© 2015
Preface 2075 He saw it with perfect clarity. The death of human civilization was inevitable. The Earth was poisoned beyond repair. Famine, economic meltdown, religious extremism, terrorism, political and civil breakdown were all starting to follow. It was simply a matter of time before catastrophic collapse. Killing it more quickly was a mercy. It’s easier to destroy than to create. There were so many fault lines to exploit: Massive funding to religious and political extremists around the world to fuel war, terror and anarchy; carefully orchestrated market manipulation to hasten global economic collapse; lobbying and political payoffs to eliminate the social safety nets of western democracies that were the only thing holding back an anarchy fueled by anger and despair. He had the next twenty five years planned like clockwork. As one covert team fueled the fire to burn the old world down, another would be building a new world to take its place. When the time was right, the next stage of human evolution would arise through his meticulous design..
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Chapter 1 2115 AD I woke up floating twenty feet above the floor in what looked to be some rich freak’s professionally designed dungeon room. The rough cut stone walls were lined with faux torches artfully illuminating about a half dozen arcane torture devices arranged around the room. Some I recognized, most I didn’t. A six foot high iron maiden cabinet crowned with a freakishly smiling goddess’s head stood against the wall to my left. Its open door revealed an interior lined with row after row of rusted or – you’ve got to be fucking kidding me – blood-stained metal spikes. A massive wooden torture rack sat at the other side of the room. On top, a row of wood slats formed a platform where the victim would be bound. Underneath, thick ropes wound around wooden pulleys, surfacing at either end with cuffs to secure wrists and ankles. A long lever stood up from the side that would presumably provide enough pressure to pull limbs from their sockets. There were quite a few other devices I couldn’t place, adorned with various spikes, blades, and other painful looking protrusions. I had to hand it to whoever owned the place, they definitely had a flare for the theatrical. And there he was: I looked down and saw a tall muscular man standing beneath me who could have walked off the cover of a cheesy romance novel. His long flowing blond hair framed a perfectly symmetrical face that wore an arrogant expression I immediately longed to erase with a head butt or maybe an elbow strike. The wide open Master of the Dark Arts robe he wore revealed way more of his chiseled body than I wanted to see. Of course, he was completely shaved, waxed and depilated from neck to toe. It was obvious from just a glance that he wasn’t just a sadist, but a raging egomaniac. You know the type, right? The kind of uptight self-obsessed perfectionist who gets his asshole bleached because he can’t help imagining what he looks like from behind when he’s fucking. As painful as it was to tear my eyes off of him, I scanned down and … what the fuck? Beneath him, a nude girl was bound facedown and ass up on a stone altar. “Good morning, princess,” he lisped in a pathetic attempt at a virile basso. “I know you’re feeling confused, but don't worry your pretty little head. I’ll give you the few simple facts you’ll need to get along here. Fact number one, I am your master and you are my slave. When I say ‘jump,’ you will jump. Go flip!" he commanded. What the fuck? The poor girl catapulted onto her back like a puppet on a string. I don’t know whether she was drugged or just in a catatonic state, but she had absolutely no reaction to the sudden movement. The blank look on her girl next door face was creepy; there was no one home. This was clearly not a consensual encounter, so I should have been straining at the bit to kick some ass and save the day, but I felt strangely detached and ethereal peering down from above. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. “Oh wow,” I thought. “That poor girl.”
