Binary, page 10
Ten or twenty seconds stuck in thought passed before she said anything. “Positive that arm’s alright?”
I shook my head. “I mean, yeah. I’m fine.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to look at your arm?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” I answered. “Thanks.”
I punched in the code and entered my quarters, catching the door before it shut. “I’m going to skip exploring the facility while you work on Bruce. I need to learn everything about the Heart Device and how it’s going to link up with the exoskeleton.”
Dr. Crane tried to hide her smile. “Welcome aboard, Alexis.”
I eased the door closed behind her, leaving it cracked to watch her leave before closing it, peeking to make sure she would not return to examine my arm. She rounded the corner at the end of the hallway.
12-2
Reflecting
A needed exhalation of air swamped from my lungs as I questioned what was to come next and made my way through my office and into my living quarters. My head hit the bed. My eyes locked onto the ceiling.
Dissecting what happened in the Social Room only a few minutes earlier was tiring, but thoughts seeped. My pulse took its time relaxing to a normal rhythm. My eyes were weighty, but I found it hard to sleep.
Over the course of a few days, I was approached by a strange little man named Mr. Whitlow with a berserk offer, left The Institute, received a package from the intimidating Desmond Pope, did not share it with Father, drugged myself in the middle of the woods—at the request of strangers, and had a conversation with the most mysterious A.I. system in existence.
It was too much to be actual, but the bruises on my arm said no dream-states were at play.
Chapter 13
Halo
NOBODY IN THE COMPOUND worked a 9-to-5. The Project dictated when they slept, worked, and ate. It conquered them, and I understood why.
My mind was not refreshed. I had been sleeping in short bursts like everyone else, but I could not rest. It was time to sit down and bury myself in The Project’s history. I made my way to the office accompanying my quarters, and it was not long before I sat across from that frontline computer.
I was behind the other scientist on The Project with its history, or my overall knowledge, in the area. Everything was progressive—a bar set beyond human reach.
Was I destined to fail? I did not believe in fate. I had always told people that we are all where we are at in life because of the combined sum-total of the decisions we have made. There were no reasons to involve destiny. Not in my eyes.
Neon lights surrounding the tower’s water-cooled, quad-fan-driven operating system came to life when the computer droned up. The fake name Dr. Crane selected for an acronym meaning nothing floated onto the screen:
‘eXtreme robotics and engineering.’
It was the only thing at the compound added for cosmetics.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s find out where you came from, Bruce.”
I clicked the mouse, and the logo disappeared as it had for Dr. Landry. A password box popped up.
“Really?” I shook my head. “Nobody mentioned anything about a password.”
They had denied me serious need-to-know information. How did they expect me to use a computer they did not provide a password for? It had to be something simple.
Overthinking things was something I was subconsciously dedicated to doing. After a few minutes staring at the monitor, it came to me. It was my name. I typed it in and pressed the enter key, but the password did not take.
“Hmph...” I said. “That’s great, guys. Just great. Thanks for the password.”
I retyped it, ensuring I had not had a slip of the fingers the first time.
“Nothing?” I asked. “Are you serious?”
I reentered my name again and omitted the initial capitalization, only to find myself blocked again. My finger depressed the CAP LOCKS, and I made another attempt to enter the system after a few moments of hard contemplation.
Another roadblock. I was on the verge of calling Dr. Crane and asking her for the password but was sure they thought I could figure it out. Neither of which justified me calling Dr. Crane.
I stared at the monitor until the screen saver popped up again. The few minutes that passed left me all but defeated. I reached for the intercom button and sighed before pressing it when the rotating screen saver caught my attention—a single capitalized letter:
‘eXtreme robotics and engineering.’
My hands drifted back to the keyboard to type my name again, only with the ‘X’ in my name capitalized.
“Here’s to hoping for minor miracles,” I said.
I took a shallow breath and exhaled it before pressing ENTER, then cheered when it let me in. A personal victory. It was not anything to get excited about in the grand scheme of things around me, but it was the trivial things in life that satisfied me.
They had severed the underground facility from the outside world. There were no available luxuries, and the computer’s firewalls had me on a technological desert island. Two icons were present on the desktop: a trashcan at the lower right-hand corner, and a single folder in the upper left of the screen. A lone acronym rested below it:
‘B. R. U. C. E.’
My head cocked. “Bruce...”
I clicked the file and leaned back to observe the monitor lowering itself into the desktop as Dr. Landry’s had earlier, disappearing into the desk itself. A small panel opened next to it and a metal crown of sorts rose to its surface. It had to be the halo Dr. Landry mentioned.
