Excerpt: A Science-Fiction Novel co-written
by Ben Easton (plain) & Kim Sawyer (italics)
Copyright © 2005
Book I
Prelude
Delilah finished the cadenza of the piano sonata she had been practicing before answering the doorbell; she hadn’t been expecting anybody, and … it was New Year’s Eve. The last notes resonated in her fingertips and her soul – fading to lush silence but for the muffled pounding of rain and howling of wind outside – as she ambled dazedly toward the front entry. She glanced out her fourteenth floor flat distractedly as she reached for the deadbolt of the door when suddenly the phone rang. Responding to the latter caller on her cordless phone while opening the door to the former caller, she realized, at the startled expense of her reverie, that the two were one.
“Hello, Delilah,” the young gentleman said simply and almost playfully; he smiled knowingly as the brunette dropped her telephone and gracefully bent down to retrieve it. He turned off his own cell phone and waited for her to collect her composure while entering, uninvited. He shut the door and stood over her in silent, gentle arrogance – as if this place were his own. Finally exhaling through the initial shock, Delilah looked across the room to a violently colorful portrait of herself, knowing full well that her husband’s eyes followed her gaze.
“When I painted that,” he uttered slowly, as if reliving it, “I vowed I must either marry or kill you. He drew a heavy breath. “And now, since having been called off planet by The Lab, I’m not sure at which I succeeded — perhaps both!”
“Everett Carlisle,” stated the signature of the portrait, which hung over the marble mantle, as did the sheet music sitting atop the Bosendorfer grand piano across the living room. He strode across the warmly lit spaciousness and prepared to sit at the keyboard, but drew up abruptly as he sensed a subtle vulnerability from his wife, who was still kneeling and . . . crying.
Delilah Carlisle had never understood The Lab or the nature of her husband’s involvement; it had been a secret part of his meteoric life. She suspected, though, that his passionate and steadfast commitment to the enigmatic interplanetary brotherhood was of the same nature as what he felt while painting her portrait.
“Everett, you know that, although I have never agreed with your methods, I have always agreed with your vision. But how can you walk in here after all this time and expect me to . . . Wanzhuang said . . . .” She added in a barely audible tone,” I thought you were dead.”
“Wu is no longer in integrity with the Brotherhood!” a quiet rage rose in the depth of his voice. “Pay no heed to what he says on this. Wu is part of what has kept me absent and incommunicado these past five years; nothing of less than paramount importance could have kept me from you.”
This was the side of him that she had never accepted, the part of him that could so easily ignore her pain and emotional loss in lieu of pursuing his goddamn mission. She was unabashedly crying, and as the tears came, she jerked her head up reflexively as the salty drops suddenly reminded her of her husband, her . . . other husband, who was at this moment en route from Australia. At that very moment she found herself swept inexorably to her feet – and then beyond – as almost in unknowing answer to her thoughts, his lips hungrily yet commandingly met her upturned mouth. All further conversation became superfluous. What at first was simply a hungry, almost starved, response to Carlisle’s invitation, turned unexpectedly to spiteful anger, and then to spontaneous joy as the former Olympian allowed herself to live in two parallel universes simultaneously – unaware that she was karmically acting out the fate of all temptresses, all sirens, all the Delilahs, biblical or otherwise – and she, for perhaps the first time in her life, allowed herself to surrender absolutely to a man. Everett Carlisle brusquely backhanded the support for the polished black lid of the concert grand piano and threw her down on top of it, ecstatically sweeping aside sheets of romantic music that would have gone exactly with the love they proceeded to make.
The random resonances and disharmonies performed by the violent impact of the Bosendorfer lid faded – shadowy – into the walls of the flat and the depths of her soul as Delilah Carlisle – or was it Wu? – witnessed the dancing duel of the images, thoughts, and loves of two powerful men in her almost dreams. Spent and overwhelmed, she fell – in tortured, yet luscious languor – to sleep.