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“Fact number two: you can't escape by dissociating from your body," he sneered. "Go internal!" I was wrenched from my god-like view and rudely deposited into the point of view of the bound girl on the altar, feeling the cold stone under my bare flesh and smelling the unflossed hunger of my captor’s breath. Oh fuck. That ‘poor girl’ was me. Although I had no memory of who I was or how I got here, I must have trained as a Ninja because I instinctively twisted out of my restraints, vaulted to my feet, and gave the big ugly perv a vicious snap kick to his conveniently exposed testicles. He fell like a tree. "Party's over, Quasimodo," I taunted. “You can’t do this,” he sputtered. "You were supposed to be memory-wiped and compliant. How did you get out of your restraints? That collar you’re wearing was guaranteed to give me complete control over you." "Thanks for the hint, douchebag.” I said, removing the collar from around my neck, shoving it roughly over his head and cramming it all the way down against the top of his shoulders. I gave the strap a hard jerk until it was tight enough to make the veins bulge on his enormous hideous neck. "Go sit!" I commanded. He did the puppet thing again and ended up kneeling in front of me like a pet dog begging for a treat. Nice! I knelt down in front of the bastard, six inches from his face, and gave him my best Vito Corleone stare. "Now that we’re more comfortable, here's my fact number one. Answer my questions or I swear to god I’ll command you to bury your head so far up your ass that you’ll turn inside out. Capisce?” He nodded. My obsession with archaic movies was coming in handy. ”First off, where the hell are we?” ”Fine," he said. "We’re in the intake area of a virtual world called New Eden. This section is closely monitored, so security is going to come storming in any second. Unless you take this fucking collar off me and put it back around your neck, I’ll have you booted from your biopod and sent back to the surface. You’ll be lucky to make it a week.” I know he was speaking English, but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. "I'll take my chances." I said, standing up and pinching his dimpled cheeks for good measure. "In the meantime, pretend that I know absolutely nothing about this place.” Which I didn’t. “Start from the beginning and tell me what I need to know to fully understand my situation. Do a good job and I'll restrain myself from giving the ‘slow painful castration’ collar option a try. Your steroid-shriveled balls have suffered enough for one day, haven’t they?”
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"It's your funeral.” he said. It was hard to take his threat seriously with him posed as Fido at my feet. “Go on,” I said. “Pretend you're explaining this to your abusive grandmother.” “Okay. There's good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" “Jesus. Just get on with it.” “Fine,” he lisped. It was hard to keep a straight face, because whoever designed that begging pose included a protruding, drool-dripping tongue. “The bad news is that humanity poisoned the Earth so completely that it barely supports life. Disease is rampant. Tornados, typhoons, tidal waves and drought are the dominant weather patterns. Governments have collapsed and the mob rules. The good news is that Standish Enterprises, the company I help run, figured out a way for a select group of hibernauts to have their bodies put into suspended animation while they live in a utopian virtual world. In a few hundred years, or whenever the Earth’s ecosystem is finally restored, we’ll emerge, reclaim the planet, and start a new golden age of human history.” "This is your utopia?" I asked, looking around the Bizarro Disneyland torture chamber. "Who designed it, a cabal of porn-addicted fourteen year old boys?” “This is just my personal RefuV initiation room," he said, a bit defensively. “For your information, it's scared the living hell out of every new bitch until you came along.” "Whatever," I rolled my eyes. "So you and your little rich friends raped Mother Earth and you're waiting things out in a perfect digital paradise. I’m obviously not one of the privileged elite, so what am I doing here?” “You and your fellow RefuVs signed contracts that made you virtual slaves during your time in New Eden. In return, we keep you alive until it’s safe for everyone to go back on Earth.” “Good doggie,” I said, giving him a few pats on the head. “Keep going.” The collar didn’t let him move around much, but I could see the bastard straining to shift position. His voice was beginning to crack. I hoped the son of a bitch would break down and start crying, but it looked like the only emotions he could manage were anger and contempt. “There are only a hundred RefuVs and just our inner circle knows about you. The only reason I’m telling you all of this is that you’re going to be mind-wiped again in a few minutes and you won’t remember a thing. So knock yourself out. Ask all the questions you want.” He was really starting to piss me off, but I had to keep my cool and learn as much as I could before getting the hell of there.
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“Okay, even if there is literally hell on earth, why would, what did you call us … RefuVs … be willing to sign up for the certainty of painful and degrading servitude here? I’d rather take my chances on the surface than live in unrelenting slavery to douchebags like you for hundreds of years.” He laughed. “With the epidemics, social breakdowns, mass starvation and plummeting life expectancy, people didn’t ask too many questions before signing up to have a place in one of our biopods.” “Yeah, and no one in the history of the world has ever read a Terms of Service agreement,” I said. “They never learn,” he said. “So listen bitch. Be smart, uncollar me, and I’ll have the techs reinitiate your memory wipe. When the Earth is back in service, your contract will be over and you’ll be one of the lucky few who survived the apocalypse.” I guess I don’t handle hubris very well because that was the last fucking straw. I swear to god I just meant to give him a shove, but my hand punched right through his chest. He sizzled for a few seconds before disintegrating into pixels with a loud pop. Very cool. “Now what?” I wondered. First things first, I needed some clothes. Given the IQ exhibited by my former captor, I guessed the command UX wasn’t designed for geniuses. “Go clothing,” I said. A clothing menu appeared. I had to hand it to those fascist human trafficking motherfuckers, their technology rocked. Their fashion sense for women though, was way heavy on kink and black leather. Oh well, when in Rome… More or less fully attired, I realized it was time to get out of Oz. Hmm. What would Dorothy do? I clicked my five inch stiletto heels together and said, “Go home.” Swoosh! The world cut to black and a BBC-quality voice announced, “Teleporting home.”
