Chapter 2: "Artificial DNA and the Syndicate"

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Back in Azimuth, John signed for and approved Tetsuo’s renderings, and uploaded Valerie’s improved hyper-realized versions into the Bio Team’s server.

Looking at Tetsuo’s work, John envied Tetsuo, that he was able to indulge his artistic side. For John, he was just far too busy to do that sort of thing anymore. In any case, indulging in his music was over for him. It would hurt too much to do that again as he would just remember his mom. His companies and his coworkers were more than enough to make up for that missing part of himself, but sometimes, when he met people like Tetsuo, there would be a little pang of something missing.

For a while now, he had been trying his hand at cooking. In a way, this allowed him to express a little creativity, and when Minnie flew home on the weekends to be able to spend time with Johnny, she would try out some of his culinary experiments. They weren’t even palatable at the beginning, but he had slowly improved over time to the point that he had become a spectacular country cook, with a lot of potential to grow better.

- - - - -

Back in the present, John fired off an internal e-mail to Edith MacAllister, the team leader of his Bio Team, cc’d it to the rest, as well as to Telly, instructing the team to start with the creation of the new genetic template. If this works, he thought, it could secure the company’s future for the next, what? Couple of hundred years? Not that the family business needed any more money. But he could just imagine how good his mom would feel if she knew how well he’s doing so far. And he imagined the potential of their new technology, of how it could benefit humanity.

He missed his birth-mom, Valerie, terribly, even after all these years. And it was during these times that he’d want to see Minnie, his other mom. It’s terrible to be a mama’s boy, he said to himself with a small self-deprecating chuckle. Over-dependence on one’s parents during one’s formative years can really screw up one's adult life. He smiled, imagining in his mind’s eye Valerie’s smile, and Minnie’s. But Minnie was in Australia, in the Naithsmith Corporation’s global HQ, keeping their various corporate holdings ticking over like fine Swiss watches. Australia’s tax rates was one of the highest in the world, but they had lots of property there, and the standard of living was pretty high making it the ideal location to construct their global HQ.

Besides, when the government heard that Australia was in the running, especially Tasmania's state government, they bent over backwards to make Tasmania more attractive, tax-wise and infrastructure-wise (they didn't really make any kinds of special accommodations, really, but they explained certain particular circumstances where Naithsmith Corp. would be able to avail of specific tax breaks and other incentives.

After doing an exhaustive analysis, John and Minnie concluded that it would actually be quite... advantageous to the conglomerate to lay down their roots in Tasmania.

- - - - -

Her visits had recently become less frequent because, well, John had just recently acquired a little sister, and Minnie didn't want to leave her alone too much.

A picker, his wife and fifteen-year-old daughter, and several of his co-workers and their families from one of the corporate-owned vineyards in a town in New South Wales called Mudgee was riding towards a private landing strip for a trip to Hobart. There was a little party being thrown for them at the corporate HQ because John's little gamble with this small, unheard-of family vineyard paid off. With the company's assistance, they improved the quality of their already affable table wine, upped their production, increased their visibility and distribution, and, seven years later, their latest vintage became the toast of the entire wine-drinking world and swept all the major international awards for that year.

But on their trip towards Tasmania, the little, thirty-seater turboprop developed engine trouble and crashed near a remote backwater Australian town. Several of the passengers were hurt and a few were severely injured. Thankfully, rescue was alerted ahead of time while the plane was still in the air, and was at the scene in minutes. But the picker and his wife had died instantly, and their daughter was badly burned. Naismith Corp. did all it could for the passengers, but despite the best that medicine had to offer, the girl fell into a coma, and would die if certain critical life decisions weren't made and certain very invasive and expensive procedures were authorized. In fact the medical people were saying to... discontinue support.

So Minnie had her people look for relatives but, despite everything they did, they couldn't find any close relatives, and the distant ones didn't want to take responsibity. So in true Naismith family fashion, Minnie, with John's full concurrence, went through the process of adopting the girl so she could make these decisions for her.

Their arguments for adoption were thin - they knew the family because John worked closely with the vineyard workers and their families because the vineyard was a new acquisition of Naismith Corp., and they were working to improve production. But that was the extent of it.

Still, Minnie and John were Naismiths, and they proceeded with adoption.

- - - - -

The Selkirks were known in Mudgee as standoffish, though friendly and pleasant, loners - something which wasn't unknown in rural towns like Mudgee. No one really knew them.

The town was relieved that the Naismiths were taking responsibility of poor Willa Selkirk, so that none of them therefore needed to find excuses for not being the ones to take responsibility, and aided and abetted the Naismith’s petition, agreeing with everything the Naismiths said. John and Minnie weren't exactly lying about the extent of their knowledge and friendship with the family - it was more exaggeration. But with the town's support, their petition was approved in record time and without contest. Otherwise, Willa wouldn't have had a chance.

So, in a way, John now had a sister.

Young Willa was brought to the Naismith's place in Hobart where Minnie had converted the largest room in their mansion into a virtual medical suite, where the Naismiths took care of her and waited for her to wake up.

In the end, the girl's condition was stabilized and it became a waiting game, waiting for her to come out of her coma, if ever. Plastic and reconstructive surgery was also performed on her second and third-degree burns, but only to the extent of what was necessary for her survival, as advised by her doctors: any further operations required her to be awake since her cooperation would have been necessary.

But there was no indication of her ever coming out of it. So besides the range-and-motion therapy that the physiotherapist did on her, the poor girl didn’t move at all. At least autonomic reflexes like breathing were still working otherwise they would need to resort to a ventilator. All the specialists said there was very little chance of her coming out of it but Minnie refused to give up hope, and Willa would linger for five more years.

- - - - -

Telly was soon back, and stood in front of his desk. She cleared her throat, and when that didn’t work, rapped on his desk with her knuckles.

Johnny looked up, irritated by the interruption, but when he realized it was her, he smiled broadly.

“‘Sup?”

“I got her to chew up the graphic file, and she’ll start churning out the code in just a little bit.”

“‘Her’? ‘Her,’ who?”

“You know who. Valerie.”

“Valerie?”

She sighed. Here we go again, she thought. “Valerie: Voice-Activated Language Recognition Engine. V.A.L.R.E. You Know? Valerie?”

“Oh! That Valerie!”

She sighed again. “Listen, Johnny. I know how proud you are of your creation. But…”

“She’s great, isn’t she?”

She huffed exasperatedly. “Yes, yes, she is! But this has got to end. Enough already. Okay?”

He made a patting, conciliatory gesture. “Okay, Okay. Simmer down. So. What did Valerie say?”

“She said that it’ll take about two hours for her bio-modeling program to finish generating the parameters that she generated from your graphic into a matching gene sequence.”

“Two hours. Is that all?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Call me when she’s done, okay?” He turned back to his screen.

She looked at him and shook her head in fond exasperation. “Okay, but you know you can find out a lot faster if you ask Valerie yourself. I’ll be at my desk if you need me.”

He was already in a world of his own. “Kay…”

He barely heard the door shut as he queued up the Valerie interface. Since she was still in the prototype stage, he didn’t allow more than ten users simultaneous access yet. He saw no one using the program, so he opened her interface.

He saw his microphone light come on and wondered if her program was running already. “Hello?"