My hands moved into position to grab it. I was curious, excited, and anxious. A hue in the peripheral of my upper eyes... It began emoting a purple glow when I rested it on my head. An odd sensation followed.
My brain activated like it never had. It was not faster but clearer, like lanes opening on a highway. My eyes searched the corners of their orbitals. The file folder popped into my head. It came to life in the surrounding room to match my thoughts.
13-2
Blacked out files
The file folder popped into the air like a tiny planet shifting colors and floated to envelop the office. I pinched it a few times and gained access to a world of considerable input. Everything I needed was in the many sub-folders set in motion by the one labeled B. R. U. C. E.
They filled the room. Some were floating down like they had in the laboratory. I walked around to pinch through a few. There were models for everything you could imagine: his motor-skeletal system layout, artificial nervous system, sensory input rates, estimated reaction times, and a total score of other models I was interested in. They were far from boring, but they were not what I was looking for.
It would have all been great if I had been an engineer looking to repair a machine such as Bruce, but I needed information on its psychological history and past A.I. interface studies. I saw none of that. Nothing caught my attention to proclaim itself relevant to my placement on The Project.
I continued my search. There had to be something. Anything. Time wasted away as I dug deeper into it.
“Annnnnd...” I said, “this sucks.”
The spherical folders I pinched and discarded were drifting down to rest on the floor, shifting through colors like a magical glowing carpet.
My fists clinched again. “Grrrr....”
I walked through the spheres and kicked at them in frustration. They floated back towards the top of the office. It was annoying. I wanted them to stop drifting down while I tried to research.
“Why can’t these things just stay up?” I asked.
Then they did.
“Wait.” I thought, placing my hands on the halo resting on my head. “Did I just...?”
I walked through the stationary cloud of information, looking about. They were no longer descending.
A chuckle escaped me. “I guess I did.”
It was nice the tech had responded to me the way it had. I paced the office, questioning what I had done or thought to get it to stop. Perhaps it was the emotional urge for them to do so. More possibilities ran through my mind as I made my way around the office.
A single folder found its way before me as I moved deeper into my investigation:
‘Possible Psychological Tendencies’
I was tired. I had been pinching through everything they had on Bruce as fast as I could for hours, but there was no way I would step from the scene before I read that folder. It was what I had been searching for. It had to be.
I pinched open the folder to find it jam-packed with material that both frightened and fascinated me. The Project’s highlighting achievements documented in it was information spanning sixty years. Many of the notations were about Bruce trying to communicate with them before he could speak—before they had technology to do so.
The oldest documentation I could find was an old photograph with the original paperwork. They pointed back to The Project’s origins but gave nothing specific regarding timelines in the files.
There were no dates on the photograph, or anything explaining how he got involved, but Dr. Landry was one of the first people called in to recover an object from an undisclosed part of the world. When first detected, they thought the object to be a meteorite that impacted the Earth with little to no energy release. That impossibility sparked the initial investigation.
What they discovered upon their arrival was unclear at the time they created the documents, which stated:
A technologically advanced object was recovered from——————————————————-—alongside several——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-—and what appears to be—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————.
I could have normally geeked myself into the system, hacked it, and removed the blacked-out portions of the images floating in front of me, but they were not digital documents. On-screen were photographs taken of files uploaded to the computer as regular old pictures. One cannot hack away the blacked-out portions of actual ink laid over paper that’s photographed and uploaded as a JPEG.
All was not lost. The description of a technologically advanced object found at the scene matched what Dr. Landry referred to as the Heart Device. Its initial history had it being brought to an undisclosed facility and checked for radiation, amongst other things.
By the time twenty years rolled around, X.R.E. was born and their discoveries already had them generations beyond what the rest of humanity considered possible in the world of physics and computer science. Their discovery was a leap in evolution.
They were building their first, albeit rough, interpretation of the exoskeleton used to house the intelligence system they refer to as Bruce. They were also attempting to communicate with the pre-existing A.I. through a computer interface system well ahead of its time, but they were unsuccessful. Forty years before my arrival, Dr. Landry was already developing a body to house the artificial intelligence system.
The A.I. within Bruce was from an unidentified world, yet they had somehow extracted a small portion it to transfer into their exoskeleton, which could have explained the reason Bruce began acting differently when they moved the Heart Device into the room with him. It was possible they could have been interacting without a physical means to connect.