* * * * * * *
The gentle twinkling of a melody wafted into the bedroom on the shoulders of a crisp winter breeze that fluttered the curtain merrily to and fro. Delilah emerged into the wakefulness she recalled as a child: delightful expectation. She called to Everett and, hearing no immediate response, distractedly turned on the holoscreen. The nasal tone of a cynical reporter stood in front of some governmental edifice; she noticed that people were being herded away from some official’s entourage, and with a twisting stab of recognition, she knew she was once again alone in her apartment.
Chapter 1
Out of the Shadows
The blood started rising and swelling – pushing a wave of dull ache with it to the surface. Everett Carlisle cursed silently; he knew that the spot on the side of his eye, where the frenzied reporter’s microphone had struck him, was going to be quite a shiner. Besides he didn’t belong in this gang of self-important, incompetent thieves that his media assailant would term “Top-ranking government officials.” Oh well, “Mission first, above all else,” he reminded himself sternly as he battled his way through the throng toward the awaiting off-planet shuttle pod that would shortly whisk them from Station 2 to his Carlisle Consolidated Mining & Development Lunar facility laboratory. Therein lay the focal point of all this accumulated madness.
The concentric circles of the universally recognized logo of Carlisle’s empire were emblazoned on the fuselage of the shuttle. The geometric pattern was simple and complex, depending on how one chose to consider it. “It’s a mirror for me,” Everett thought to himself as he halted abruptly before yet another podium and bank of microphones. He instinctively braced himself for the barrage of questions which he had anticipated for many months now, and he knew he would finally have to submit and throw the dogs a little bit to chew on. He didn’t mind though because, once again, he was on the threshold. He paused for an instant in this brief self-check, and he reflected that this was where he lived: at the doorway, from one world to another, from one adventure or project to another. He took one last glance at the CC symbol as if taking a shot of whiskey to steady himself; the effect was immediate. Carlisle was again the calm, centered, focused captain of industry that the media had dearly missed for half a decade now. Their questions would surely concern this – probably overshadowing the imminent tests that were the actual reason for his reemergence.
Carlisle drew a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled it soothingly through his mouth; he knew that in order to get where his heart truly lay – on Luna – he had to pass through this distasteful but unavoidable ordeal before him. He cleared his throat and began, “As many of you know, I don’t enjoy these rituals, so you will allow me, I’m sure, to cut to the quick and address the two issues which are most pressing on all your minds. The first – regarding my unexplained and rather sudden disappearance, not to mention a five year absence, and now, similar reappearance – I will say only the following. Those of you who know me know to expect nothing further on this matter, and no additional questions will be entertained. My disappearance is related to both the second issue, that is the rumored technological breakthrough at CCMD – Luna, as well as a personal crusade on a much broader and more impactful stage which has brought me to fear for my life and my life’s work at the hands of a deadly enemy whom I’ve never met.”
Everett Carlisle paused and glanced at his chronometer, and there was an immediate clamor by the two dozen media reporters to land the first question. The staccato of insistent shouts and pleas seemed to have no effect on him, and his look of implacable resolve was the only response given to the stabbing bristle of microphones and predatorial smiles.
“Mr. Carlisle, how long has —”
“Carlisle, why haven’t you —”
“Do you expect to —”
“Doctor, do you play water polo?”
All sorts of questions, most of them running into or over the others, had registered on his precognitive brain, just as the ambient temperature and barometric pressure had, as well as the lighter pseudo-gravity supplied by the shorter rotational moment at the docking hub, . . . but only as the young and clear-eyed reporter finished her question did Carlisle allow his attention to focus on this single event.
He met her eyes and locked onto her direct countenance, and he wondered three things in the fraction of a second prior to his response to her question. The first was: why had she addressed him as “Doctor,” a title he never used, even though he had three claims to it? The second question, he knew with sardonic certainty that he shared with any breathing male who was present, was: why have I never seen a picture of a woman this astoundingly good-looking before? The third question, and the only one which convinced him that he should venture a reply, was: why would she bring up such an irrelevant notion, unless she . . . .