“Hello Johnny. How are you today?” The voice was incredibly lifelike and, to anyone who knew her, she sounded exactly like John’s mother, Valerie.

John smiled. “Hello, Valerie? I’m fine. Thank you for asking. How are you feeling today?”

“I feel fine. How could I feel otherwise?”

“How, indeed? Give me an update on all outstanding projects, please.” And Valerie proceeded to give him succinct but complete reports on each of the projects that he had put in his priority list. Just added to the list was the new gene sequencing project for the Bio Team.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, can you email Bob Iger? Can you ask him to arrange for Tetsuo to have an interview with the Pixar people? And send him Tetsuo's resume? He owes me several favors so I'm sure he'll do it."

"Tetsuo is the anime artist that we hired for the...?"

"Who else?"

"Of course. I was just confirming. My apologies. You programmed me to be thorough."

"Of course, " John laughed.

"Done - the email has been sent, and I used your emailbox."

"That's good. Thank you."

"Why did you not hire him instead? AI's animation section is short of people."

"I would have if he wanted it," he said. "But he wants to work for Pixar, not here. Just humor me, okay?"

"You are the boss," Valerie said with a tone that sounded a little like long-suffering patience.

John smiled at that, and gave the AI a razzberry.

- - - - -

Valerie’s “user interface” was quite an advance over other similar systems. It was made up of several major components. On the hardware side, on the face of it, was fairly straightforward: A good speaker system, a good directional microphone, and several high-speed supercomputers. The software, though, was something else - specially coded by John’s programmers, with a big chunk of the code being programmed by John himself.

There were three major components to the brains of Valerie’s interface. The first module was by far the easiest to program - the sound generation system, which translates Valerie’s responses to an analogue signal fed into the speakers, was practically off-the-shelf. When deciding on the physical voice, John provided a set of old video recordings and interview tapes of his mother when CNN interviewed her for one of their programs years and years ago. His staff broke down her voice into their individual phonetic components. The team also replicated her intonations and speech patterns. It was an inspired choice - the femininely-low and husky voice coupled with the slight English accent lent the electronic Valerie an air of sophistication and formality that suited their needs, not to mention the aura of sensuality and sexiness that the real flesh-and-blood Valerie also exuded, which grabbed the attention of the listener right off the bat.

The second component was the voice interpretation software that allowed Valerie to understand English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Chinese (although, among all the Chinese dialects, she could only understand Mandarin with any predictable level of reliability. They were still working on her Cantonese). It was here that John’s special skills with languages were put to good use. Breaking down a person’s words appropriately, and trying to understand what she meant was a skill that most people took for granted, but difficult to replicate artificially. But, by understanding the meaning of the individual words, the language structure to understand what the words strung along in a sentence meant, and, by being able to recognize cues from the intonation, the loudness, the cadence of the sentences themselves, made Valerie exceptionally astute in knowing the context of whole conversations as well. This recognition and interpretation program required more computational power, memory and storage space than usual computer systems, but Valerie had enough to contain the various language dictionaries and tables required, as well as couple of people constantly coding new referents, slang terms and phrases for each language.

And her AI operating system, which was John's own proprietary code that took all the current technology from IBM, MIT and all the leading AI innovators, integrated them and actually made them work, was a necessary adjunct in order to make it possible.

The result was that Valerie's conversational skills became very fluent and natural very rapidly.

The storage for the enormous amount of information necessary to make her possible was easily accommodated – Valerie was outfitted with extremely large, regular commercially-available storage systems from various companies like EMC, Hitachi and IBM. However, the processing power needed to make the code run fast enough required the processing power that could only be provided by top-of-the-line “massively parallel” supercomputers. But since the sale of supercomputers was heavily restricted by the government, John and his people had to make their own. The result was that Valerie’s computers, commercial UNIX-based IBM computers, were retrofitted to a great extent, whose insides now resembled the old Crays of the eighties and nineties rather than their original IBM pedigree - the old Crays were “hardwired,” as opposed to today’s systems which relied more on off-the-shelf components. Valerie’s brains were “hardwired” as well. In any case, what was inside the relatively small twenty-foot by twenty by fifty room - where they kept Valerie’s customized computers - now represented the fastest and most advanced parallel-processing combined-computer on the planet, and could outperform any other supercomputer currently available by at least a factor of a thousand.

The third component, which John programmed himself (since none of his current people could get a handle on it), was a program that allowed Valerie a way of understanding what people were saying to her, or what they want from her, with a high degree of accuracy, going beyond a literal interpretation of the spoken sentences. It was as if Valerie could understand context. Some of the most advanced recognition systems of the day could already translate spoken sentences, but people had to use a specific form and syntax in order to be understood by such systems. Using the concept of “frames” that AI theoreticians originally put forth in the sixties and seventies, Valerie could put into the proper frame of reference any conversation that she had, and converse with any woman or man off the street, understand what was being said to her and, in turn, be understood. With the addition of a camera several months back, John had another input to Valerie, making Valerie’s skills much better. Using the same algorithms from her AI program, Valerie could now correlate voice with body language, intonation and facial expressions as well.

Most recently, John’s computer people had modified the facilities of the compound to be directly interfaced to Valerie, but with John, the Bio Team, and a few other select people the only ones with access to her. That means, with her ability to understand people, she could now carry out instructions more rapidly for them than ever before, and directly run the company’s systems and equipment for them.

For those who had the privilege of using her, everyone was incredibly impressed. But after six months or so of constant use, even that novelty became run-of-the-mill. Except for John, of course - the closest Valerie had to a father.

And, like any proud parent, he reveled in his electronic offspring's accomplishments.

"Valerie?" he asked, going back to the new project, "would you match up the team survey data to the new graphic, and determine if the graphic matches the physical parameters in the survey?"

The aforementioned survey was conducted by one of the foremost polling and survey companies in the UK, but the service was done in the US. The effect of this was that the survey was out of the media spotlight, as intended, and because UK companies were known to be very thorough, and went the extra mile when conducting interviews, the resulting survey was very thorough, indeed.

The company higher-ups was told Azimuth was attempting to improve the efficiency of its executives to effectively run and lead AI. The survey centered around a different approach - to prioritize people's physicality and not their behavior or personality. The rationale being psychological and psychosocial data was open to interpretation. By looking mostly at physical features and characteristics, it was hoped that the data would yield more objective conclusions.

It revolved around three main questions: based on how they looked - who did people trust the most, who did they listen to and would follow, and who did they find most attractive (since attractiveness gave so many advantages when relating to others). The data gleaned was most useful for this purpose, but it was also useful to Edith and her team.

Anyway, the results of the extremely thorough survey were quite predictable. Especially to the male members of the team. The ones who had problems believing some of the results were the women.

"Tits and ass," Jazz had muttered at the time when the survey’s results were seen. "How typical." This was greeted by razzberries from Glenn. After all, it was a survey so Jazz couldn’t really accuse anyone from the staff for skewing the results in any way.
Anyway, the survey concentrated on physical traits since that was a big chunk of what the team was after, and according to the survey, generally speaking, those that people trusted the most and paid attention to the most were people who were good-looking, had a good head of hair, were physically strong and weren't overweight or too underweight.