I wished to learn what he had come to us in. Was it a craft of some sort, or did he simply crash here as they found him? All logic dictated it had to have been a craft capable of interstellar travel. There was too much-advanced technology at the compound to come forth in fifty years with nothing beyond the human mind to generate such discoveries, invent, and adapt means to create. Something was reverse engineered—stolen.
13-3
Initial communication
Dr. Landry’s initial attempt at communication was through a new interface linking their technology with the device’s found a decade earlier. Records dictated the first attempt to speak with Bruce came through Dr. Landry’s once young hands. Words popped on the screen next to his name as he typed:
‘LANDRY: “ANYONE THERE?”
Ninety seconds passed, and he typed again:
‘LANDRY: “RESPOND.”
He continued for several minutes without a response, signaling the team it was time to change their game plan, but they never stopped trying to communicate. Every day, Dr. Landry would type into the computer without a reply. He never gave up.
By the next decade, the laboratory was already using technology beyond the rest of the world’s understanding. They added additional elements to the periodic table and were not sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. It was the first decade X.R.E. integrated the unknown A.I. system and gain partial digital access into what they referred to as the wreckage. It was also when they deciphered blueprints for Bruce’s exoskeleton, one they initially built in what became the skin room.
First two-way contact came shortly after Bruce took a spill trying to take his first steps. Dr. Landry, according to records, thought The Project was damaged and rushed to his keyboard:
‘LANDRY: “ARE YOU OKAY?”
A long moment passed before their discovery responded for the first time.
‘UNKNOWN: “I AM OKAY.”
Those three simple words, uttered by a nonexistent, non-sentient being, must have been a stupendous moment in time for those on The Project.
The documentation from the following decade was impressive by any standards. By that time, the laboratory and equipment they were working with were advanced beyond anything anywhere else on Earth. It was also the year Dr. Crane and Dr. Schultz took full command of The Project alongside Dr. Landry as the other seniors died off from old age and other related illnesses.
Insert Desmond Pope here...
He and his wife, Maria Pope, were both specialists and made it through the selection process: he was a former MARSOC combative turned international counterterrorism prevention specialist. She was a CCT (counter-cyberterrorism) expert who made breakthroughs in video/audio surveillance with remote-operated defense systems. She was also the only one who believed Bruce to be a life-form, alongside Doctors Landry and Crane. The documents mentioned nothing else about her.
Together, they manned all avenues of defense and security, making for a powerful team worth having. Yet Pope alone remained. I wished someone to tell me what happened to his wife, but I certainly was not about to ask Pope.
As things progressed, the technology involved topped what I could understand without further study. That was clear. They had tapped far enough into the information trapped within the artifacts to make radical advancements in the development of what Bruce was by the time I met him. Every decade had them leaping forty-plus years forward in technology.
Although some of the information surrounding The Project was blacklisted, there was an abundant amount of data regarding their current goals and expectations still readable. Some of which I found unsettling.
The Project was not about creating an advanced form of robotics to house the Heart Device. Its faceless funders were trying to create life. What became clear as I read was the fact they were mistaken.
“Oh my God...” I whispered.
They were trying to create a life, but the truth was they had found one. Only three people on The Project understood that fact, and they kept those notions close to their chests. Those funding The Project were trying to have it weaponized.
The information revealed X.R.E. playing God in the beginning so they could play Devil in the end. And I had stepped in to play devil’s advocate.
I stood from the chair and powered down the monitor. My head needed clearing, but I understood what Dr. Landry must have been feeling when he discovered it. I knew why they stayed involved under such circumstances. Without their presence, Bruce was destined for terrible things and possible termination once the funders got all they could get from him.
I had pushed my body, which needed tenfold more sleep than most people, well beyond its normal waking hours. The documents had undermined my morals. The ability to focus faded as stress rose.
Tired eyes warned me I had been reading for several hours. I could no longer concentrate linearly. A moment to digest everything was in need. Besides, I was having bout of claustrophobia with mental walls closing in around me and had to move. To breathe. I needed to get out of that office.
13-4
Pecan-Butter
I walked into my living quarters and grabbed some frozen waffles from the freezer. The nervous eater in me was wide awake, forcing my hand. Though not one of those people who ate over depression, if I was nervous or anxious... I ate. And seeing there was not anything sweet, or a drink with an alcohol content higher than zero percent available, I tried to be creative.
Maple syrup alone would not do, but I pulled some from the cabinet and dropped the waffles into the toaster. My hunt revealed some Pecan-Butter.
