The Runners: Chapter 14
Chapter 14
A lone brick building, single story high, about the size of 100,000 sq ft stood in a desolate desert, 50 miles west of Phoenix. There weren’t any occupied manmade structures within 100 mile radius. A private company called Bio3DN Technology Corporation or B3DN-T had purchased the entire land from a very rich individual from Paris, back in 2130, with a purpose of creating a secret research facility. The building stood 40 ft high, very tall for a single story structure, which provided sufficient space for 20 scientists to live and work comfortably.
The occupants of the building rarely left the facility because of the secret nature of the project for their corporation. The scientists included the thought leaders in the areas of physics, computer science, mathematics, biology, electrical engineering, biomedicine, nuclear engineering, and mechanical engineering. The team was originally put together in 2135 and went through several iterations before assembling the perfect members. In the year 2165, under the new leadership of a young visionary chairman, by the name of Dr. James Chandler, the purpose of the research team took on a whole new perspective.
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James’ father played a major role in the UN adapting the UNCID law. He was the lead scientist for one of the UNCID-EA technology assessment groups. While helping to implement the new law, he became aware of certain dissidents who had the intention of resisting the UN as long and anyway as perceivable. Along the way, he had uncovered certain information regarding rumors with respect to those nations having to have stock piled conventional and nuclear weapons at some clandestine locations. As the younger Chandler grew up and took the similar career path as his father had, that of a scientist, the older Chandler began sharing the stories about the hidden troves of weapons along with the secret map that could lead to their locations.
He used to tell his son, James that “whoever controls these weapons would rule the world!” and that “the balance of power will shift from the UN to the one holding the destructive powers of these weapons.” On the evening of young James’ 25th birthday, his father called him to the library at his residence for a chat. The younger Chandler had just received his PhD in physics. Believing that James had matured into a responsible scientist, his father decided to share the secret that he kept to himself for many years.
“Son, I have something important that I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you. Seeing that you have matured in your studies, I believe that now, is that time.” The senior Chandler said as his son took a seat in a leather sofa in the library.
“What is it dad? Is something wrong?” Seeing his father’s mood become somewhat somber and serious, the younger prodigy was worried about his father’s well being. Perhaps, there was a health issue. After all, his father was not exactly a young man anymore, in his eyes.
“Not at all… But, I’ve been keeping a secret to myself. It is with respect to the work that I’ve been doing for many years, in my own way to keep the peace and prosperity of the UN…,” after a slight pause as he looked into his son’s eyes, he continued, “whether it was right or wrong, only time will tell. I’m old, son and not as sharp as before. But, the project that I undertook for myself is too important to let it wither away.”
“Dad, what are you talking about? You’re as sharp as a needle when it comes to your work!” The young James did his best to dismiss his father’s claim of inability to continue his work. Besides, this being his birthday and having received his doctoral degree, the young James was expecting an extravagant present from his father. To his disappointment, the conversation did not start out as James had imagined.
“No, son… I see myself making mistakes and my memory is not as good as I’d like it to be. It is time that I must pass on my most important project to someone I can trust. Will you promise me one thing?”
“I don’t understand what you are talking about. You’re the best man in your field, dad.” James was not sure what his father was getting at. But, he felt that whatever it was, it was exhausting his father.
“Can you promise me one thing?” The older Chandler insisted.
“OK, dad… I promise. But, whatever it is, I’m not sure that I can do the work as well as you. Why, are you acting like as if the world is about to end?” Unable to overcome his father’s insistence, James decided to hear what his father had to say. At the same time, he has never witnessed his father expressing this level of concern. At this point, James recognized that this meeting wasn’t about receiving a present.
“Good!” James’ father replied appreciatively. Then, he stood up from his chair and proceeded to walk over to a hidden safe behind the original Mona Lisa portrait. His identity was authenticated as he neared the portrait and he moved to open the safe after which he took out a hexagonal shaped box. He held it securely in his hands as he walked back to rejoin his son. Carefully placing the box on the table, James’s father pushed it gently towards his son, but not yet, fully releasing it from his hands.