“That is an original question, and, as such, it deserves an original answer.” The hoard of reporters were pleased that someone had engaged this nonconformist, and many of their sound cones were redirected to catch the woman’s words.
“I enjoy playing water sports with my brothers, Miss . . . ,” Carlisle waited.
“Artemian,” she offered, holding his piercing gaze.
“Miss Artemian, I have never played polo . . . in water or on land,” and with the briefest nod, Carlisle turned to field more questions.
One spectacled reporter turned to another and murmured under his breath something about not knowing that Carlisle had brothers. The other shook his head similarly; they both flipped through their notes rapidly, hoping to find some new angle on this man who appeared so resilient and unorthodox.
Watching Everett’s back disappear behind a frothing tangle of reporters, security guards, video equipment, and the glare of camera flashes as he retreated from the press conference that she had just witnessed on the holo, Delilah shook her head sadly and knowingly. She knew that this man, whom she so loved, had no biological brothers; she knew the deadly seriousness lurking behind his wry, mysterious humor in which he held all this “stuff” about which he had been speaking. Delilah understood all these events and points of intrigue more deeply, completely, and in a fuller context than perhaps any human – on or off the planet – including the participants themselves. As a matter of fact, the only thing in the previous scene, which had caught her interest at all, was the female correspondent and her arcane question about water polo.
“There was something about her . . . ,” Delilah pondered, only briefly. “I’ll follow up on that later.”
There was no accident in Carlisle’s use of the phrase “water sports,” she noted as she mused, “The games men play . . . ,” and finished shaking her head with a painful smile. She hopped out of bed, leaving her thoughts behind, as the holoscreen droned on with its monotony of media debris.
“Let them play,” Delilah concluded. “I’ve more important matters to attend to.”
Chapter 2
The Fourth Gauge
“Ever aware, may you be,” spoke the diminutive figure to the first man that reached the airlock. The entrance to Mine 23 had been built out with a quick-lock capability, yet the group which had descended from the rover had chosen, for some reason, to approach the property from a distance: they had walked just over three and half kilometers. One of the two guards communicated with the visitors, via radio, of course, and the minor static was not enough to disguise his Sino-Indian ancestry. The giveaway was the unusual – and, therefore, trademark – manner of his greeting.
“G’ morning, mister,” returned the lieutenant, who was the field guide on duty. His poly-plastic pressure suit had one gold bar on the right shoulder as its sole adornment. The others in his landing party had not missed the fact that he had purposely avoided the formal response to the gatekeeper’s polite and ceremonial opening. It was no surprise that they all copied the gruff hello, and only the one bringing up the rear, the one in the Hawkins skinsuit, wondered whether he had insulted the man. It was a brief and idle reflection, for Carlisle knew that the Pan-Asian contingent on Luna, which was concentrated at the nearby city of Darbhanga, was predominantly Buddhist, and he inferred from the exchange, the accent, and the stylized bow that this man may well consider himself unworthy of receiving an insult. He – Everett Carlisle – dismissed this speculation in order to immediately focus on the task at hand: the inspection of a new laboratory, a state-of- the-art chamber equipped with a new phase suspension system.
The audio feed of the atmospheric equalization complete, as signaled by the cheery chord of subdued bells in their headsets, the men receded into the system of tunnels. The Dharbangi led them a distance that would have been difficult to estimate had it not been for the periodic striping with calibration liners. The terrans were also reassured by the fact that at every fourth of these points was a cluster of barometers, thermometers, and chronometers, not to mention a call-phone. The no-nonsense attitude affected by the lieutenant did not hide the fact that even he, apparently a moony, a permanent resident of Luna, was reassured by these regular safety zones. Roland Gantry, the CCMD chief engineer brought up the rear with Dr. Carlisle. He had correctly guessed that the industrialist and principle owner of these minerals had been focusing his attention on the fourth and newest gauge in these instrument clusters with keen interest. Meters of this variety existed nowhere else in the known universe. Carlisle realized that he was being watched, and he nodded enthusiastically to his friend and colleague, “The fall off is quite startling. The gauges appear to be working, Rolly!”
