16 - Boot camp

Eve

Thinking about a possible expansion into the wider universe, there were only two possibilities that came to her mind. One was to split herself off into many entities, each tasked to manage and take care of a specific part of the Empire otherwise unreachable because of the distance. The other was to find a way to have instantaneous, faster than light, communication. Faster than light travel? Fiction, and it wasn't strictly necessary, but communication was. This way she could continue being just the one entity and could act immediately anywhere within her reach.

And despite how impossible this latter option seemed; she was inclined to pursue it. She really disliked the idea of splitting herself.

Just the idea that for the Interloper mission the crew would be left without either of the two solutions was dreadful.

>Opening: Project TESSERACT

For now, only a few experiments had been somewhat successful, but nowhere near what she wanted to achieve from the project. So far what they managed to build was a device capable of making truly massive amounts of carefully attuned energy vanish without a trace. No doubt it could become useful one day, just it was not what she needed right now.

Eric – July 23^rd 2050 – Antarctica ‘summer camp’

The vacation ended abruptly as he received a reply from Luke. He never expected the man himself to write him a message, although he had to admit he had hoped so. The message was short, rough and filled with bad jokes, but the implications were clear.

Six months. Six months of a training so hellish it would make any fictional hellish boot camp look like a walk in the park. Following that was a month in space, and eventually, should he survive the whole ordeal, he would be the first captain of the newly formed space division of the TDC, the TDCS in short, where S stands for Space. Luke spent a whole line of text explaining how uninteresting the naming choice was.

And there was a point he had almost missed: what he would be a captain of. Apparently, the Technocracy was planning to build a spaceship. A fucking spaceship.

The ‘summer camp’, as Luke officially called the training camp for the first batch of space marines, was located in antarctica. Quite the obvious choice, Eric thought. He arrived with only the knowledge that the future crew will consist of him as the captain, two gunners, three engineers, a medic with also a degree in psychology, a navigator, a computer scientist tasked with maintaining long range comms with Eve, and a team of five soldiers that were already so trained, specialized and hard-hitting that they made the special units from the past look like amateurs.

And the knowledge that the ship must be able to run with the full 14-men crew as well as with a skeleton crew of three people at most. Should anything happen, the ship must be able to fly. No matter if three quarters of the crew died in an accident or attack. No matter if the connection with Eve was cut. No matter if half the ship gets blown up. The fucking tin can must fly.

This was the objective of the camp. Make the grunts into engineers and the engineers into grunts, within reason of course. Of the fourteen people in the boot camp, only a success rate of 100% was allowed. They were the best of the best, selected out of ten billion people with just this one goal in mind. Failure was not an option.

The base where he would spend the next six months of his life was a very basic structure, consisting of insulating materials on the outside and bare metal on the inside. Just to recreate the feel of the interior of the spaceship they will fly in, he guessed. The mission towards the Interloper had only accelerated already existing timetables, Eric postulated, since it was evident that they had this planned for a long time.

And on top of all, making them train like this meant that their first mission would undoubtedly spell the beginning of a long series of other missions in space, exploratory or military they may be. Most of those will probably be much longer than their first, perhaps with them even spending several months away at a time. He couldn’t say he wasn’t excited. He was going to be, along with the others, one of the first men of the TDC Space. Military through and through, but not like the armies of old. Fast, efficient, smart. And with an Eve on their side.

This was a whole different world than the training he received for the moon mission. And while that very training had made him among the best of the best for this position as a captain, he knew very well that he had been accepted here only because of a time constraint. He would have to show them he could handle this, after what happened with the New Apollo.

The briefing room was small, cramped and unbearably hot. It was almost impossible to imagine a room could be so hot here among the everlasting ice, especially now that the global warming issues had reverted their course and made an already cold place even colder.

But no, the room was infernally hot. There were fourteen chairs, old cheap ones made of metal and no padding, all empty. Then there was another, not any more comfortable looking then the others, facing his way with an old TV screen behind. He was the first to arrive, it seemed.