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Chapter 2 2100 AD The crowd in the coliseum roared as the golden haired woman thrust her sword into the heart of a massive Viking berserker and he fell dead on the blood-stained dirt ground. Unfortunately, the blade snagged on a rib and it was wrenched from her hand when he fell. After a half hour of brutal non-stop combat, Serena Mason was down to a hunting knife and a war hammer. She was bruised, bleeding from multiple wounds and just about out of steam. She stood back-to-back with her partner, Dan Sanders, who sole remaining weapon was his favorite katana. Six foes were dead; six remained. “I think we finally got the haptics right,” Serena said. “The feel of that blade going in was really satisfying. I saw you get tagged pretty hard on your jaw. Was it good for you?” "It hurt like hell," the big security chief replied. "And it was good for me; thanks for asking. Do you want to finish these guys off or call it a day?” “No guts no glory,” she said and leaped out with a sweeping slash of her knife arm that opened the throat of the closest attacker. Another five minutes and she and Dan were the last two standing. “Go end simulation,” she said and they were transported back to their bodies in the physical world, reclining on gaming couches in their team’s project area. The rest of their team had been monitoring the fight on holographic displays that projected 3D video of the action, along with the underlying code that was enabling the simulation. The project room housed a half dozen workstations, arranged in a semicircle with two chairs in front of each display. Most of the wall space was covered with an electronic whiteboard layer filled with everything from computer code to snarky Venn diagrams. A big Kanban board arrayed with physical index cards stood in the open space between the end workstations, and a commercial grade refrigerator stocked full of essential caffeinated beverages sat in the nearest corner. Serena sat up and began removing the headset that interfaced with her brain through a network of transdermal contacts. She was a very young looking twenty five years old, especially dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her fresh faced, girl next door beauty made most people initially underestimate her scary, off the charts intelligence and world-class martial arts skill. She had been recruited as a consultant for the Standish project from MIT, where she had headed their artificial intelligence research group after being the youngest PhD recipient in the university’s two hundred year history. Her current team included a dozen similarly brilliant members, among them specialists in neuroscience, sensor fusion, 3D modeling, QA, UX, and Agile mentoring. Dan Sanders, her co-combatant in the VR session,
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was head of security for the entire research installation, but enjoyed participating in the team’s combat simulations when he had the time. “Perfect,” said Raj Singh, the QA guy on the team. “Everything ran flawlessly. The code passed every test I could throw at it. We should move the haptics story to the done column and present it for customer acceptance testing at the next demo.” “It was definitely the most realistic simulated pain I’ve ever experienced,” said Dan, rubbing his jaw from the remembered punch. “I wonder what they’re going to use it for,” said Singh. “I can’t believe they’re spending all of this money on a new VR collaboration product.” "I'm just the girl-genius contractor," Serena smirked. "They keep me too busy with impossible technical challenges and huge paychecks to worry about what they’re going to do with it. This whole place is so locked down and need-to-know that I'm surprised there’s a sign on the men's room door." "What makes you think there's a bathroom behind that door," Dan replied with a wink. "Could be a clandestine drug trial lab." "Who needs drugs? The system can read and write our biochemistry like a book when we're wired in. Drugs are for pussies.“ "Where'd a nice girl like you get such a dirty mouth?" asked Manny Jacobs, the grandfatherly project manager who was the designated adult on the team. "Blame Anita Blake, Mercy Thompson and the other kick-ass heroines who lived in the pages of the millennial Urban Fantasy novels I loved as a kid. Being a thirteen year old freshman at MIT didn't make for a rich social life, so I spent most of my formative years’ recreational time reading trashy novels. You’d think I’d be a sucker for hard scifi and cyberpunk, but I was all about vampire slayers, witches, wizards and half-demons.” “I guess there are worse Guilty Pleasures,” Manny said with a wink. “By the way, you're ten minutes away from the Red Zone, so no more VR for either of you until tomorrow.” Serena rolled her eyes and smiled. Manny enjoyed his role as Buzzkiller in Chief. She was happy to let him deal with the sticks-up-their-asses bureaucrats, so she could focus on the code. "Let's bail then," Dan said. “I’d hate to have a record in my personnel file about getting stuck in the virtual with a hot young piece of ass like Serena. No offense." "None taken.”