As anyone would say, these survey results seemed obvious and, and if this was all the survey got, then the survey was probably unnecessary. But, to come to these conclusions, the survey people had gathered a lot of information.

Among the information that was unearthed was that people liked those who were good in sports or in music, who kept their appearance clean and neat, dressed well, got along with others, were uninhibited in certain things but shy in certain others, spoke well and whose speech was easily understood. The survey company accumulated a lot of this type of data, but didn’t include all of it in their report, since they weren't part of the information asked for. But Dr. McAllister asked for it anyway, and they provided a complete secondary report.

But the Bio Team was actually looking for parametric data for their New Human. Of course, they didn’t want that known so they obfuscated and dissembled, not being up front with the survey people about what they really wanted. It was their way of keeping their project under wraps.

Out of the blue, Valerie, asked to see the survey details. Johnny was pleasantly surprised – this indicated that Valerie was initiating a "line of thought” that was totally independent. In any case, John didn’t see any reason not to, so he uploaded a copy of the survey for her.

The survey was thorough enough that it did come up with very specific physical information. For example, in males, people found tall, muscular (but not overly so) men, who had a semi-deep voice the most influential. In females, people preferred sexy and busty women with sultry, husky voices. But this was not specific enough for the purposes of the Bio Team.

John had Valerie churn the survey over and over, and, in a short time, she was able to generate very specific empirical parameters - things like exact heights, weights, body ratios and measurements, eye color, hair color, skin tone, even details to the most ridiculously-specific information – like the age (plus or minus three months), the length of fingers and fingernails, length of hair, exact shade and hair texture, freckle patterns, voice tones, vocal decibel ranges, voice patterns, and even the person's scent. The survey even came out with what people found as the most attractive accents (which happened to be British English - specifically "RP," "heightened RP", French and Australian - John was a little surprised by that last one).

The problem was, the data ranges were very wide, and would also change a lot depending on things like the ethnicity of the people surveyed, the location, and even the time of the day. The parameter combinations were almost infinite. No single computer model could be created that could represent the "ideal." But what Valerie could do was identify if a set of criteria fell into the ideal range for a certain demographic. It was the whole point of getting Tetsuo from Pioneer – for him to do a drawing of the “ideal” human (in this case, a human girl) and thereby establish a way of constraining this wide range of parameters and put the appropriate bias to these numbers. And then Valerie would further constrain these parameters appropriately, depending on other parameters that are not covered in the survey data. Unbeknownst to anyone, Valerie did some research on her own and dug out additional data – demographic data that the advertising agencies in many English-speaking countries used for their various ad campains, as dictated by their campaign needs, to constrain the baseline further.

Prior to this, Valerie's rendering routine fine-tuned Tetsuo's graphic to a near-real life image that fit the required ranges, and the result was what looked like the full-body portrait of a real person that Tetsuo saw (and eventually forgot).

Physically, they now had the perfect model for East Coast Americans, Londoners and, in an odd coincidence, Australians (and it was not that far off from the ideal for the rest of America and most of other western countries). But for things that weren't strictly a physical parameter, i.e. something to do with behavior, personality, psychological characteristics, or something of that nature that was also revealed by the survey, that was something that couldn’t be conveyed in Tetsuo’s image. Valerie could still use them – she had the survey data, after all. But she didn't say anything to the Bio Team on how she would use them (they didn’t ask, after all).

- - - - -

Johnny sat in the big conference room and waited for the others to file in.

“Hello, sir,” one of the younger scientists coming in greeted him shyly, and ducked her head. The shy eighteen-year-old Scottish-Irish genius always brought a smile to his face. The youngest of his people, Dierdre, was a certified genius, had a PhD in several fields, did five crossword and Sudoku puzzles at a time, owned a little yellow Japanese Kei-class mini-SUV that suited her petite five-foot one-inch form, always wore her blonde hair in a neat ponytail, and liked to watch Nickelodeon. All these things would have made her easy to remember. But what people noticed about her first, and remembered her best for, was her very cute Irish accent. That, and her very prominent breasts…

Learning that she was also gay had disappointed John as well as all the heterosexual men in the office. Of course, he had no intention of acting on the attraction he felt for her, but he was a little sad to know that he didn’t even have a chance. But that was okay. He’d settle for being her friend instead.

Johnny smiled and nodded pleasantly. “Hello, dear,” he said. Dierdre giggled. For some reason, Johnny had a lot of trouble pronouncing “Deirdre”, so he just called her Miss O’Connel, or “Dear” (the closest he could come to Dierdre). And this was always greeted with a giggle.

The others came in and found seats around the large conference table. Telly came in last.

“Everyone in the Bio Team that could be spared is here," she said. "We’re missing Paolo, Dexter, Lizzie and Rosie. They’re finishing up an experiment, and they’ll be along in a few.”

“Can’t be helped I guess,” Johnny said. “Let's give them a few more minutes. But everyone else is here?”

“Yes, sir,” Edith said. At fifty-five, Edith was by far the oldest in the team, and acted as the Team Leader. With more than a thousand patented gene sequences to her name, she was the most advanced genetics specialist in the world, and besides, the photo-voltaic gene-sequencing system that they were trying to make was her idea and design.

- - - - -

Established science had said that the essential theory behind Edith’s device was basically flawed, and it had been junked by the universities and labs she had worked on it with. She did have a lot of supporters remaining in the new field of Synthetic Biology, however, and largely with their lobbying, she was able to progress her experiments from theoretical to a prototype device (albeit a still-non-working one). Also, because of this, she was able to convince Johnny that her theory was not a flawed theory, and could be the key to solving some of Humanity's biggest problems.

Johnny, being who he was, decided to fund the project because of its potential benefits for the world.

The project to create a working "photo-voltaic gene-sequencing device" prototype was originally called the Pea Project. The name of the project was, as usual, thought up by Johnny. It was in honor of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

Mendel’s experiments were done with pea plants, and the name of the device Edith and her people were trying to make began with the letter "P," hence the "Pea Project," or later on, "Project P." But it didn't sound good after all so John thought to call it the "Proteus Project," after the ever-mutable Greek god of rivers and oceans. And everyone went along with that. It was a round-about way of naming the project, but everyone liked it.

- - - - -

Glen, Waldo and Jazz (short for Jasmine) sat together as usual. Along with Johnny, they were responsible for designing Valerie’s computers. And they rarely cracked a smile. Still, they were highly-valued members of the project since they were the ones in charge of creating the physical device.

They looked at Arnold, the biochemist that sat next to them, with less than enthusiastic expressions.

“Feet off the table, Arnold,” Johnny said in a mild voice.

“Righto, boss,” he said, and promptly lifted his feet off. Kimiko, another biochemist, smirked, and Arnold glared at her.

Arnold, a smartmouthed street-smart Cockney was their senior biochemist. He usually put his Nike-clad feet up on the table’s polished mahogany surface during meetings just to irritate the hardware kids.

It was his, Kimiko's and Edith's responsibility to create what they called the biological "matrix" - the material upon which their device will work on to create their "product."
The "product" they were hoping for was no less than a totally synthetic replacement body for humans.

This had nothing to do with cloning. By that time, cloning was old hat, and, after a fashion, it was already in current use, and it had been responsible for helping so many people enormously, essentially helping to develop gene therapies and provide human "spare parts." But so far, cloning entire bodies remained undone. The politics of cloning precluded it.