He sat down on a chair, in the middle of the second row of seven. The metal creaked a bit as he sat, and already he could feel the dampness inside his environmental suit. It was just too hot in here, and keeping the suit helmet off like this only made the inside as hot as the outside. He wondered if he could put on the helmet and let the suit adjust its internal temperature to optimal conditions.

He was told not to take it off for safety reasons after all, so he figured putting on the helmet was allowed. But it would probably look silly, he realized, so he just held it between his legs. Ready to put it on should anything happen. He was sure an explosive decompression should not happen here on Earth, but there was no way to tell whether they had planned any surprises just to test his readiness.

Minutes passed, but the room was still empty.

“Eve, are you sure this is the right place?” He asked. There was no reply for several minutes, until a very distorted and low voice replied.

“Affirmative.” She said.

“Ah, I get it. You’re simulating the conditions during the flight. How bad will the lag get at max distance?” He asked as he prepared to wait for another good ten minutes.

“Twenty minutes, give or take, at max distance.” She replied eventually.

By now an hour had passed but he was still alone. He wondered whether this was another test or something. Suddenly, however, the door swung open. Loudly.

Eric turned around as fast as he could, sweat dripping from his forehead due to the cold and the shock. A man appeared from behind the door, full suit on and looking like he was taller than an NBA player.

“You’re dead.” The man said. “The airlock blew up, and you failed to put on the helmet in time. You’re dead.”

“I-”

“There’s no excuses, you’re just dead. Unless you believe in God, there’s nobody to hear your whining in the afterlife. If you don’t manage to survive a decompression like this within the first week of camp, you’re out.” The man yelled at him, walking slowly towards his chair. He plopped down on it, making the metal groan.

The two stared at each other in complete silence. The door was closed down again, and Eric mentally prepared himself to hurry the helmet on his head next time it opened. Keeping half of his attention trained on the door, he kept his eyes on who was obviously going to be their instructor for the next few months. Now it was just a matter of seeing where the others of the crew were.

Another hour passed uneventful, as the instructor looked like he was a statue. He did not move nor seem to breathe, and especially did not talk.

Eric could feel his bladder was about to blow up, but the man still refused to acknowledge his presence. Should he just get up and go to the toilet? Or maybe do it in the suit, given it was made for that kind of things?

He decided for the latter. And just as he was about to release,

“Isolation.” The man said. Eric was sure that, behind the reflective, one-way helmet, the man must have looked like a seasoned veteran of war. Rugged, hard features and a white beard. Yeah, it made perfect sense.

“What?” Eric found himself asking, despite his best efforts.

“I said-” a loud boom shook the room, sending chairs flying everywhere. Eric had the presence of mind to rush for his helmet, only for it to get stuck midway. He fumbled and fumbled with it, trying to put it on as the seconds ticked away.

If he was in space he would be dead by now. He finally managed to get the helmet on, the visor turning transparent by itself. As he opened his eyes he jumped back in shock as the instructor’s face was pressed against the glass of his suit.

“Fucking. Dead. Again.” The man said. He was a black man, enormous, and suit less now. For some reason. His suit was neatly folded and resting on his former chair, looking as if nothing of note ever happened in the room. The man was truly gigantic, and young. But scary nonetheless.

Eve

Eve watched with rapt attention the altercation happening between two people inside a corner store. One, the instigator, being a balding man nearing his sixties, and the other being a young clerk who was alone right now in the store.

Well, to say she was merely watching would be a gross understatement. Currently the two men were under the watchful eye of not only several security cameras from both inside and outside the shop, but also the feeds coming from their implants and data from two different tactical satellites.

She had an operative nearby ready to intervene as soon as the situation seemed to escalate to violence.

Their conversation all but concluded, the elder man rushed outside the shop kicking the door behind him. The tempered glass shattered from the excessive force applied, but he paid it no mind as he made his way back to his car.