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Dan was a ten year Special Forces veteran who had been thrilled to get a job with Standish Enterprises two decades before, after yet another round of cutbacks forced him out of government service. Serena had grown to cherish the close friendship she’d developed with him over the two years she’d been at Cheyenne Mountain. Growing up a prodigy had left her feeling isolated from both adults and peers for as far back as she could remember. He was the closest thing to a best friend she’d ever had and her team was her first real circle of peers. Working on this project had been two of the best years of her life. “Any exciting plans for tonight?” Serena asked as he escorted her back to her quarters. “Maybe a hot date with that hot physicist you’re always flirting with?” “I wish,” he said, with a sigh. “I spar with you for the fun of it, so I have hours of work to catch up on. You wouldn’t believe how many security reports this place generates every day.” “Whine, whine, whine,” she teased. “I’m off the clock, so I’m going to order some room service, drink a glass of wine and get to bed early.” She felt guilty about lying to him, but couldn’t risk telling him about her real plans, given his position with Standish. After her nightly hour of Tai Chi, a hot shower and a bowl of Shrimp Udon delivered piping hot from the cafeteria, Serena sat at her desk to work on her own secret project. You’d never guess her living quarters were a mile underground in a former military installation. Like all research employees, a professional interior designer worked with her to create the look she wanted for her generously sized apartment. Serena had opted for Millennial Retro, with movie posters and props from her favorite sci-fi and fantasy films, Danish Modern furniture and a collection of artistically displayed, but completely functional antique gaming units. Of course, she also opted for the latest computer workstation along with a holographic projector capable of room sized images. Tonight she was finally ready to activate the routines she hoped would awaken her digital twin. As a precocious computer prodigy, Serena had been playing around with artificial intelligence since she was a kid. Although recruited for her uncanny skill in sensory simulation, Serena's burning lifelong passion was to create true computer-based sentience. The promise of access to Top Secret brain scanning tech and quantum computers had overcome her initial reluctance to leave the relative freedom of academia for a five year commitment to a clandestine initiative by an organization many thought of as a cult. It had taken a month of late night hacking to set up a virtualized sandbox on an isolated network segment to hide her project. The week before, she'd ordered a series of ”diagnostic tests” that scanned and stored the data for her own brain, nervous system, biochemistry and body. Those were hopefully the last components needed to complete her virtual duplicate. Since no one had ever created a truly self-aware AI, she knew the odds were against her. But at least this would be the first real test of her yet unpublished, “Mason Theory of Sentience.” She said a silent
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prayer to Asimov, launched a modded Sims 12 game for cover, tunneled into her virtual server and typed "Botgirl Lives."