“Son, this is the subject of my secret project. I’ve been working diligently to protect anyone from getting to this object. As I have been sharing stories with you with respect to the secret weapons…, this is the ‘New Pandora Box’. This holds the secret locations of the hidden troves of weapons.”
“WHAT?” Utterly surprised at what his father had produced in front of him, James babbled, “I…, I remember you telling me bits and pieces about the story. But, I…, always thought it to be a myth. I didn’t think that it…, it actually existed!” The story was only told to him by his father and no one else. There was no way to corroborate the truthfulness of the story as he has never met anyone even, remotely mentioning about such events in his entire 25 years. Now, here he was, face to face with his own father who claimed that he had the secret map to world domination.
“It is not a myth. I’ve been hiding this map from falling into the hands of the dissidents. No one knows that this map is in my possession. I have reached my limitations. And I have begun the ailing process of losing my faculties. I need you to protect this map from anyone and I mean anyone!” Chandler instructed his son.
“How did you get a hold of this map and is this the only map in existence?” Trying to digest the information that had just been revealed to him, James wanted to probe his father’s story to verify it in some way.
“How I got this is not important. What is important is that you must protect it. Can you promise to keep it safe?” The senior Dr. Chandler wanted his son’s promise. He had a feeling that his son was still in doubts. However, he could not come fully clean as to how the map came into his possession because along the way, he had committed unfathomable acts of violence that he believed was an antithesis to being a scientist. It was not something that he was proud of. However, driven by his belief in the UN system of order as the unwritten doctrine that he devoted his entire life to, he did everything possible to keep the map from anyone who might pose a threat to the UN. He looked deep into his son’s eyes while holding the box down with both of his hands to the surface of the coffee table. He was anxiously waiting for James’ disposition before he was to pass it on.
“Dad…, I…, promise!” At last, meeting his father’s eyes, James assured his father nervously. At the same time, he felt an exhilarating sensation and very mysteriously powerful feeling overtaking his senses. “Perhaps, it was all true…” He thought to himself as his heart raced with a jolt of strange energy rushing over him.
“Thank you…, son!” Hearing his son’s promise, the older Chandler, slowly pushing the box over to his son said, “Now, it is yours to keep it safe from the UN’s enemies!”
“I…, will!” Shaking his hands, James received the box from his father. Staring at it blankly, he recalled his father’s repetitious statement with respect to “whoever controls these weapons will rule the world!” It was not an organization or country. His father has specifically said “whoever,” implying it to be any one person.
During the course of the evening, James kept at his father to confirm whether or not this was the only copy of the map. But, his father wouldn’t tell him other than a blurred statement that “the existence of another copy cannot be ruled out. The top echelon members of the UN might have some knowledge…” was all his father had said.
Soon after, James joined the UN as a researcher of a top secret weapons division where he became an elite insider. It was while in this position that James was able to confirm the existence of the powerful legacy weapons of war, which had been hidden away prior to the UN’s unification. He also learned that only a handful of UN’s top leadership were aware of this secret.
As years have passed, James often recalled the repetitious message of his father with respect to “ruling the world.” Then, in a project meeting to decide the future of the sound wave weapon system that he had designed, he was met with animate opposition by his fellow researchers, who had the backings of the UN’s top brass. This would destroy his ego and slowly yet maturely, a transformation took place in his view of the reality. Soon, he vowed revenge and began his clandestine journey to find those weapons for himself in order to eviscerate those that had shamed him. This was a direct opposition from what his father had entrusted him to do. Ultimately, Chandler had decided to embrace the idea of harnessing the power of these weapons as the means of vindicating and fulfilling his own ambition.
When his father was killed in an auto accident, the top CEO and chairman’s job became vacant at his father’s corporation. He felt an obligation to steer his father’s company. At the same time, it provided him with the perfect circumstance to leave the research team at the UN to assume the chairmanship and the CEO positions at Bio3DN Technology Corporation. He was familiar with the research that his father was conducting. More importantly, unlike his father, James recognized the potential of the technological innovation. Going beyond the belief that it would ultimately pave the road to opening the ‘New Pandora Box’, Chandler had developed specific plans to make it a reality.