It was also not about recombinant biology, where "customized" biological... stuff was made - a field of biological science that was responsible for creating better plants for food, inventing cures for diseases, and so many other things that allowed the world to maintain its current population. But the full effects these had to humans, the food chain and so many other things were still unknown, making them problematic as well.

True, both technologies had their detractors, and, true, they had the potential to be used for things which had less than ethical purposes, and had the potential for so much danger, but that's a discussion for another time.

No, the Proteus Project was all about creating substitute bodies from scratch, without using any existing biological material, and to actually transfer the consciousness of a person into such a body. The point of that was that the person's new body could be designed to be anything, and would be all-purpose - designed according to any specifications they wanted, allowing the new entity to do things that were literally not imagined yet. Extended life, for example, or resistance to all known diseases, or enhanced strength, or breathing underwater, or surviving without food for a long time in environments thought of as hostile and unsurvivable. The body could even be designed not to be humanoid at all. It could herald a quantum leap in human evolution - the creation of the homo futurae.

The idea hinged on the matrix. Originally designed to be organic nanobots meant to search out and destroy harmful viruses, these nanobots invented by Edith were repurposed to become the "aggregate," or the matrix, used as the base for the "universal" body, since they could be made to function and behave in any manner depending on their programming. After being redesigned and reformulated, It was now more like an organic protein matrix designed to grow according to a code that was fed into them via electricity, lasers and ultraviolet lights coming from the "P Device." (The unfortunate name still made the team snicker.)

At the beginning of the project, Edith was able to grow artificial organs using the cells and DNA from the original organ as the pattern. It wasn't cloning since her matrix didn't grow from the original cells themselves. In fact they didn't use DNA at all except as the basis of their code. This meant that Edith was able to create synthetic organs based on the originals. It was like making a meat-free hamburger patty using a real burger as the pattern, thereby making sure that the meat-free burger looked, felt, smelled and tasted like a real burger.

The beauty of these artificial organs was that they could be used as replacements without any danger of cell rejection or organ incompatibility, and could, in theory, be enhanced to function better than the original.

Edith, as well as everyone else, didn't have the technology yet to do better than nature. But what Edith did have was the ability to copy nature – her artificial organs used the “blueprint” of genetics and DNA and RNA, aping what nature had perfected though millions and millions of years of evolution. She was able to do that by borrowing heavily from the work of the worldwide Human Genome Project. Her artificial body parts with their own version of DNA-RNA used other nucleobases other than Guanine, Thymine, Cytosine, Adenine and Uracil, but they worked so well that they aped what nature does exactly, and, though her matrix did indeed grow on their own after a fashion, she was able to code a large quantity of her matrix to grow into fully-functional organ replacements and even whole bodies in as short a period as a few hours instead of having to wait for it to grow naturally in the same time as the original did.

Before the end of the first year of Project P (as it was still known then), she was able to grow a complete imitation adult human body in less than six hours - a feat that she and John had kept secret, given that the ethics of the thing was not exactly clear-cut yet.

It was difficult, of course, as she had to use massive, jury-rigged equipment that wasn't too reliable, and had to personally hold the thing together, both she and John staying in the labs literally holding fire extinguishers just in case.

In the end, Edith was successful in creating her artificial people.

She and John had agonized over that. The question of whether they had created actual people weighed heavily on their minds. Not that they worried about the god-related philosophical questions of creating life, although that caused them many sleepless nights as well, but it was more because they had decided to "kill" the artificial bodies afterwards.

But after two more full-body "builds," Edith told John that she had accumulated enough of the data they needed that she didn't need to create any more "fake humans." This relieved John enormously, and the two of them could just create virtual artificial people in a computer simulation instead.

What Edith didn't tell John was that she actually had to go through the creation of several dozen fakes to accumulate the information she needed to program the simulator. This fact weighed heavily on her heart because she felt she was putting people to death. These were "created" people, she constantly told herself, not real people, and her work was important to the world – it needed to be completed. But when she saw her artificial people's faces after their “deaths,” she started doubting it.

She had taken a month off after she had finished her simulation software, and told John she just needed time off to recharge, but actually, she had gone and had several sessions with her old college roommate, who was now a very successful psychiatrist. It was to get help to get over her feelings of guilt for “murdering” her creations.

In the second year of their project, with her team's help, she finalized the design of her device. They had to make a change, though - Edith had to use a different kind of coding in order to have full control of the process. So any "product" she would create would not be DNA-sourced at all anymore. Besides, by that time she didn’t need it to be.

She had also started finalizing the software which would essentially write the "programming sequence” that would "grow" their protein matrix the way they wanted it. By the end of the year, with the help of Johnny's people, her new software would be able to completely control the "P Device" and allow it to emit the appropriate electromagnetic signals needed to affect their protein “matrix” base in the appropriate way.

By the end of the project's third year, her device was ready to start producing a new-human equivalent of a real live being based on that person's DNA. Well, theoretically, at least. She hadn't done a real live one yet – just simulations.

She then started exploring the coding needed for an artificial body that would be able to accept a person's consciousness into itself so that the person would essentially reside in the newly-created body. But she seemed to have hit a brick wall.

So she decided to table the question for now, and decided, temporarily, to concentrate on the question of being able to make human and new-human organs coexist, with the idea of pushing forward the goal of creating cheap and safe substitute organs.

Purely by accident, however, in one of her experiments using rat brain cells, she stumbled on the basis for new code that would force the new-human cells to, in essence, absorb the brain matter introduced into them.

A little piece of a rat brain she had just pureed in a commercial Osteriser (something lots of lab people used) fell into a new batch of matrix she was designing to replicate a human brain. The new "product" that came out was completely new-human with her new-human coding and form, but the new-human brain cells exhibited the same electro-chemical properties as the cells it had absorbed while the organic material had been broken down, metabolized and used to power the reaction.

It was the key to transferring a human's consciousness into a new-human body, she thought. With the help of Valerie, she investigated further and she eventually confirmed her hunch, and proceeded to isolate the effect. Now, she was confident it would work. The thing was, it would necessitate physically taking a person's brain - as intact as possible and still alive - and physically putting it in the "blank's" cranium-to-be, letting it literally be "absorbed" by the synthetic body. In doing so, the physical substance of the brain would be broken down but its neural patterns - the result of a lifetime of experiences, of accumulated knowledge and the embodiment of the essential substance of the person - would be absorbed. The blank would then come out as what Edith's design meant it to be, but it would not be soul-less like the other full-body creations she had grown before: a consciousness would now reside in the new-human body, in fact the consciousness of the person who owned that brain, and not a copy.

Needless to say, it was a one-way process, and any mistake or miscalculation would result in a slow de-association of the neural pattern - in essence, death.

She had eventually accepted that she would have to perform the process on herself first. She wasn't willing to risk anyone else's life, so she knew that she would have to be the guinea pig.

And knowing that, she had therefore instigated the survey. Sure, the reasons she used to justify it were reasonable – to have a “catalog” of “perfect” new-human body blueprints - but the real reason she wanted the survey was that, If she had to be in a new body, she'd want it to be the perfect one.

- - - - -

Using the data that came from the world-wide collaborative human DNA mapping project also known as the “Human Genome Project,” as well as other DNA-related projects and experiments, Edith was able to create a "predictive algorithm" that she and John installed inside Valerie.