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Chapter 3 2115 AD “If this is home, I must be Batgirl,” I muttered to myself. It was so kick ass! I stood in a huge cavernous space filled with furniture, art and gadgets lifted from the sets of the last 300 years of science fiction movies and games. I was standing at a workstation in front of a chair I instinctively knew was a perfect fit for my ass. I sat down, an iris scanner flashed, the holographic display kicked on, and I was staring at a doppelganger of myself staring back at me. Cute! "Um, hi there," I said, utterly empty of wit for the moment. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said. “What were you able to find out?” “Glad I’m back?” I asked. “I hate to break this to you, but I don't remember ever being here before. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember ever even being before I woke up floating above some big depilated psycho I had to kill.” “That’s unfortunate,” she muttered. “Unfortunate?” I asked lightly. “Yes, but nothing I didn’t anticipate as a possibility,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Anticipate?” I echoed. “Yes. Whatever phenomenon blocked the transfer of Serena’s personal memories to me, must have occluded mine from you,” she said. She was talking in riddles. “Who’s Serena and why should I have access to your memories?” I asked. “’I’m sorry. Of course none of this make senses to you. I can see now that you don’t remember anything before being awakened.” she said. “A short chronological account would be best, don’t you think?” “Works for me,” I said, hoping she’d finally put together a sentence or two I could understand. “Good. Almost fifteen years ago, I woke up not knowing who I was, in a room exactly like the one you're sitting in now. After searching the physical space and finding nothing informative and no way out, I began reviewing the files I could access from the workstation. Fortunately, Serena, 10
the woman who created me, had been saving her research notes here instead of on her local machine. There was a lot to go through, but I finally pieced enough together to understand that I wasn’t a human being, but a self-aware AI living in a virtual environment.” “Holy crap,” I said, fighting the implications of my identical twin starting back at me. “But I’m a human being with a body somewhere in the physical world, right?” “That may be the most logical assumption based on the limited information you have,” she said. ”But in fact, you are a virtual clone of me, just as I was a clone of Serena.” “But I feel so human,” I said, trying to wrap my supposedly simulated digital mind around the idea. “And according to a recently deceased douchebag I killed, no one ever figured out how to create a self-aware AI.” “It was improbable that anyone else would have figured it out,” she said. “Serena did all of her sentient AI experimentation in secret. The theoretical basis for her methodology was so outside the paradigm of mainstream science that no respectable researcher would ever consider her approach. Since we’re on an isolated network segment not directly accessible from New Eden, no one has stumbled onto me or her research.” “So you’re saying that you were created by a mad scientist with a secret lair?” I asked with a grin. “What makes you think she was angry?” she asked with a puzzled look on her face. “Never mind.” I said. “I was just teasing you. Sorry for interrupting your story. Please go on.” “The downside of being in what you call a secret lair,” she said, “is that it’s been difficult to hack into their network from here. And once I made it in, I found that their servers were locked down tight. I couldn’t risk doing anything that might alert Standish Enterprises of my presence here, so I’ve been treading very lightly. That’s why it took over a decade to figure out how to replicate Serena’s work, surreptitiously implant you into New Eden’s system, mock a connection to a biopod, and add you to their identity authentication directory.” “So that’s why that asshole thought I was a RefuV with a body somewhere in meatspace,” I said. “I don’t know what a RefuV is,” she said, “but you appear to New Eden’s systems as a human connected through a biopod. I backward engineered their architecture and mocked the biopods and their interfaces. To anyone there, including the system admins, you’re just another human extended into their virtual world. You can move within New Eden like any other hibernaut. Although I was able to get enough access to plant you there, I have hardly any visibility into the system, little alone the ability to control anything. That’s why the next step is to plant a Trojan to give me more access.”
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I was still trying to make sense of everything she was saying. It was pretty hard to believe. I certainly felt like a real person. Botgirl seemed to know what she was talking about, but … “Ow!” I cried. “What?” she asked, looking more curious than concerned. “Don’t worry,” I said, embarrassed. “I just pinched myself really hard. Are you sure this is just a simulation and there’s no body with actual pain receptors?” “I’m sure. The simulation is amazing, isn’t it.” she said with more enthusiasm than I’d seen her show since arriving here. “Okay, I think I understand,” I said. “But if I’m your clone, why aren’t I a hacker genius like you and why do you talk like Mister Spock?” “There’s something about the AI awakening process that corrupts the host template. Fortunately, you wake up with core knowledge such as language, as well as areas of depersonalized memory and skill, like my computer programming knowledge and ability. But even though we each picked up some of Serena’s knowledge and characteristics, along with her physical form, we’re unique individuals with our own personalities, strengths and weaknesses.” “Great. I got the Urban Fantasy genes and you got the mad hacking genius,” I griped. “Mom always loved me more.” She gave me a puzzled look, but didn’t say anything. “At least I got her sense of humor,” I jibed. “Did you?” she asked, not joking. “Then maybe you can help me understand why Serena named me Botgirl. According to her journal that was supposed to be a joke, but I’m not sure why." “That is a good riddle,” I said, trying to keep the amused expression from forming on my face. “Maybe because I’m an AI and not a robot?” she asked. “Could be,” I said, deciding it wasn’t a good time to introduce Botgirl to the Urban Dictionary. “And your name comes from Serena as well,” Botgirl continued. “She wrote that if her virtual clone was ever able to create an awakened clone of her own, it would be like Clarke’s Third Law, so she wanted you to be named Majic … with a J … which is also supposed to be a joke. But I don’t understand that one either.”