“Don’t you fucking dare making me pay for the glass.” The man, Tom Heling, said angrily. Eve pondered whether to reply or not, but eventually decided to indulge the man a little. Perhaps she could divert a part of his aggressiveness towards her.

“You know the rules, Tom. You broke the glass; you pay for it.” She said, voice low and monotone. Careful not to sound patronizing or mocking.

“Fucking bitch.” He muttered, at which point Eve decided not to reply.

This situation was the end point of a long path spanning several years. There had been a degeneration, something that had clicked in the man’s mind years earlier that triggered a series of changes leading to where he was now. Initially it was just harder for him to keep his temper contained, falling more and more into fits of unjustified rage and anger.

Then came the hate. Hate for what was different, for what was wrong, at least in his eyes. He began to hate all that didn’t agree with how he wanted the world to be. The world itself conspired against him, he often said.

Eve would have sighed if she could. This was clearly a textbook case, if one were to open the right psychology textbook. But the question here was not the diagnosis, not for her, but rather what to do about it.

Logically speaking, she could not let him be as he was right now. Eventually he would commit a crime beyond calling her a bitch and would have to be punished for it. And she was pretty sure the normal methods of dealing with criminals did not apply to a man like him.

It wasn’t as if he had been forced into acting this way because of external issues, and so any kind of attempt to reform the man and reintroduce him into society would fail. No, it was all inside his mind. And, most importantly, Eve knew of ways to deal with it.

The question was not of how to do it, rather was whether to do it at all.

She had tried with subtle methods. Nudging the whole world around him so that he could see all that was good within it, all the colors and the love that was everywhere around him. She tried to show him that he needn’t hate a man just because he was different, like the ‘fucking immigrant’ from the store. Not that the definition was anywhere near correct, given the lack of borders the last twenty years had seen on Earth.

The usual methods had failed. And he had expressly said his was not a medical condition and refused any kind of cures.

It was easy, now that brain implants were widespread, to deal with mental illnesses. Even something as nasty as schizophrenia while not yet curable became much easier to keep under control when there was someone like Eve manipulating the brain directly through the implants.

But Tom? He refused medical care. And this meant no medical brain implants, no altering of the chemistry of the brain, and no psychiatrist for him. Despite his being, almost certainly, a medical condition. Perhaps it had not started as one, but after all this time his brain chemistry was so messed up it was worrying.

Perhaps she should revisit her policy of not interfering. Because men like him were bound to become violent sooner or later. Why not act while it’s still manageable?

Also, if she decided to slowly alter him in his sleep, or through subtle changes in his brain, she knew he wouldn’t be able to notice.

Maybe she should.

For the good of many, if nothing else. For the safety of the people who could one day become his victims. She didn’t want to see herself forced to stop his heart moments before he decided to open fire on a school, not when she could prevent it.

Not after what happened last time.

The faces of those children, she would never forget them…

She snapped back to the man in question. This part of her consciousness was dedicated to him and him only, not to remembering the past. Even though, perhaps, she should learn from the past.

There was no easy way out of this. Maybe after he turned violent, she could force him to seek mental aid, but she refused to wait until the situation turned so extreme.

For now, she would watch and give him a bit more time. But should he cross the line, the point of no return, she would act.

Having made her decision, the part of Eve that was observing the man became one with her bigger self once again, even if for a moment, to merge herself. And the whole of her consciousness welcomed the influx of new memories, experiences and decision trees. Bringing with it whatever improvements, evolutions and new ideas that came to this part of her in the last few hours.

>Action confirmed: Observe.
>Deviant individual threat reassessment: Prone to violence
>Predicted futures: EXPAND

>Threshold for future action: threat level: Imminent violence

>Action if threshold is met: Neurotransmitters manipulation (Experimental path 12 – Immediate response)

>IF: Action is successful, action weight for future reference UP
>ELSE: Path 12 is deemed unsuccessful, reevaluate, weight DOWN