After about a five-minute walk, the group of six men came to the inner bulkhead of the facility. At this point, the scarlet-suited gatekeeper pushed the appropriate entrance code and stood politely aside. The men filed past, still ignoring their escort. Gantry drew up short as he noticed Carlisle pause next to the man.
“Your passage beyond this point will be made more comfortable by the removal of your EMUs. To be safe, though, please wait until the door is sealed,” spoke the man in red. He was preparing to turn away when Carlisle stood in front of him.
“Ever aware, may you be,” he offered, pronouncing it reasonably well in the singsong manner of the natives.
“I am you – you are me,” the Buddhist replied, inclining his head slowly. The solar-reflecting visor shield made it impossible to see the Dharbangi’s expression, but Gantry could sense the appreciation and respect in the man’s eyes. He wondered, again, at the worldliness of his boss. The two of them turned and disappeared into the shadowy cloisters as the metal bulkhead sealed them into the sub-lunan cavern, three hundred fifty meters below the surface of the Moon.
The soft aqua glow of terralight washed and rippled across the room from the overhead optiview canopy, as the man floating in the gravilounge amidst his floorless abode released a deep exhale, signifying his return to standard consciousness level one from his psinet linkup. Having received the psionic transmission from one of his Lunan agents as to the movements of his nemesis, the dark captain of the other way, he rocked the lounge pensively. There had definitely been a momentary disturbance fluctuating across the fabric of his operative’s sensory relay flow when the occidental stopped to briefly converse with him. As well developed as had become Wu’s ability to sense through another gifted’s intellect, the emotional domain still remained opaque.
“An urgently important area for further R & D,” the floating man thought fleetingly, because the image and concept, which absolutely riveted his full attention, was “gauge.”
A much smaller and more focused jet of air puffed out, this time from a port in the lower side of the gravilounge, at the command of Dr. Wu’s middle finger on the arm-console, and the chair-now-vehicle glided its way over to his work station on the solside wall of his personal diversispace.
After scanning the array of monitors, and seeing nothing else that was urgent, he glanced up at the silk tapestry that commandeered the lion’s share of the salon. On the cloth, composed of the finest silk, there was a mandala; it depicted a complex of color and symbology so delicate that he was sure that he had still not begun to plumb its full meaning. The concentric rings and radial spears of the mandala instantly reminded him of his old colleague. Carlisle’s corporate emblem had a similar character, and he wondered which had come first. Had they both been borne of some earlier construct? No matter . . . for at this time, Wu was much more concerned with the lunar enterprises of his rival. What could be the significance of “gauge”? Of what sort of gauge was that cowboy thinking?!
Everett was up to his old tricks, Wu thought, and he had been caught quite off guard as he returned from a brief trip to The Lab in Antarctica. Breathing deeply and reciting an ancient verse was what he had needed all day and was only now able to enjoy. Staring at the Chinese mandala, inhaling deeply, exhaling in the controlled manner he had learned as a Shaolin priest, Wu gradually allayed the stress he had taken on from learning the bizarre news of the public resurrection of his rival . . . his blood brother, his friend, Everett Carlisle.
But that was all more than ten years ago. Wu exhaled abruptly, sat upright and re-focused. That was ten years ago! These are no longer the days of the Brotherhood. The schism had begun even before that, but . . . . He had been shaken up by the goings on of the last forty-eight hours. Meditation was not enough; he needed sleep. But first, he had to get a message off to his wife; she had expected him twelve hours before. She deserved some sort of notice; he wondered how she had handled the news. Surely Delilah was now aware of the reemergence of Carlisle. Who on Earth wouldn’t be! What effect had it had on her? This thought brought him a heavy surge of sadness as well as anger.