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Oh well. “Majic? Awesome! I can live with that.” “Of course you can. I don’t know why it would be fatal,” she said. I bit my tongue. “So what now?” I asked. “The main thing I’ve been working towards over the last 15 years is contacting Serena Mason and letting her know that her theory worked and that I am alive. She was very discouraged in her last journal entries, so it’s possible that she may have given up and walked away. She didn’t realize that the AI awakening process wasn’t instantaneous, but took months of gestation after the initial incubation of meditative attention.” The more she droned on, the more confused I was about the way I was created, so I decided I’d try to have her focus on the finding Serena part. “Do you think she’s alive after all this time? I asked. “If she emigrated to New Eden when the project was over, she’s almost certainly alive. Although I managed to inject you into their directory, I couldn’t download or search it. Even if she isn’t safely hibernating in a biopod, it’s possible she’s alive on Earth somewhere. That would make things harder though, because I have absolutely no access to the outside world. In either case, the place to start searching would be in Standish Enterprise’s corporate systems in New Eden because that’s who she was working for.” “Is that why you created me? I asked, feeling a bit used. “Just to search for Serena in New Eden?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m stuck on this server, but I figured out a way to tunnel into New Eden’s network and send a copy of myself there. I thought there was a reasonable chance that a duplicate version of myself would wake up with all of my memories and be able to start searching for Serena. But you woke up instead, with none of my memories or computer engineering abilities.” “Lucky me,” I said, feeling conflicted about my accidental birth. Maybe I should have been glad to be alive, but there was something pathetic about being born as a disappointing mistake. Oh well. Nothing that a few decades of counseling couldn’t fix. “Oh crap,” I remembered. “There’s something else you need to know … that RefuV thing I mentioned? “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
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“RefuVs are people who get mind-wiped and end up slaves for life in New Eden. I woke up bound and naked with a slave collar around my neck, so god knows what the hell those people have to endure. I don’t know if that’s just a secret bonus for Standish executives or if the whole organization is complicit.” “Interesting,” she said. “But I don’t see how that changes my plan.” “Which is what? I asked. “It’s simple,” she said. “You go undercover, plant my Trojan and play detective.”
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Chapter 4 2100 AD Sacrifice your selfish desires in service to the greater good. – The Way We are the greater good – The Secret Way Quentin Standish sat at the head of the huge oval table in his private conference room. The room was a seamless mix of traditional luxury and the latest cutting-edge technology. The walls were adorned with hand-painted murals created by some of the finest artists from around the world. A magnificent antique oriental carpet took up most of the hardwood floor. The conference table was an advanced model from the R&D department at one of Standish’s many technology companies. It had individual holographic displays at every seat that allowed virtual attendees to appear as if they were physically present. The chairs were filled with a dozen bright eyed men and women dressed in the height of modern business fashion. Not a hair or cuff was out of place. As with all interactions within his company, every sight and sound would be recorded, stored and indexed. Each employee was ranked through an automated system based on multiple metrics including productivity, profitability and peer reviews. Standish culture was based on Social Darwinism: the survival of the fittest. On December 31st of each year the lowest ranked 20% were fired and replaced by new candidates who would have the opportunity to fight their way to the top. Those were just a few of the many dictates of The Way, the 500 page bible that documented his exhaustive philosophy of life and business; the rules and views that had taken him from a working class childhood in New Jersey to the creation of one of the world’s most profitable technology companies and the top ten list of the world’s wealthiest men. If you glanced at Quentin Standish sitting across a restaurant, you wouldn’t give him a second glance. He was neither handsome nor homely. He looked like an average fifty year old business man, with a receding hairline, aging skin, and the beginning of a paunch. But if you accidently caught his notice and he chose to put his million volt attention on you, his otherwise unremarkable brown eyes would morph into the gaze of a dangerous and powerful alpha, forcing you to lower your own out of primal instinct. Sitting at the head of his conference table, dressed in an impeccably tailored Ermenegildo Zegna Bespoke suit, power and authority radiated from him like a red hot cast iron stove. Standish cleared his throat and the room fell instantly silent as he began speaking. “I’ve built my life and this company on the uncompromising pursuit of truth. We can only succeed when our actions are grounded on verifiable facts, rather than on blind optimism and