I shook my head. “I mean, yeah. I’m fine.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to look at your arm?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” I answered. “Thanks.”
I punched in the code and entered my quarters, catching the door before it shut. “I’m going to skip exploring the facility while you work on Bruce. I need to learn everything about the Heart Device and how it’s going to link up with the exoskeleton.”
Dr. Crane tried to hide her smile. “Welcome aboard, Alexis.”
I eased the door closed behind her, leaving it cracked to watch her leave before closing it, peeking to make sure she would not return to examine my arm. She rounded the corner at the end of the hallway.
12-2
Reflecting
A needed exhalation of air swamped from my lungs as I questioned what was to come next and made my way through my office and into my living quarters. My head hit the bed. My eyes locked onto the ceiling.
Dissecting what happened in the Social Room only a few minutes earlier was tiring, but thoughts seeped. My pulse took its time relaxing to a normal rhythm. My eyes were weighty, but I found it hard to sleep.
Over the course of a few days, I was approached by a strange little man named Mr. Whitlow with a berserk offer, left The Institute, received a package from the intimidating Desmond Pope, did not share it with Father, drugged myself in the middle of the woods—at the request of strangers, and had a conversation with the most mysterious A.I. system in existence.
It was too much to be actual, but the bruises on my arm said no dream-states were at play.
Chapter 13
Halo
NOBODY IN THE COMPOUND worked a 9-to-5. The Project dictated when they slept, worked, and ate. It conquered them, and I understood why.
My mind was not refreshed. I had been sleeping in short bursts like everyone else, but I could not rest. It was time to sit down and bury myself in The Project’s history. I made my way to the office accompanying my quarters, and it was not long before I sat across from that frontline computer.
I was behind the other scientist on The Project with its history, or my overall knowledge, in the area. Everything was progressive—a bar set beyond human reach.
Was I destined to fail? I did not believe in fate. I had always told people that we are all where we are at in life because of the combined sum-total of the decisions we have made. There were no reasons to involve destiny. Not in my eyes.
Neon lights surrounding the tower’s water-cooled, quad-fan-driven operating system came to life when the computer droned up. The fake name Dr. Crane selected for an acronym meaning nothing floated onto the screen:
‘eXtreme robotics and engineering.’
It was the only thing at the compound added for cosmetics.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s find out where you came from, Bruce.”
I clicked the mouse, and the logo disappeared as it had for Dr. Landry. A password box popped up.
“Really?” I shook my head. “Nobody mentioned anything about a password.”
They had denied me serious need-to-know information. How did they expect me to use a computer they did not provide a password for? It had to be something simple.
Overthinking things was something I was subconsciously dedicated to doing. After a few minutes staring at the monitor, it came to me. It was my name. I typed it in and pressed the enter key, but the password did not take.
“Hmph...” I said. “That’s great, guys. Just great. Thanks for the password.”
I retyped it, ensuring I had not had a slip of the fingers the first time.
“Nothing?” I asked. “Are you serious?”
I reentered my name again and omitted the initial capitalization, only to find myself blocked again. My finger depressed the CAP LOCKS, and I made another attempt to enter the system after a few moments of hard contemplation.
Another roadblock. I was on the verge of calling Dr. Crane and asking her for the password but was sure they thought I could figure it out. Neither of which justified me calling Dr. Crane.
I stared at the monitor until the screen saver popped up again. The few minutes that passed left me all but defeated. I reached for the intercom button and sighed before pressing it when the rotating screen saver caught my attention—a single capitalized letter:
‘eXtreme robotics and engineering.’
My hands drifted back to the keyboard to type my name again, only with the ‘X’ in my name capitalized.
“Here’s to hoping for minor miracles,” I said.
I took a shallow breath and exhaled it before pressing ENTER, then cheered when it let me in. A personal victory. It was not anything to get excited about in the grand scheme of things around me, but it was the trivial things in life that satisfied me.
They had severed the underground facility from the outside world. There were no available luxuries, and the computer’s firewalls had me on a technological desert island. Two icons were present on the desktop: a trashcan at the lower right-hand corner, and a single folder in the upper left of the screen. A lone acronym rested below it:
‘B. R. U. C. E.’
My head cocked. “Bruce...”
I clicked the file and leaned back to observe the monitor lowering itself into the desktop as Dr. Landry’s had earlier, disappearing into the desk itself. A small panel opened next to it and a metal crown of sorts rose to its surface. It had to be the halo Dr. Landry mentioned.