Armed with the financial might of his new company, the young Dr. James Chandler enticed the brightest minds of the time to his project. They were mostly young, intelligent, ambitious and dedicated scientists who have come from all around the world, representing various disciplines. Inadvertently, these scientists had dedicated their entire lives to making the vision of Dr. Chandler’s, a reality.
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The facility had 25 sleeping quarters, enough food and water for twenty years with a single stocking. A large elevator shaft connected the living quarters on the first floor to the laboratory that was located 300 ft below the ground. A long corridor connected the elevator shaft and the laboratory room at the end of the hall way. There were two rooms before one could get to the lab. One room on the right was labeled ‘POWER’ and the room on the left was labeled ‘Bio-Electro DB’. The power of the entire facility was provided by a micro-nuclear power plant. The small scale nuclear power plants were developed by the TEPCO after an epic tsunami that threatened safety of nuclear power plants in early 2000’s. The new design allowed powerful yet, efficient fission, cooling, and heat exchanging mechanisms.
Bio-Electro DB was a database system that stored DNA information of biological entities or a plant at the nano-element level. It had an embedded control system that interfaced with external stimulants, which in turn, allowed extraction of the DNA sequencing information for a target element. In a controlled environment, the research team’s ultimate objective was to develop a system that could recreate the subject’s biological, physical, and chemical characteristics using high intensity electrical pulses with the proper DNA sequencing instructions. In other words, their charter was to create a system which could accelerate growth, at cellular and physiological levels, once the target entity was input or identified.
The laboratory itself was a large, spacious room, completely finished in chromium. Inside the main room were two smaller rooms. One of the rooms, also known as ‘the chamber’ or ‘the dark room’, was a size of sixteen semi trucks stacked up in two layers of two by four as it base. With its outside walls made of chrome, it sat in the middle of the laboratory. The door of the dark room was about a foot thick with about eight feet tall and eight feet wide that closed down from the top.
Inside the room were six circular spot lighting devices. From outside, it appeared to be a single lamp, but up close, it housed millions of small pins of lights on each lamp. The devices were placed on every surface of the room. When the door was shut, a perfect vacuum space was created void of any light or air. The air then gets pumped into the room by the computer system based on the controlling algorithm that created the necessary environmental conditions for a target subject. Several Quintessential-Ultra HD cameras were embedded inside the walls so that monitoring could occur from outside the chamber.
The second room was a control room, built with walls of transparent glasses that stored computers, monitors, tablets, digital visors, and other equipment used to control the experiments such as power. Even the aspects of the security of the facility could be controlled within this room. The control room was raised up on a three story platform, erected in cylindrical shape. A metallic stair way that wrapped around the tower was connecting the floor and the entrance to the control room.
There was another room known as the hall, which was furnished for casual usage. There was a large round table with a number of chairs, computers along a side wall, large QUHD TVs, monitors, refrigerators, water fountain, coffee machine, and sofas providing comfortable gathering place for leisure time.
The researchers worked, slept and played in this facility. The very rare times that they would go outside were when they were needed to tend to the very limited company functions. But, they were under strict gag orders and could not reveal what they were working on, to anyone.
Further, the access in and out of the facility was strictly monitored by the chairman himself and few of his elite security guards. They had accepted such working conditions and were satisfied for the most part because they were being handsomely compensated for their sacrifices. Another incentive for the scientists was that they were offered to become part owners of the new company to be founded at a later time.
However, the real driving force for their dedication was the recognition and honor that would be due when the project successfully reached the final milestone. This aspect of the job was more enticing to this group of scientists than all the riches that Dr. Chandler would endow on them for now, or has promised in the future. For that purpose only, they were dedicated and weren’t shy about giving their lives to this project.
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“Mark! Come take a look at this!” Dr. Darren Johnson, a thick glassed nerdy computer scientist, who sported a curly hair, yelled out to the Nano Bio-engineer who was playing poker with Cindy, Jonathan, Hector and Kimberly. Mark was about to raise UN$2500 on his 3 deuces in the game of poker. The pot had already grown to UN$5000. It was a considerable amount of money, but peanuts to these brightest minds whose salaries were absurdly high.
