feeding of green pets.

“You want them to leap,” he said, “then you must feed them energy food.”

Mini wasn't certain that Jorge's wisdom would help her with
the Deeps. In fact, at the beginning of their sojourn together, she hadn't been sure she could teach them anything useful for a military application. Why did they care about manipulating art software or even pixels and photons on a screen?

So finally she asked.

“Our goal,” the group's lieutenant, Rachel Cohen, had told her, “is to be able to manipulate pixels directly, the way you do it. It obviates the need for specialized software.”

“Well, yes, but to what purpose?”

“Just imagine the time saved if we can prototype skins for our robots, create rescue scenarios, and demonstrate them without having to work them out painstakingly, using standard wire frames and animation software. The applications are practically endless.”

So she had taught them the art of pixel manipulation, first using the software, then moving beyond that to simply create images on the screen. It did not escape them that there was a different quality to her images and animations.

“Yours look three-dimensional,” said Rachel. “How are you doing that?”

The question was a gratifying reward for all of Mini's hard work. She had spent hours working alone in the lab and even at home, pulling and pushing the pixels, extending herself into the medium to draw them out and imbue them with three dimensions.

Using the flowering plants that Jorge had been kind enough to surprise her with, Mini walked her class through 3-D, drilled them on it, and was eventually satisfied with their work, though in her heart of hearts she knew it was not equal to what she could do. She felt a small thrill of satisfaction at that but quashed it, knowing that in the end she was being asked to make them her equals.

Even as she moved her students along, Mini knew she was close to moving beyond what she was teaching them. The prospect excited her . . . as did daydreaming about a fitting way to reveal her new trick.

She'd show Eugene first.

“IS IT MY IMAGINATION, OR
are there more Smiths roaming our halls today than there were yesterday?” Sara Crowell set her cup of hot coffee down on the café table between Tim and Mike and pulled up a chair.

“Why do you call them that?” asked Mike, sipping at his own cup. Hot chocolate, Sara could tell by the aroma. The man was addicted to it.

Tim answered. “It's from the
Matrix
movies. I thought you knew that.” At Mike's head shake, he added, “Agent Smith is this sort of generic man in black who's, like, everywhere.”

“I swear they've multiplied,” said Sara. “There are three in the main lobby, and God knows how many wandering the halls.”

“Two by the espresso machine,” murmured Tim, flicking a glance in that direction. “Maybe they're clones.”

Mike laughed. “Naw, the one on the left is shorter than the one on the right. See?”

“What are they doing here?” asked Tim.

“According to Matt,” said Sara, “they're supposed to be making sure no one crashes the party or tries to remove classified items from the lab. Presumably the enemies of the US of A would be very interested in what we're doing here. This zeta wave stuff is off the charts as far as human-machine interface tech goes. I'd be willing to bet no one has anything like it.”

“I wouldn't be too sure,” said Tim. “Stuff like this seems to be in the ether. I've talked to editors who say the same story idea has come to them from multiple writers in a short time
period, and scientific discoveries seem to happen in clumps, too. Do you know how many Nobel laureates share the prize with people who were working on the same concept halfway around the world?”

“I don't think so this time, Timmy. It took a serendipitous confluence of two completely opposite minds to get us to this. I mean think of all the threads that have to come together: creativity, openness to seemingly outrageous ideas, a knowledge of the human brain, a deep interest—no, an obsession with the workings of the human mind—and the mathematical and mechanical chops to pull it off. I think we're it, boys. So I guess it makes sense that Uncle Sam would want to guard us like the national treasures we are.”

Tim made a face. “So we're just pieces of tech to them. Is that what you're saying?”

“Not necessarily. We're human resources.”

“Personnel?” Mike offered.

“Wetware,” Tim countered.

“Just be glad they didn't give you a jarhead haircut.” Turning to Mike, Sara asked, “How're your troops doing, Mikey?”

“Pretty good. They're operating servos like they were born to it. But . . .” He hesitated.

“What?”

“It's just . . . I've been wondering why we even need the servos.”

Tim's eyes lit up. “Sara and I don't use servos.”

“What do you mean? You can make
anything
move with your minds?”

“Hardly, or Kate Upton would be sitting here right now.”

Sara's eye roll was almost audible.

“I'm not sure I can put words on what it is we do, but it doesn't require a mechanical interface. We're just able to manipulate unmodified pieces of machinery.”

“Wow, Timmy, you make it sound as easy as shooting a layup,” Mike said.

“Still can't do that.” Tim frowned.

“It has to be machinery that we have some idea how to operate,” Sara added. “But for you that's pretty much everything. Have you tried it?”

Mike looked over at the espresso machine, with its gleaming copper and brass fittings. The two Smiths were still standing next to it, exchanging notes about something.

Sara followed his gaze. As she watched, one of the taps on the side rotated its nozzle, and a jet of steam shot out of it, forcing the two agents to retreat several steps. The tap closed again just as quickly as it had opened.

She looked back at Mike. His expression was noncommittal and completely innocent.

Tim was chortling. “Dude, you better not let them know you can use the Force like that. They'll classify your ass.”

Would they
? Sara had wondered that many times since they'd embarked on this partnership with Deep Shield. What if the military came to view the zetas as little more than classified warmware? What happened to people whose brains and the thoughts in them were considered classified?