My hands moved into position to grab it. I was curious, excited, and anxious. A hue in the peripheral of my upper eyes... It began emoting a purple glow when I rested it on my head. An odd sensation followed.
My brain activated like it never had. It was not faster but clearer, like lanes opening on a highway. My eyes searched the corners of their orbitals. The file folder popped into my head. It came to life in the surrounding room to match my thoughts.
13-2
Blacked out files
The file folder popped into the air like a tiny planet shifting colors and floated to envelop the office. I pinched it a few times and gained access to a world of considerable input. Everything I needed was in the many sub-folders set in motion by the one labeled B. R. U. C. E.
They filled the room. Some were floating down like they had in the laboratory. I walked around to pinch through a few. There were models for everything you could imagine: his motor-skeletal system layout, artificial nervous system, sensory input rates, estimated reaction times, and a total score of other models I was interested in. They were far from boring, but they were not what I was looking for.
It would have all been great if I had been an engineer looking to repair a machine such as Bruce, but I needed information on its psychological history and past A.I. interface studies. I saw none of that. Nothing caught my attention to proclaim itself relevant to my placement on The Project.
I continued my search. There had to be something. Anything. Time wasted away as I dug deeper into it.
“Annnnnd...” I said, “this sucks.”
The spherical folders I pinched and discarded were drifting down to rest on the floor, shifting through colors like a magical glowing carpet.
My fists clinched again. “Grrrr....”
I walked through the spheres and kicked at them in frustration. They floated back towards the top of the office. It was annoying. I wanted them to stop drifting down while I tried to research.
“Why can’t these things just stay up?” I asked.
Then they did.
“Wait.” I thought, placing my hands on the halo resting on my head. “Did I just...?”
I walked through the stationary cloud of information, looking about. They were no longer descending.
A chuckle escaped me. “I guess I did.”
It was nice the tech had responded to me the way it had. I paced the office, questioning what I had done or thought to get it to stop. Perhaps it was the emotional urge for them to do so. More possibilities ran through my mind as I made my way around the office.
A single folder found its way before me as I moved deeper into my investigation:
‘Possible Psychological Tendencies’
I was tired. I had been pinching through everything they had on Bruce as fast as I could for hours, but there was no way I would step from the scene before I read that folder. It was what I had been searching for. It had to be.
I pinched open the folder to find it jam-packed with material that both frightened and fascinated me. The Project’s highlighting achievements documented in it was information spanning sixty years. Many of the notations were about Bruce trying to communicate with them before he could speak—before they had technology to do so.
The oldest documentation I could find was an old photograph with the original paperwork. They pointed back to The Project’s origins but gave nothing specific regarding timelines in the files.
There were no dates on the photograph, or anything explaining how he got involved, but Dr. Landry was one of the first people called in to recover an object from an undisclosed part of the world. When first detected, they thought the object to be a meteorite that impacted the Earth with little to no energy release. That impossibility sparked the initial investigation.
What they discovered upon their arrival was unclear at the time they created the documents, which stated:
A technologically advanced object was recovered from——————————————————-—alongside several——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-—and what appears to be—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————.
I could have normally geeked myself into the system, hacked it, and removed the blacked-out portions of the images floating in front of me, but they were not digital documents. On-screen were photographs taken of files uploaded to the computer as regular old pictures. One cannot hack away the blacked-out portions of actual ink laid over paper that’s photographed and uploaded as a JPEG.
All was not lost. The description of a technologically advanced object found at the scene matched what Dr. Landry referred to as the Heart Device. Its initial history had it being brought to an undisclosed facility and checked for radiation, amongst other things.
By the time twenty years rolled around, X.R.E. was born and their discoveries already had them generations beyond what the rest of humanity considered possible in the world of physics and computer science. Their discovery was a leap in evolution.
They were building their first, albeit rough, interpretation of the exoskeleton used to house the intelligence system they refer to as Bruce. They were also attempting to communicate with the pre-existing A.I. through a computer interface system well ahead of its time, but they were unsuccessful. Forty years before my arrival, Dr. Landry was already developing a body to house the artificial intelligence system.
The A.I. within Bruce was from an unidentified world, yet they had somehow extracted a small portion it to transfer into their exoskeleton, which could have explained the reason Bruce began acting differently when they moved the Heart Device into the room with him. It was possible they could have been interacting without a physical means to connect.