Based on a characteristic Edith would ask Valerie’s predictive algorithm program, Valerie could answer with the DNA pattern that would exhibit the characteristic she entered. This opened up the possibility for her to actually dictate the full characteristics of the new entity she wanted to create.

These “tweaks,” however, were theoretical since human or mammalian genetics could not accept the changes - these changes would initiate a cascade of mutations that would make the new creature non-viable, or create a rapidly-spreading cancer or some other catastrophic cellular disease in an existing creature.

But then again, she wasn’t working with DNA. DNA was just the pattern that they worked from. Their code allowed the tweaking that their photovoltaic system made possible - the nanites that made up their matrix was originally programmed using varying lightwave frequencies instead of chemical cues, which allowed their system to initiate changes so rapidly and precisely, the matrix had no chance to produce imperfect or intermediate cells that gave rise to unwanted mutations as it would in a natural DNA-based creature, whose changes were based on chemical cues.

The upshot of it all was, instead of having to use chemical triggers that were very imprecise, and having to laboriously correct the hundreds of thousands of coding mistakes this impreciseness would give rise to, with their system’s precision coupled with Valerie’s human genome data, they could now, for example, just tell Valerie to give the new-human red hair, and Valerie will tweak the code so that the resulting artificial human would have red hair. At this point they could specify anything they wanted. For example, they could show a picture of a person to Valerie, and the new-human that would come out would look exactly like that. It was so flexible that, if they played a voice for Valerie, for example, the new-human would have a voice that would sound just like that recording.

With the system’s precision, the details could be as ridiculously specific as height, weight, dimensions down to the millimeter, or even pin the biological age down to the second, whether that person had an allergy to peanuts, whether that person had a large lung capacity - anything at all, even up to the number of freckles and their location on the face - it was that perfect and precise.

Edith, of course, knew how complex the kind of calculations Valerie needed to do in order to give them the ability to create a new-human from such vague specifications, not to mention the calculations necessary for Valerie to interpret what Edith could ask in the first place. Valerie's gigantic memory capacity and unique AI program made it possible. And without those, Edith's dream of a perfect artificial human would just remain a dream.

- - - - -

Johnny’s people proceeded with their meeting, and discussed current projects. But, soon, after they finished discussing everything, they could finally start talking about the Proteus Project.

John got on the keyboard and the monitor on the table came to life. "Arnold," he called out. "Could you plug in the projector?"

"Sure thing," Arnold said, grabbed a cable and plugged the computer into the ancient Barco multimedia projector. Kimiko pulled down the projection screen at the end of the room. It wasn't the most high tech room in the building, but it did have the virtue of being the most secure.

John typed in his password, instructed Valerie to bring up all the Proteus data and turned the computer keyboard over to the others.

Glen, Waldo and Jazz reported that the physical photovoltaic device was ready, and they had finished the program that Valerie needed to fully control the process. They flashed their program, as well as diagrams of the device, on the screen. Johnny asked Telly to start the ball rolling for the fabrication of the prototype device.

Next, Arnold and Kimiko reported that, based on the data provided by Dr. McAllister, they were now able to create a coding sequence without the need for any manual intervention at all. Their system could now accept any DNA code they entered and create the equivalent new-human code automatically. With the intervention of Valerie, of course - she was only computer available to them with the capacities to run their algorithms within a reasonable time.

Kimiko called their code "CAC." And with a CAC code fed into her, Valerie would start their photovoltaic device which would generate the necessary electrical and photo-electrical signals that will "grow" Edith's matrix according to the CAC pattern or code.

"Why CAC?" Johnny asked.

"We're calling our new-human DNA a 'Chemical Analog Code,'" Arnold replied. "So, CAC."

"I like it," Johnny laughed.

Dierdre then reported that she and Telly had completed the program that will allow Valerie to map out the DNA code based on parameters she was given from scratch, regardless of how sketchy they were, and from which Arnold's and Kimiko's program can then replicate into the equivalent CAC code. Dierdre and Telly relied heavily on Edith's predictive algorithm and the data from the Human Genome Mapping Project. They had a lot of problems getting a handle on the requirement in the beginning but got a lot of input from John as it required several improvements in Valerie’s AI routines, so they were successful in the end.

In essence, they had to give Valerie something akin to a point of view, or perhaps a kind of personal preference or even a kind of personal bias that would allow her to select from options available and allow her to pick one she “liked.” There was no danger of affecting her ability to be totally empirical since her “like circuit” would kick in only if she came to a situation where she wasn't given any kind of factual criteria or information to pick from several options.

By then, Valerie had been improved to the point that they can, for example, show her a picture of Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansson and Amber Heard, and give her a vague, imprecise command that they wanted someone that looked like all three, and she would have been able to comply.

They showed the algorithms and code that they incorporated into Valerie’s program and everyone pored through them until Arnold got everyone laughing.

“You know, of course, m’dears,” he said as he studied their code along with the others, “that we’re just pretending that we understand all that chicken scratching.” And with that, they all dissolved into laughter.

“That’s true, actually,” Kimiko said. “But we know you did good, and that it’ll work.”

Dierdre blushed and Telly thanked everyone.

When they were done, Johnny turned to Edith. It was her turn.

Edith shrugged. "What can I say?" she said. "My team is great."

Everyone laughed.

"Seriously, Edith," Johnny said, smiling.

"Except for assembling the final device and running simulation tests, I am pleased to report that we're done, Johnny."

Everyone applauded.

"All right, then. I guess we start with the simulations next?"

“Yes,” she grinned.

- - - - -

Over the next few days, everyone started running their simulations and quickly identified many problems in their individual areas. They started fixing and adjusting, and they reported that they would eventually be ready to do their first “conversion” in a month or so.

As everyone knuckled down to work, the team didn’t notice that Dr. McAllister had contantly started disappearing during the middle of the day. To where, no one knew.

Unconsciously, they just assumed that she was hard at work in her Photovoltaic Lab.

Well, they were halfway correct – Edith was indeed in the Photovoltaic Lab, but she wasn’t really working on bugs in their system, but was mostly tweaking the code template that Valerie had generated from Tetsuo’s drawings.

The first thing that she did was to make a copy of the file, “FEMALE PROTOTYPE-1.” That way, any errors she makes will not damage the file. The file was several petabytes in size, so she could only make one copy to practice on.

Her intent was, since she fully intended to be the guinea pig for the conversion, she wanted to improve things so her new body would be more than just a regular new-human, but a “super” new-human. (She was amazed that no one was curious why they were starting with the female prototype, for which she was grateful for. But if this works, she knew they’d have to replicate all of this work with a male version, using data from the survey they used for the female. But that’s a problem for a later date.)

She put Valerie’s new improvements (care of Dierdre and Telly) to the test and told her the additional changes she wanted. But Valerie had a question – the question Edith had been dreading.

“Dr. McAllister,” Valerie said. “Why are you doing this?”

“Just trying to improve our girl, Val.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons.”

“But why?”

Edith sighed. “Accept override alpha.”

And, with that, Valerie didn’t question her anymore, and did her best to follow Dr. McAllister’s instructions. But she did resolve to tell Johnny and Minnie when Dr. McAllister was done.