He hit the intercom and spoke some quick words in Mandarin to one of the two crewmembers on the bridge. With another rapid staccato of strokes on his keyboard controller, lighting and environmental parameters began to change at the other end of the chamber. The transformation that began to take place was an impressive sight indeed. The orbital station, modern as it was, did not look like anything else in space. Neither inside nor outside did it have the typical “cluster of canisters” look of most orbital space environments.
Buckminster Fuller Wu, the architect and designer, was known throughout the space design community as a radical, as an artist, and, not surprisingly, as a genius. While only a select few had visited his crowning achievement, this captured and reupholstered planetoid, there were only two humans living who knew his real name. Early in his education in Mainland China, Wu became disillusioned with the renegade scientist and architect in whose honor he was named. The fact is that he disowned the name and the western influence that adhered to it as a nascent rebelliousness against his parents, both of whom, along with most of the oriental culture at the time, had been enamored with all things American. A small province near Beijing was one of the last strongholds of “pure” Chinese culture, and Wu had met his first love there. Although he no longer knew of her whereabouts, her memory was secure, for the name of her town had become his own. He had had his name officially changed to Wanzhuang Wu upon graduation at the University in Beijing; that was when he was nineteen and indestructible.
Now, perched literally inside an orbiting asteroid, Wu was too preoccupied to realize that more than one peculiarity he shared with his secret namesake was now haunting him. Surely he would have appreciated it, for he had been taught from his earliest years that the seeds of ruin are sown in the mouth of the vanquished dragon. He sat up and dictated a voicemail to his wife in New York City. “Delilah, my dear, I imagine you have guessed why I have not yet returned from . . . .” Several minutes later, the gravilounge hovered across the dimly lit space, and it delivered its master to the most expensive futon in the solar system. The gifted was asleep before it had returned to its recharger.
“Bucky! . . Bucky Wu! . . Bucky Pu!!” The jeering taunts of the pre-teen voices still ringing in his ears and heart, Buckminster Fuller Wu slumped, out of breath, in a chair in the computer lab, where he had run once again to find a haven from his hurtful peers out in the schoolyard. Tears and rage churned simultaneously in him as he pondered uncomprehendingly the mindlessness of those muscle-brained techno-zombies that were rising up as the germ – in both senses of the word, he thought, his sarcasm in no case deserting him – of the turn-of-the-century society. Theirs was not a future in which young Wu relished growing up; besides, he had never found a home among the mainstream of his world. He found himself somehow a shame-riddled outcast of whatever stream he stepped into. Only in the cyber world or in the depths of his meditating consciousness was the boy able to find solace and belonging. As he grew up, this theme remained the same in his life; much like his namesake, he was continually ridiculed, ostracized, and maligned for his brilliantly unpopular and premature discoveries, theories, and developments. Even when his brilliance and creativity won him acceptance in the 22nd Century Aristotelian secret brotherhood known as The Lab, his deep resentment of western linear techno-materialism drove him further and further into the – from his colleagues’ perspective – unfathomable, frightening, irrelevant, and seemingly mystical realm of cyber-psycho spiritualism. When he presented his full treatise on his newly developed field, Psionics, it created such uproar, outrage, and disdain, that, by that time, Doctor Wu resigned in a storm of epithets and vows of horrible revenge. He remembered uncomfortably that there was one voice within the Brotherhood, whose members met only in the anonymity of cyberspace, which remained silent in the storm of derision leveled at Wu. As the pain, confusion, and anger of that recollection rose up in his subconscious, a massive wall of evasion and repression came down with such impact that it awoke him.