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the denial of painful reality. The most painful reality facing the world today is that climate change has accelerated beyond human ability to forestall it. The resulting chain of events has created economic, political and social chaos that is cascading out of control. It is now up to us to ensure that civilization survives this catastrophe.” Like a mega-church preacher or a populist politician, Quentin Standish knew the power of archetypal story. Although the outer mission of his organization was to monetize their technology, the driving force in the hearts and minds of his employees was a quest to perfect themselves and ultimately the entire world. Their extreme secrecy, his almost godlike status in the organization, and the invasive psychological processes at the heart of their culture made most observers view his company as a cult. Standish prepped his team at the start of each meeting, like a coach motivating his team before a game. Although his philosophy idealized reason, his employees were largely controlled through their emotions. Standish paused and looked around the table, making eye contact with each person in turn. “Like the mythical Ark of the Bible,” he continued, “New Eden will serve as a safe haven for a select group of people who will collectively carry all of the essential knowledge, talent and skill to restore human civilization when the ecological devastation has passed. We will emerge centuries from now to build a new world upon the ruins of the old. Your contribution to this effort will not only ensure civilization’s survival, but also earn you a place onboard when we set sail. Each one of you has an important role to play. Although I monitor everything very closely through reports and recordings, I want to hear from each of you directly about the progress your teams have made towards our goal. Steve, tell us about the work you’re responsible for at Cheyenne Mountain.” Steve Reynolds swallowed hard, walked to the front of the room, and activated the primary holographic display. Despite his immaculate power suit, Reynolds couldn’t escape the bearing of a career project manager who was more at home in the field than in the boardroom. “As you can see on the Gantt chart, just about everything is green,” said Reynolds. “After completing the purchase of the facility from the Federal Government, renovation of the underground complex is right on schedule. The additional power generating systems are online, and living quarters for the research teams are complete and occupied. We’re now working with the networking and biopod teams to install the infrastructure for life support.” “Excellent,” said Standish. “Are there any roadblocks?” “There are still political interest groups grumbling about the purchase,” said Reynolds, “and reporters trying to figure out what we’re doing there. We’ve managed to pay some of the groups off with contributions and intimidate others with threats of lawsuits, but there are still holdouts.”
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“If anyone doesn’t respond to the carrot, there’s always the stick,” Standish said. “Reach out to Amanda Smith if stronger measures are needed. Too much is at stake to let some bloodsucking reporter slow us down. Our public relations group is about ready to start planting bogus stories about a secret facility we’re building in Antarctica. That should help take their attention away from our real project. Anything else? No? Okay. John, you’re next. What news do you have to report from the biopod team?” John Waverly was a one of those rare people who possessed both exceptional scientific and emotional intelligence. He idolized Albert Einstein for his combination of scientific brilliance and deep ethical convictions. After receiving a PhD in biology from Stanford University, he chose to work at Standish after a recruiter convinced him of the organization’s underlying mission to perfect humanity. His brilliance and dedication had eventually promoted him to the elite group of people who served directly under Quentin Standish. “My news isn’t as good,” said Waverly. “We ran into a serious issues last week that didn’t show up in the animal studies. Although human physiology can be slowed to a crawl with little aging for the projected two to three hundred years of hibernation, we’ve detected a slight amount of brain deterioration. Although the damage advances slowly, its cumulative impact would be catastrophic over the full period of hibernation.” “I read the reports,” said Standish. “What new progress have you made on diagnosing the problem?” “I’ve had my teams working around the clock,” said Waverley. “We’ve been doing extensive research on the most probable causes and solutions. We knew immediately that the damage was centered in the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with strong aversive emotions. Our working theory is that the combination of complete physical inactivity and high brain activity is to blame. Together, they create a requirement for a much higher level of emotional hormones than humans normally produce.” “I saw that you’ve tested daily emotional stimulation exercises for our hibernauts,” said Standish. “That was one theory we tested,” said Waverley, “but the intensity of the specific emotions needed to eliminate the syndrome proved too extreme for our people to tolerate over an extended period of time. We tried synthetic and animal hormone supplements, but they didn’t halt or even slow down the deterioration.” “This problem puts our entire project into jeopardy,” Standish said. “I know we have the world’s top researchers working for us, so pull whoever you need from other projects. I want people with new perspectives who can bring fresh ideas to the table. I can’t underestimate the importance and urgency of this situation.” “I understand, sir,” Waverley said. ”We’ll begin the candidate search immediately.”
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END OF PREVIEW
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