The Siren Project (54 page)

“Then stop encouraging him,” Gunter said,
hearing the whirring of a small motor behind him. He looked over his shoulder
to see a robotic janitor following the detonation wire from the Relay Room. He
wondered what EB was making of the demolition charges he was rigging. “Tell him,
no more until he finishes sending the project’s records to the FBI. Do we know
what he is sending them?”

“I asked for the money trail first, then
anything to do with congress, the military, and defense contractors. And
finally,” Mouse said, indicating the people attached to the immersion tank’s
neural nodes, “A list of who they are, where they came from, and who put them
there. All for Special Agent Lamar’s eyes only”

“That should do it.” Gunter replied, returning
to his study of the wiring underneath the work stations as the volume of data
bouncing off the satellite to the FBI ceased.

UPLOAD COMPLETE.

“Did we get a copy?” Gunter asked,
selecting a wire to cut.

“Sure did. It’s sitting in the National
Bank of Venezuela’s central computer, where no one will ever find it, except
me.”

Gunter lifted his pliers to cut a wire when
a telescoping arm reached past him. The robotic janitor’s claw clamped onto the
pliers, preventing him from cutting the wire. The download stopped as the
screens in front of Mouse went blank and the lights in the control room went
out.

“What happened?” Gunter asked surprised,
blinking to adjust his eyes to the gloomy light seeping in from the immersion
tank.

“I didn’t do anything!” Mouse declared as
he typed a query, receiving no response. He jumped out of his seat to another
workstation and tried contacting EB. “He’s not responding.”

Gunter glanced at the robotic janitor,
frozen behind him. “Looks like he figured out we were going to terminate him.” He
released the pliers, now firmly gripped by the immobile robot, and stood up. The
humming from the Neural Net Relay Room began to fade away. “That is odd.” He
hurried back to the entrance to the room, as one by one, the lights of each
relay blinked out. “It is a system wide shut down. Is there any way EB could be
shutdown remotely?”

“Maybe a backdoor?” Mouse said, seating
himself and beginning to type requests to EB.

Gunter watched the Neural Net relays switch
off, one by one. “A dozen left!”

Mouse continued typing messages on the
lifeless keyboard. “I’m getting no response at all.”

“He knows we are going to blow him up, so
he cut the power to stop me detonating the explosives!”

An image of Mitch appeared on the screens
arrayed in front of Mouse, and on the large screen on the wall behind. The
camera was below the surface, shooting up, and even though the image was
distorted by surface ripples, it was apparent he stood on a narrow walkway at
the top of the immersion tank. Once Mouse realized what he was seeing, he ran
to the window and looked up, spotting Mitch far above, cornered by McNamara’s
security team.

Gunter saw that less than ten of the Neural
Net Relay ‘online’ lights still glowed, but those last ten stayed lit, giving
EB a tiny fraction of his cognitive ability. It was enough. After a few
seconds, all of the relay lights flashed back on in rapid succession, restoring
EB to full capacity.

Gunter furrowed his brow in confusion. “What
the hell?”

* * * *

The movement of a small torpedo shaped
maintenance robot caught Mitch’s eye as it glided toward him through the clear
immersion solution. The torpedo rolled slightly to one side, orienting its
camera toward him, then moved off to observe McNamara and the security officers
near him.

Mitch returned his attention to McNamara. “Why?”
He pitched his voice so it would carry over the drumming of a hundred streams falling
from outlets in the tank’s ceiling. “Why New York? Why all this?”

McNamara cocked an eyebrow, genuinely
surprised, then took a few steps along the edge of the platform. “You really
haven’t figured it out yet? Perhaps I overestimated you.” He glanced around the
tank, then shrugged. “We’ve got to have someone to fear, someone to hate. Fear
makes people accept losses of freedom they’d never normally tolerate. The
Russians are no use anymore, since they went belly up. The Chinese might get
there one day, but they still have a way to go. That leaves terrorism. It can’t
defeat us, but it can make us afraid. We can use that fear. Focus it. Ensure
the taxpayers are scared enough to keep the money flowing. That’s all we want.”

“For this?” Mitch indicated the tank around
him. He noticed another of the torpedo shaped robots cruising toward him from
the depths, and further away, more torpedoes circling the other platforms, monitoring
the soldiers there.

McNamara looked out across the surface of
the immersion solution. “No. This isn’t expensive. A few billion a year. Not
enough for anyone to notice. It’s the military industrial complex we’re
interested in, that great enterprise that employs millions of Americans, and
makes us the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. We always knew there
was a risk we’d win the Cold War, that the Soviets would self-destruct, and
then we’d face budget cuts, base closures, and a loss of focus. That's no way
for a self respecting super power to behave. Hell, before you know it, we’d be
back to citizen militias and muskets. That’s why Sincom got built. We told the
penny pinchers in Washington it was the new strategic weapon, that it would let
us control foreign Governments without firing a shot, but it was never really
intended for that. Okay, so maybe we’ll fix a few recalcitrant foreign leaders
when they come visit Washington, but that's just a side show. The main event is
our contingency plan. Sincom is our insurance, in case we become too
successful, and run out of enemies.”

“So you’d incinerate a city, to do what? Scare
congress into giving you more money?”

“Scare the American people into giving us
not just the money, but the power.” McNamara smiled. “Don’t get me wrong. We’ll
crush terrorism without mercy, and fight a small war every few years just to
show we’ve still got what it takes, but we’ll also ensure the perception of threat
always remains. Perception is, after all, more important than reality.”

“You could take over the Government with
Sincom?”

“Too messy. We’ll settle for enough
influence to get what we want. Like the senator’s Security Bill, and the next
generation super fighter, even if it costs more than the gross domestic product
of half the countries on Earth.”

“You trade in fear. If there's no fear, you
have no power.”