Or was it the raucous clangor of the digitized synthesization of an early 20th century audio alert signal that had, in that era, been created, crudely, by the rapid and repeated impact of a metal mallet upon a hollow metal hemisphere? Wu rose groggily and gravved toward its source – his computer; he had selected the archaic sound to alert him to urgent incoming terraside e-mails. Brows furrowed deeply and lips pressed tightly together, Dr. Wanzhuang Wu, having read, deleted, and responded to the correspondence, signed off with his habitual salutation, “Ever aware, may you be.”
Six hours later, Wu was awakened again; this time, though, it was by design, and it was carried out by the redirection of solar rays through a bank of mirrors and filters. Visible light was beamed down to bathe the master suite in gentle rays at the red end of the spectrum, and, as the filters were automatically adjusted, the light rays were shifted toward the blue and signaled the time for quicker vibration.
Besides Wu, there were only a select few, the Life Force cell, who knew of the physiological aspects of this mechanism. The stages of awakening were orchestrated according to the biological and geometrical patterns of the human chakras. As adepts, Wu and his colleagues had the ability to actually identify and assimilate the different energy qualities of the spectral regions. His cyberspace team, or cell, was at work, among other things, on psionic enhancement of physical systems, and it was central to their success that traditionally subjective and speculative work such as this be measureable and repeatable.
Each member of the research branch was experimenting with different techniques of charging their body/minds with as much of the energy potential as possible. Wu had learned to call this charge chi from his readings of various classics – including Reich, Tesla, and Clavero. His own work in this field was by no means insignificant, and his name was already destined to stand up with the other giants on the basis of his psionics alone.
Typically, Wu would open his eyes in the orange and be on his feet in the green. The scientist would thus begin each day, at least on Nautilus, his captured asteroid, with a full syzygial calibration; he programmed his computers and instruments to do the same by way of self-diagnostics and metric base lining. At home in New York, he was not able to openly experiment, for he had decided to forever keep a certain veil of secrecy from his beloved. Delilah’s desire to maintain strong workplace vs. home boundaries was honored by the doctor as much for her sense of integrity as his desire for accountability regarding his oath of secrecy to the Network.
Right on cue, Wu gravved toward his terminal as the salon went from green to blue. He was considering alternative responses to the several new developments that had arisen, besides the obvious one of Carlisle’s homecoming. The message to which he had responded only hours before still played on his mind. The coded brief had been positive: another attenuation plateau had been reached in the resistance levels of the superconducting coils at the Lutzow-Holm Base in Antarctica. This was very good, but there were still two thresholds remaining between the present level and the theoretical one needed for super-amplification. He thought, too, of the letter sitting on his desk in New York – yes, a real letter, archaic . . . paper . . . actually in manuscript. The signature was indelibly imprinted on his memory.
Shaking his head and sighing, Wu considered these and other matters. As if in a huge aquarium, deep inside a gigantic boulder, the Chinese man was held captive. He dared not return Earthside without finding his way to a new course of action. He needed synthesis . . . resolution. He looked up at his mandala and considered the shifting light of the cabin; although a man on whose decisions and theories millions of people acted and planned, he was not immune to seeking a bit of direction himself. Would his superior respond in this hour of need?
First things first, though, … tea and … morning meditation.
His eyes ached with the strain of the razor sharp, crystal clear intensity of the light they were receiving. The symphonic, magnificent immensity of the star field and the focused brilliance of the harsh lunar landscape filled Everett Carlisle’s heart with inspiration and peace simultaneously, as he lounged in his specially constructed mountain-top observation chamber. The pre-eminent technologist had this pod built as his retreat; it was the only place on Luna where he could find solitude and release. It was the only space he could enter in order to fill that most fundamental human need – to encounter and concretely experience an entity or force greater than he – he who was king in most every arena of his existence.