First off, Edith McAllister had Valerie tweak the template so the resulting new human would have improved and enhanced abilities, or abilities not currently found in Humans. Valerie, being Valerie, asked the doctor what abilities, and why.

Edith sighed. She sometimes forgot that Valerie wasn't a real person. So she explained what she wanted when she said abilities.

"You know, Valerie, all I want is that our new girl was just better all around. For example, I want her to be able to run faster than any other human, jump higher and farther, be stronger, cope better in any environment or situation. Or…"

"I see. That would, of course, require deviating from the current parameters of our template.”

“I guarantee, Valerie, that the things I want will not be in the template. Think of them as additional constraints.”

“All right.”

The additional changes Edith wanted were based on her own preferences.

For example, she liked wearing heels but couldn’t wear them all day, so she asked Valerie if changes could be made to allow their new girl to be able to. Valerie said that she could do that.

Edith also hated cellulite, wrinkles, and the blemishes that become inevitable with age, and Valerie said that taking them away was possible, too.

Edith also mentioned that she hated chipped nails and cavities in her teeth, and had always wanted to be super-flexible so that she could do the splits (she was a frustrated ballerina).

There were other things that really put Valerie to the test, such as Edith’s desire to be able to sing well, or to be able to paint, or to have a great clothes sense. Valerie said she could make this happen as well by making appropriate changes to the new human’s brain. The new human won't know how to paint, but would have the necessary capacity to learn as well as the necessary motor skills and other qualities to be a great painter, and so forth.

Edith also had other more… unconventional requests but Valerie said she could accommodate them as well.

And it went like that for several days until she was able to finish all her “customizations.” She had Valerie save the new file without touching the original, name the new file "BABE-XXX," and she turned back to her regular work.

- - - - -

Minnie became more visible in the AI offices in the next few weeks. John had told her of the exciting new developments in his pet project and Minnie had decided to fly over from the global main office of the Naismith Corporation in Hobart, Australia and temporarily transferred her office to AI so that she could be near where everything was happening.

John asked after his adopted sister but Minnie shrugged. No change to her condition, she said. But that was how Willa had been ever since she came to live with Minnie at the Hobart mansion, and the doctors said this will not likely change. That was partly why Minnie felt it was okay to leave her for a while. In truth, though, Minnie and John were told that she didn't have long to live anymore. Thoughts of Valerie's death echoed in Minnie's mind everytime she thought of this. John saw the suppressed tears and gave his mother an encouraging hug.

"You never know," he said. “Willa might surprise us.”

Minnie didn’t say but Willa’s condition was deteriorating. Her doctors said she might not make it past six months. Despite everything that they did, nothing helped. Knowing how Johnny felt about his “sister” and the hopes he had for her recovery, Minnie didn’t say anything. Who knows – if John and his Bio Team were able to perfect their technology soon enough, Willa might be able to benefit from it before it was too late.

- - - - -

Most of the AI staff resented the boss’s mother being around to look over everyone’s shoulder and butt in, but it wasn’t like that at all.

Wilhelmina Lloyd was a very astute people person, and knew enough not to buttonhole the staff. So she just smiled and said good morning to everyone and quietly did her work in the spare office beside John’s. She did, however, make a point of having her meals in the building’s large cafeteria, and of having coffee or a snack, or a bit of brunch with the members of the team whenever she could. And within a week, she had endeared herself to John’s people, especially among the men (she was a babe, after all, though a bit mature). And how could anyone be cross at someone named Minnie?

Everything seemed to be going like clockwork, with John quietly going about the business of putting money in AI’s bottom line, keeping such picayune worries away from his people while they worked, and Minnie continued to keep the family conglomerate ticking over like a Swiss watch.

However, a few days later, there was a bit of an undercurrent of something in the office. John and Minnie started to hold closed-door meetings with some of the company’s security people, and, later in the week, people from the FBI paid them a visit. Everyone was getting worried and John sent an email to the staff that said he would be making an announcement in a few days.

On the day before the Bio Team was supposed to try their first conversion, John called a meeting and had everyone assemble in the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was just large enough to accommodate AI’s entire staff, and they all milled around waiting for John.

In a short while, John came in with Minnie. He picked up a wireless microphone, stood on a table and waited patiently for everyone to settle down.

“Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends,” he began, “I’m sure you have been feeling something in the air for some time now, especially after people from the FBI paid us a visit.” Lots of people nodded their heads at that.

“Well, first let me help get rid of all the speculation. No, there’s nothing wrong with AI, nor with the corporation. Believe it or not, my mother isn’t here to do any audit or inspection. She’s just here to pay me a visit. You know how mothers are.” Everyone laughed at that.

He took a deep breath. “The reason the FBI was here was because they wanted to let us know we have been targeted by the Yellow Dragon Syndicate.” Many of the staff gasped.

The Yellow Dragon Syndicate had been a fixture in the news for quite a while now. It was a criminal organization that trafficked in pirated technology. But instead of industrial espionage via hacking target systems and electronically extracting the information they needed, the Syndicate went old-style, and would actually go in and literally physically steal the technology they were after, in broad daylight, as it were, killing whoever got in their way.

It was like a late nineteenth century criminal syndicate, or perhaps like the 1920’s gangsters of old Chicago, in the way it did its business, but many in the intelligence community said that their style was actually a quick and economical way for the Yellow Dragon to do its business of industrial piracy. But it would only work if it didn’t make an effort to hide the results of its activities: Instead of having specialists with special tools, and arranging for certain "circumstances" to allow them to thread their way through all the security precautions and cyber traps that most top corporations implemented nowadays, the Yellow Dragon pirates did it the blatant, very brutal and very straight-to-the-point old-world way. In their last twenty jobs, they had successfully blasted their way into the research facilities of their target companies and blatantly stole what they were after. Many people were killed in these heists. The police and federal officers just couldn’t stop them because their attacks were completely out of the blue and unpredictable, and the firepower that they used were a hundred times more than what the authorities had. And each and every time, despite the authorities beefing up their own forces, the pirates always had more.

The one good thing was that, after studying where and when the pirated technology came out in the market, the CIA and FBI were starting to close in on the Syndicate. They now knew the channels where the Syndicate was getting its information from and what to target, and they knew the channels where it was selling its stolen wares through. And although the authorities couldn’t stop them, at least they now know that no government was behind them or funding them, but at the same time, it seemed that many companies and organizations also now know how to put up notice of what they’d be interested in getting, and how much they’d be willing to pay, and the Syndicate would usually get if for them if the price was right.

The feelers that the CIA had out in the marketplace had come back with information. It seemed that the secret work that AI had been pursuing was what the Syndicate was targeting now. They didn’t really know what it was but they knew that certain entities were extremely interested in it. Who the eventual buyers were was still unknown, however. John had a strong suspicion who it was and where the leak had come from, but he wouldn’t tell the Feds anything. He said he didn’t want to say anything because there was no proof yet and didn’t want to ruin anyone’s reputation, so he allowed them to pursue the investigation for themselves. They, of course, wanted to know what it was about but he remained mum and the authorities decided it was prudent not to push. They’d find out in due time, he said.