“Fortunately, fear is like a disease,
especially fear of the unknown. Once it spreads, it's hard to cure. And even if
there was a cure, it's too late. We already have enough influence over congress
to steer the country in the right direction. The masses can still have their
elections, at least those who bother to turn up. Whoever they elect, Siren will
ensure they think clean thoughts. No one will ever know. Hell, I don’t think
anyone even cares anymore! So you see, you’ve been fighting a losing battle
from the beginning, and you never even knew it.”

“So Siren makes you the invisible King
Maker!”

“The King Makers, as you call them, are a
few key people in the military, a congressman or two, and some large and very
rich corporations. It’s kind of a club, a mutual benefit society. I’m just the
King Maker’s secret policeman, a very well paid secret policeman.” McNamara
hesitated as a thought struck him. “Funny isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“FDR was right all along, all we have to
fear, is fear itself. When people are afraid, they forget about freedom. Not
that it matters anymore, the masses are already enslaved, they just don’t know
it. I call it wagery, wage slavery. People get paid to surrender their freedom.
How much control do they really have over their own lives? None!”

Mitch gauged the distance back to the
pressure hatch, but he knew it was too far. He noticed the second torpedo was
loitering near his feet, diving down shallowly, then returning again, curiously
repeating the maneuver. “So what now?”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d step over here.
We could shoot you, but it would take several days to filter your blood out of
the solution. It’s cleaner if you come quietly. There is no escape, not from
here. Not for you.”

“And if I don’t go quietly?”

McNamara shrugged. “Then I guess the
filters will be working overtime.”

Mitch glanced down, noting the torpedo’s
strange movement again, how it turned back toward him as if watching to see
what his response would be.

EB is watching! He's trying
to tell me something?

Mitch nodded slowly at the torpedo, unsure
what EB’s intent was, but certain it was better than what McNamara had in mind.
A moment later, the humid air of the immersion tank rang with a series of metal
clangs as the hydraulic arms slammed the pressure hatches closed. McNamara spun
around to see the hatch’s wheel automatically spinning shut, locking in place
and sealing them all inside the tank. He motioned to one of the security guards
to open the hatch. The guard shouldered his weapon and tried turning the wheel,
but it was held firmly in place by the emergency locking system. The guards on
the far side of the tank began wrestling unsuccessfully with the pressure
hatches on their platforms, as the fear of being trapped began to rise.

“Doesn’t look like any of us are going
anywhere!” Mitch said.

“Your friends in the control room, no
doubt.”

“I don’t think so.”

From the hundred outlets that had
previously been trickling small streams of immersion solution into the tank, a
hundred mighty torrents of white frothing liquid blasted into the tank. The
drumming became a deafening crescendo as the solution bubbled under the impact
of the high pressure streams flooding the tank.

McNamara yelled at one of the security
guards as he pointed at Mitch. “Shoot him!”

The guard looked uncertainly from the jets
of liquid blasting noisily into the tank, to the rapidly rising water level. It
was already over the gantry walkway, lapping at Mitch’s shoes.

McNamara yelled again, “That’s an order, Corporal!”

The soldier took aim at Mitch as he leapt
off the gantry between two torrents of solution. Bullets cut the air about him
as he plunged into the tank, using the gantry as a shield. The corporal fired a
burst of automatic fire, raking the metal supports as Mitch dived under the
superstructure, trying to unsight the guard.

A torpedo robot circled below, watching as
Mitch drew near the black bulbous shape of a node. Four feet below the gantry
walkway, attached to the base of the node, was a naked unconscious woman about
forty years old. Her face was enclosed by an air mask and the back of her head
was covered by a shiny, stainless steel skull plate. A complex weave of thin
black cables snaked from the skull plate, up to the node, giving the woman a Medusa-like
appearance. Black securing straps held the woman’s body in place, while a
triangular metal device fitted below her hips collected her waste. The
intricate system of flexible hoses and electrical cables transformed the woman
from an unconscious automaton, into a fully functioning bio-processing unit.

In the quiet submarine world of the Neural
Net, Mitch was mesmerized by her presence. He noted the gentle movement of her
chest as she breathed with regulated certainty, the lifeless pale color of her
skin and the soft atrophied look of her body, all controlled by a machine that
was seamlessly integrated into her brain.

Mitch was filled with a sense of revulsion.
He pulled himself away, surfaced for air and stole a quick look over the
gantry. One of the soldiers with McNamara fired at the hatch’s hydraulic arm,
trying to sever it, but the bullets ricocheted uselessly off the heavy steel
casing. Even from that distance, Mitch sensed the first signs of panic
beginning to set in. The solution was now ankle deep over the maintenance
platform, and was rising fast. Soon the tubular mounting that housed the
pressure hatch would be under water, and then the pressure hatch itself. The
second soldier dropped his rifle and tried to help the first soldier force the
hatch open, no longer concerned with Mitch.

McNamara yelled angrily at the soldiers,
but the noise of the water jets drowned him out. He retrieved the rifle from
the shallows on the platform, then splashed across the gantry toward the
walkway Mitch had abandoned. Halfway there, he raised the weapon to shoot. Mitch
dived below the surface, swimming underneath the gantry as bullets cut the solution
beside him. Submerged, the sound of the water jets was a muted drumming in his
ears, while the surface had become a boiling sea of bubbles. The torpedo slid
up toward him, waited a moment, then dived down ten feet before circling back. More
bullets cut the water either side of the superstructure, as McNamara now stood
directly above, shooting either side of the walkway. Mitch knew, as soon as he
surfaced for another breath, McNamara would shoot him. The torpedo robot slid
up next to him again, this time floating beside him, waiting.

Okay Flipper, can’t go
up!
Mitch thought as he reached out and grabbed
the torpedo’s manipulating arm.