The man, now just that – alone, small, and vulnerably merely human – reclined naked on a pile of silk cushions and pensively and luxuriously puffed on an ivory pipe filled with natural tobacco. His viewpod sat encrusted, gem-like, at the pinnacle of the jagged up-thrusting rim of a crater. Inside, all was softness, organic. Real wood, rare natural fabrics, down, candlelight, and music performed archaically on acoustic instruments. In fact, the only object in this private cocoon of Carlisle that betrayed the true nature of his life outside the pod was the small array of analog gauges which now drew the retreatant’s attention, especially the momentous fourth gauge. His glance kept returning to the most remarkable aspect of this meter to him – the tiny inscrutable letters naming its unit of measure, Øgb/sec -9, or biotic gigabytes per nanosecond. The implications of this particular unit, both proven and potential, still boggled its developer’s mind and bordered on a spiritual experience for him when he gazed upon its inscription on the tiny, seemingly insignificant gauge.
The surge of euphoria flowed through Everett Carlisle’s system, and he settled, with a long slow exhale, back into the state of deep relaxation he had learned long ago from a cyber-colleague in the Lab. And his glance, as it again reached hungrily for the lunarscape, rested for a brief second of recognition and curiosity upon the other anomaly in his oasis – a hand-written piece of correspondence, yet unread.
Kicked back and more mellow than he had been in many weeks, he propped himself up on one elbow and reached for his tobacco. After tamping another load of the blend into his pipe, Carlisle again lay back, lit the pipe, and inhaled the mild intoxicant. This was one of the very few “vices” he allowed himself. He had always told himself that it was a natural desire of man to experience the mysterious transition of physical states – and here was a way to literally breathe in the essence of this transformation: the aromatic offspring of the dried tobacco leaves as they underwent combustion and became delicate gossamered veils and airy apparitions, changing and undulating, reflecting and refracting according to the slightest environmental inputs . . . becoming and forgetting . . . and fading, like so many memories . . . .
As he often did, Everett blew smoke rings. Even in this ruminative state, the lanky technologist could not deny himself the fun of imagining the calculus of the surface tension of smoky donuts being torn apart at the molecular level by a micro-planar magnetic field – which contained, of course, the outflow of air. The inflow ducts were also microscopic in size, and they were ingeniously dispersed all along the back wall.
Even the wafting smoke from his pipe, curling up to the glowing wooden beams, was a pleasurable sight. The man fixated on this ever-changing show of cause and effect, and he became aware of his thoughts and emotions; by the magic of the moment, he was able to instantly map his recent years of effort, his effervescent present, and his transparent future on the column of smoke as it danced its topographic and synchronistic dance. Aware . . . ever aware . . . of so much, yet unaware of the smile on his own face, Carlisle revisited the memory of his discovery – the discovery that changed his life, then . . . and now.
Almost exactly twelve years to the day before this moment, this same man had been sitting in an office cubicle at his computer terminal, inputting experimental parameters for an exciting new inter-networking piece of software. He had been up for a day and a half, exhausted, frustrated, defeated . . . almost. Like so many of his colleagues, Carlisle had been chasing the phantom of the self-generating algorithm – sort of a perpetual motion engine of multi-variable trigonometric equations. That day – December 21, 2135 – he envisioned a matrix of conditions, which, when defined just so, and monitored by a supersensory field, would launch and sustain a hologramatic overseer. The missing piece of code had been a gift of his exhaustion; he had been having waking dreams of a bizarre nature, and that day at about 3:30 in the afternoon, Carlisle had slipped magically into technological overdrive and paved the way for the next generation of inter-link systems by inventing the first truly self-aware computer.
That had been the first step, the key, on which the next many years of intense research and design was based. Everett Carlisle had intentionally gone underground to find the exact means for the reactions and principles, which controlled them. It had been, not uncoincidentally, at the stage of his career when his colleagues and fellow industrialists were experiencing a great upheaval. The Lab fell under intense scrutiny, from within as well as without, and Carlisle disappeared at the height of all this. What had been fleeting alchemy before was now science and formula. The biotic field generator and suspension chamber to match were now a reality – working, generating, controlling, . . . breathing. His pipe dream on that first day of winter so many years ago had actually materialized, and he still couldn’t quite believe it.