I wished to learn what he had come to us in. Was it a craft of some sort, or did he simply crash here as they found him? All logic dictated it had to have been a craft capable of interstellar travel. There was too much-advanced technology at the compound to come forth in fifty years with nothing beyond the human mind to generate such discoveries, invent, and adapt means to create. Something was reverse engineered—stolen.
13-3
Initial communication
Dr. Landry’s initial attempt at communication was through a new interface linking their technology with the device’s found a decade earlier. Records dictated the first attempt to speak with Bruce came through Dr. Landry’s once young hands. Words popped on the screen next to his name as he typed:
‘LANDRY: “ANYONE THERE?”
Ninety seconds passed, and he typed again:
‘LANDRY: “RESPOND.”
He continued for several minutes without a response, signaling the team it was time to change their game plan, but they never stopped trying to communicate. Every day, Dr. Landry would type into the computer without a reply. He never gave up.
By the next decade, the laboratory was already using technology beyond the rest of the world’s understanding. They added additional elements to the periodic table and were not sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. It was the first decade X.R.E. integrated the unknown A.I. system and gain partial digital access into what they referred to as the wreckage. It was also when they deciphered blueprints for Bruce’s exoskeleton, one they initially built in what became the skin room.
First two-way contact came shortly after Bruce took a spill trying to take his first steps. Dr. Landry, according to records, thought The Project was damaged and rushed to his keyboard:
‘LANDRY: “ARE YOU OKAY?”
A long moment passed before their discovery responded for the first time.
‘UNKNOWN: “I AM OKAY.”
Those three simple words, uttered by a nonexistent, non-sentient being, must have been a stupendous moment in time for those on The Project.
The documentation from the following decade was impressive by any standards. By that time, the laboratory and equipment they were working with were advanced beyond anything anywhere else on Earth. It was also the year Dr. Crane and Dr. Schultz took full command of The Project alongside Dr. Landry as the other seniors died off from old age and other related illnesses.
Insert Desmond Pope here...
He and his wife, Maria Pope, were both specialists and made it through the selection process: he was a former MARSOC combative turned international counterterrorism prevention specialist. She was a CCT (counter-cyberterrorism) expert who made breakthroughs in video/audio surveillance with remote-operated defense systems. She was also the only one who believed Bruce to be a life-form, alongside Doctors Landry and Crane. The documents mentioned nothing else about her.
Together, they manned all avenues of defense and security, making for a powerful team worth having. Yet Pope alone remained. I wished someone to tell me what happened to his wife, but I certainly was not about to ask Pope.
As things progressed, the technology involved topped what I could understand without further study. That was clear. They had tapped far enough into the information trapped within the artifacts to make radical advancements in the development of what Bruce was by the time I met him. Every decade had them leaping forty-plus years forward in technology.
Although some of the information surrounding The Project was blacklisted, there was an abundant amount of data regarding their current goals and expectations still readable. Some of which I found unsettling.
The Project was not about creating an advanced form of robotics to house the Heart Device. Its faceless funders were trying to create life. What became clear as I read was the fact they were mistaken.
“Oh my God...” I whispered.
They were trying to create a life, but the truth was they had found one. Only three people on The Project understood that fact, and they kept those notions close to their chests. Those funding The Project were trying to have it weaponized.
The information revealed X.R.E. playing God in the beginning so they could play Devil in the end. And I had stepped in to play devil’s advocate.
I stood from the chair and powered down the monitor. My head needed clearing, but I understood what Dr. Landry must have been feeling when he discovered it. I knew why they stayed involved under such circumstances. Without their presence, Bruce was destined for terrible things and possible termination once the funders got all they could get from him.
I had pushed my body, which needed tenfold more sleep than most people, well beyond its normal waking hours. The documents had undermined my morals. The ability to focus faded as stress rose.
Tired eyes warned me I had been reading for several hours. I could no longer concentrate linearly. A moment to digest everything was in need. Besides, I was having bout of claustrophobia with mental walls closing in around me and had to move. To breathe. I needed to get out of that office.
13-4
Pecan-Butter
I walked into my living quarters and grabbed some frozen waffles from the freezer. The nervous eater in me was wide awake, forcing my hand. Though not one of those people who ate over depression, if I was nervous or anxious... I ate. And seeing there was not anything sweet, or a drink with an alcohol content higher than zero percent available, I tried to be creative.
Maple syrup alone would not do, but I pulled some from the cabinet and dropped the waffles into the toaster. My hunt revealed some Pecan-Butter.