“I am sure all of you have heard of one of our research projects,” John said, continuing his briefing. “I’m referring to the Proteus Project that Dr. Edith McAllister is spearheading. It’s a project that we’ve taken on for one of our sister companies. I am not at liberty to discuss what it’s about. But all I can say is that, if it’s successful, the project will benefit the whole of mankind in a major, fundamental way. And because of this, many people are interested in it."

A couple of people came in and stood in the cafeteria entrance. John looked over and the two nodded.

“If you will all turn your attention to the cafeteria’s main doorway,” John said, “you will see two gentlemen from the FBI and CIA. These gentlemen are here to oversee the facility since it is their opinion that an attack from the Yellow Dragon is imminent. Since this is not a terroriust attack, Homeland Security isn't here. Still, the FBI and CIA are more than enough to manage a bunch of pirates.

"Anyone who has any information they think is relevant, please let them know. Now, for everyone else, elements from the police and the military are on their way. I am requesting all of you to go home until further notice. Anyone who is running any routines in the computer should terminate them. Anyone doing anything at their work areas should save their work and lock down their benches. Secure your work areas and leave it for later. We will call when the immediate danger has passed. Okay?”

There were worried and irritated murmurs, but no one really complained.

John clapped his hands. “Okay then, kiddies. Except for the Proteus team, everyone pack your stuff up, go home, and be safe.”

As everyone streamed out of the cafeteria, John stepped down from the table, brought out his phone and dialed a special number. “Valerie?”

Valerie’s mellifluous, synthetic voice answered. “Yes, Jonathan. How may I assist you?”

“Valerie, I have ordered most of the staff to go home. Please make sure to scan them before they leave the premises, and make sure that they don’t bring out any of our proprietary material. But do it subtly and alert the FBI if you do find anyone smuggling out stuff.”

“I have been listening to your briefing, Jonathan. I understand.”

“Also, there will be a lot of armed Federal agents coming in shortly. Our security staff will take care of them, but I want you to scan them as well, and let me know if there’s anything amiss. Okay?”

“I know. I understand,” she repeated.

“Good girl.”

He shut off his phone and put it away. As he was doing so, Edith, Telly and the rest of the Proteus team gathered in front of him and Minnie.

“Guys,” John said. “Someone has let the Yellow Dragon Syndicate know that they are interested in the Proteus Project. Someone may have leaked information, but we’ll try and find out who this person is some other day. For now, what I want you guys to do is to back up all our data into Valerie’s storage, wipe them from our general systems and let’s all meet up here after you’ve done that.”

“John,” Edith said. “What about the protoplasm base! We have two pallets now. If we don’t use them within two, maybe three days, they’re gonna spoil!”

“It’s just two?”

“Yes. They’re not easy to make.”

“Well, stop making any more, and leave those two pallets. If they spoil, they spoil. We can afford it.”

“Each pallet costs like a hundred thousand dollars!”

John held her lightly by the shoulders.

“You and the team are more important. Never mind the money. Now, do as I say - back up all your data, put away and lock up your equipment, and come back here.”

She looked at John rebelliously but eventually backed down.

“Okay,” she said resignedly. She turned to her staff.

“All right, guys, you heard the boss. Go! Go!”

They all scattered back to into the offices. Edith turned back to John, nodded. “See you in a bit, Boss. Have to do some stuff.”

“John nodded. “Go ahead, Edith. See you in a short while.”

She turned on her heel and went back into the building, undoubtedly on her way to the photovoltaic lab.

“You know, Johnny, dear?” Minnie said, and threw a casual arm over his shoulders.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“You have good people, but you work them too hard.”

He stuck his tongue out at her, an expression from his youth that he hadn’t gotten rid of, at least when he was around Minnie.

They went over to the two Federal agents and talked over the security precautions they were putting up.

- - - - -

At the end of the day, the office felt a little bit like a ghost town. Only essential staff were left, as well as various security people from the government and the police.

Johnny had talked with everyone and they confirmed they all had their data backed up. Edith said that she was almost done with her backup, and was currently saving the details for the device as well as all the blueprints, and the code for the software.

“Good work, everyone,” Johnny said. “Now, as soon as you’re all done, the FBI will be taking you all to a safe house, and as soon as the bad guys are caught, everything will go back to normal.”

“How long do you think that’ll take, Boss,” Arnold asked.

Johnny shrugged and turned to one of the agents.

“Agent Humphries?”

The tall FBI agent stepped forward. “You have no reason to worry,” he said. “As soon as we have you in our safe house, we can start going after the Yellow Dragon. We now have enough details about them that we are confident we can take them down.”

“But how long before everything goes back to normal,” Arnold asked again.

“I cannot say, exactly,” Humphries answered. “No more than a month.”

“A month!”

Johnny stepped forward. “Now, now – this is a major operation that needs to be done. We need to cooperate with the authorities in order to prevent them from continuing their terrorist activities. Besides, a month isn’t that long. And it’s a small price to pay to get rid of them, and to keep everyone safe.”

The others grumbled but didn’t complain anymore.

Humphries nodded. “Good. My agents will be here in a few minutes.”

But they didn’t have time to do that.

A loud explosion echoed through the entire building and alarms started blaring.

“What’s that?” one of the other FBI people exclaimed.

“Security breach,” Telly said. “Someone broke through the security fence, probably.”

Humphries nodded. He pulled out a radio and started giving orders.

“Mr. Naismith?” he said to Johnny. “Any place we can retreat to that’s safe?”

“There’s the conference room two doors down the hallway,” he said. “Let’s go.”

But before they could start for the conference room, several FBI personnel barged in, all of them carrying weapons and sidearms.

“Agent Humphries!” the one in the lead yelled. “Move everyone back! They’re here!” His compatriots started grabbing tables and chairs to block the doors.

“Everyone back!” He called and pulled Dierdre to the far wall opposite of the main door of the cafeteria.

Johnny pointed to a door. “Agent, that’s the door to the kitchen. From there you can get to the main hall and then through the underground access tunnels to the loading docks.”

Humphries nodded. “This is Agent Humphries." he said into his radio. "We’re bringing the civilians to the loading area. Have the vehicles stand by.” He gestured to John. “Lead the way.”

John grabbed Telly, and Minnie got Dierdre and Kimiko, and they started leading everyone to the back door.

A powerful explosion rocked the cafeteria, and the barricaded doors were torn from their hinges. The tables and chairs piled against them flew away, leaving an opening for the invaders to come through.

Humphries waved them on. “Go! Go! We’ll hold them off!”

John suited words to action, and continued on.

More than a dozen armed intruders came through the shattered remains of the doors and started firing their high-powered weapons.

The FBI retaliated but they were outgunned. Though they did their best to cover their retreat, the enemy got everyone except for John, Minnie, Dierdre, Telly and two of Humphries’ agents. Unnoticed, they got to the access tunnels that led to the underground parking area and loading dock, but it was difficult because there were several stretches of the tunnel that were in darkness.

“Come on!” Johnny yelled and gestured them through one of the bends. When all of them had passed, he opened an access panel and fiddled around with the controls. A metal grill slid down and effectively blocked the path behind them. He also tripped several other controls and several other grills throughout the tunnels behind them slid down.

“They’re fire baffles,” he explained to the agents. “They’re designed to reduce the spread of fire through the tunnels, but they’re also good for making it more difficult for bad guys to follow us.” He smiled wanly at this feeble joke.

“Good job, Doc,” one of the agents said. “Let’s go.”

As soon as they got to the basement parking area, one of the agents brought out a radio, and a SWAT van pulled up to them in a minute.

“Everyone get in!” one of the agents in the van said, and they all piled in except for Johnny.

“Mr. Naismith!” one of the agents called. “Come on!”

“I’m going to go back.”

“Go back!”

“My friends are still there…”

“I’m sorry to say, Doc, but they’ve probably been killed already.”

“You’re right, Agent, but I have to be sure.” He turned to Minnie. “I’m sorry, Mom. I have to do this.” He leaned over and gave her a kiss.

Waving to Telly and Dierdre, he pulled the van’s door closed and ran back.

The people in the van couldn’t do much because the driver pulled forward as soon as the door was closed, and drove for the exit.

- - - - -

Johnny didn’t want to go back through the blocked access tunnels and decided to go through the overhead vents. He found one near the tunnel entrance, used a pipe he found to knock back the grill, leapt up and grabbed the edge of the vent opening.

He struggled a bit to pull himself up and through the vent and when he was through, did his best to put back the grill so n one would know anyone climbed through it.

The vents were not too large but large enough for him to drag himself through. He would occasionally peek through the grills that he passed in order to get his bearings, pick his proper course, and continue on. Bruce Willis made crawling through ventilation tunnels seem easy, he thought, but this was hard work. Still, in about five minutes, he found himself over the hallway outside the cafeteria. He quietly pried off the grill and jumped down. Finding a broom, he used it to jimmy the grill back into position. Although it was just sitting on top of the vent, at least it wasn’t too obvious that someone just passed through it.

Feeling like a spy, Johnny crept through the hall, making sure that he wasn’t seen by the few invaders that were still roaming the halls. He couldn’t afford to take chances, so John assumed that anyone he saw that he didn’t recognize was a member of the Syndicate.

Johnny's progress was slow but sure, and eventually he was at the entrance to the cafeteria. Looking around, he saw no one. He picked his way through the rubble and saw his friends.

“Kimiko!” He cried, seeing the young scientist on the floor. He ran to her and picked her up but it was too late. She was already dead. So were the others. He looked around and saw all his friends, along with FBI and Syndicate agents, all dead.

Kimiko, Glen, Waldo and Jazz. Farther in, were the bodies of Paolo, Dexter, Lizzie and Rosie, and the farthest from him was Arnold. Looking at him, Johnny couldn’t tell if it was Arnold because his head was gone – shattered by multiple machine gun hits. But he recognized the sweater and, of course, the sneakers.

Poor Arnold…

Through his tears, he struggled to see, and though he saw the bodies of FBI agents and Syndicate thugs, he couldn’t find Edith. Where was Edith?

“Edith?” he called. “Are you here?”

There was no answer except the machine gun fire of the Syndicate shooters in the otherwise-eerie silence. Johnny dived for cover and barely dodged a fusillade of bullets. He got one of the rifles from one of the dead agents.

He didn’t move nor make a sound and, apparently, the intruder thought he was hit because the shooter started to walk in his direction without seeking cover.

Johnny saw his chance and popped up from behind a fallen cafeteria table and fired. He wasn’t familiar with guns but he knew enough to be able to fire one.

Johnny’s marksmanship was very bad, but at this range, he couldn’t miss. He hit the man enough times that he died right there. The Yellow Dragon killer fell in front of him dead, and Johnny gulped.

It was his first kill, and he thought it would affect him more but it didn’t. He knew that it was probably shock or something, but whatever it was, he didn’t wait around for it to affect him, and continued to search for Edith.

- - - - -

"What's happening," Telly quavered.

"We're escaping," Dierdre explained.

"Duh? I know we are, you…"

"It’s industrial espionage," a voice from her cellphone came out. “But I believe you already knew that.”

Because she was Johnny’s personal assistant, Telly had set her phone so that calls from Johnny and Valerie, the company main computer voice interface, would automatically come through. And since the voice clearly wasn’t Johnny’s...

"Valerie?" Telly said. "Who switched you on?"

"John and Dr. McAllister had just finished uploading the new programs into my systems before the first meeting was called today, and they activated me in order to check the success of the upgrades. Needless to say, the upgrades were fine, but neither remembered to turn my interface off."

“So you’ve been running the whole day today?”

“Yes.”

Minnie moved closer to Telly. “Valerie. Do you have access to the CCTV cameras?”

“Hello, Ms Lloyd. I am glad to hear your voice. As of this time, yes, I do. I am fully interfaced to all of the compound’s systems.”

“Please find out where Johnny is.”

“Easily done. John is currently in the main cafeteria but I believe he is about to leave it.”

Minnie turned to Telly. “My dear, I am going to borrow your phone so I can keep in touch with Valerie, Okay?”

“Ummm, okay I guess. But…”

“I am going back and help Johnny.” She plucked the phone from Telly’s hand and slid open the van’s door.

The van was moving at around twenty miles per hour, but Minnie didn’t hesitate: she jumped out, tucked herself into a ball as she was taught by her trainers, and rolled onto the grassy part of an empty lot nearby. She knew all the survival training that she goes through regularly would eventually pay off. She just wished Johnny took the same kind of classes.

She stood up, visually checked herself for any wounds or injuries, and did a few calisthenic moves, and assured herself that she was fine.

She started jogging along the dirt access road, keeping hunched down so as not to be noticed.

A couple of the agents had leaped out and were now trailing her.

"Miss Lloyd!" one of the agents called out in a kind of whisper-shout. "Come back! We'll take care of coming back for Mr. Naismith! Miss Lloyd!"

But Minnie knew that, by that time, it would be late. No, she was going to get her boy back herself.

The agents were fit - they had to be for their job - but so was Minnie, and she was more familiar with the terrain than they were, so she was able to keep ahead of them, plus the fact that Valerie was able to give her directions from time to time while the others had to stumble around.

"I see you now, Miss Lloyd," Valerie said, picking Minnie up on the security cameras. "You're about to cross the threshold into the compound's perimeter. The main doors are forty-five degrees in front of and to your left."

"Should I try for the main entrance, Valerie?"

"It is safe. None of the... bad guys are near the main entrance. From there, you can go through the fake elevator and then through to John's office."

"Got it."

Minnie started creeping over to the main doors when Valerie called again.

"Ms. Lloyd!" Valerie "whispered." "There are four syndicate agents walking towards the gate!"

Minnie immediately ran for cover behind what was left of a concrete security hut nearby.

The four stood arrogantly in front of the doorway, obviously feeling powerful and invulnerable, secure in the idea that there was no one left to fire back.

But there was.

The two agents trailing Minnie were able to pick them off easily, but were unable to stop one of them from raising some kind of alarm.

The sound of boots reverberated in the now-deserted front office, and the two agents found themselves under fire in less than a minute.

As they returned fire from behind some rubble, one of the agents looked around.

"Dammit!" he swore. "The woman's disappeared!"

The other agent nodded. "I guess she's gone in then. She's on her own now."

"She'll be dead soon, you mean. I can't stand these braniacs! They're crazy!"

The other agent shook his head. "No, she's not crazy. She's just being a mother trying to save her son."

to be continued...

 

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