“Raise twenty-five hund—“
“Newsome! Come on!” Darren screamed again.
“What is it, Darren? CAN’T IT WAIT?” Little agitated, Mark shot back even louder.
“No! You need to look at this now, I have one minute left or I will lose this experiment.”
“Nerd…” He slammed the table with the palm of his right hand and got up.
“Well, ladies and gents consider yourselves lucky,” he said as he threw his triple deuces on to the table open faced. Then, he quickly turned and walked towards the control room slightly disgusted that Darren was forcing him to forego the pot money.
“What’s the urgency? It better be good or you will owe me UN $20,000!” Mark protested impatiently while the rest of the poker players let out a sigh of relief and played on the hand sans Mark.
“Now that, the triple deuces have FOLDED, I raise UN $300!” Cindy Lee, one of the physicists, was the first to raise a bet, looking over towards Mark with a smile on her face.
“First of all, I lied about the one minute. But, here take a look! Do you see the apple tree?” pointing at an apple tree inside the dark room that was being displayed on the monitor, Darren urged.
“Yeah, so?” asked Mark nonchalantly.
“What do you see?”
“I see an apple tree, a dead apple tree!”
“Well, it’s not dead. It’s just not transient yet.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
“OK…, now, what do you see?” Darren busily keyed in to execute a part of the tuned algorithm in the bio-growth function of the nano-elements that were created within the chamber. There was a noticeable brightness in the dark room for a short period.
“What do you see?” Darren urged for an answer.
“Wait, did the apple tree just bear new fruit?” “Can you do that again?” Very excited, Mark could not keep his eyes off of the monitor.
“Well, I think so!” Confident and excited Darren entered another command sequence and they both watched another fresh fruit growing on the apple tree.
“THAT’S A NEW FRUIT!” yelled Mark. Now, he couldn’t contain his excitement. This level of success was by far the farthest the team has come to. It always had been simple holographic projections without the live physiological growth transitions. But now, like magic, the tree was growing and bearing fruits right in front of their eyes.
Hearing Mark yell, the rest of the card players hurriedly ran over and joined the commotion. They lined up so closely behind Darren with their heads lowered to see the monitor, Darren was able to feel them breathing on him.
“Give me some space!” Darren said to his colleagues, which made the others back away momentarily, only to huddle back even closer.
“Hold on, that’s not all. I can take it one step further and make that darn thing persistent outside the chamber. It was an accidental find. I reversed the growth algorithm, but gave it accelerated pulses at the rate of twice the forward growth pulses while maintaining all the other elements in the room constant at the same level.”
“So, you were able to isolate one element as if it did not belong in the program?” Mark asked slowly.
“That’s right!” Darren concurred.
“Therefore, it allowed you to isolate that one element from the entire system of holographic images. The result is, effectively fooling the system and causing it to treat that specific element as if it did not belong there anymore! Thus, it makes that element an independent structure beyond the control of its environment.” Mark was extremely excited as he explained what Darren’s accidental findings meant.
“You know your stuff man! Now, let’s take it one step further and give it the persistency outside the chamber,” impressed with Mark’s deductive reasoning Darren praised him before performing the next experiment.
“Now, I have reversed the growth of the last apple using the new algorithm.” And Darren quickly shut off the power.
‘Wing, Wing’ with the sounds of declining power levels, the chamber went dark again. No one could see anything in the monitor. Darren pushed a button and ran to the dark room with the five scientists frantically following behind him. They all waited at the dark room half nervous and half exhilarated as the door slowly rose up to reveal what was inside. Darren walked in first and the rest followed.
And behold! There was a very tiny fruit a size of a thumb. It appeared to be the early form of an apple. They all ran inside the room and Darren cautiously picked it up with both his hands.
“YEAH, YEAH, YOU DID IT, DARREN, YOU DID IT!” The entire laboratory burst into elation. As Darren picked up the fruit off the floor, the five scientists picked up Darren on his back, everyone supporting part of Darren’s weight. Then, they danced a dance of celebration and kept yelling “Yes, Yes, Yes!”
They carried Darren outside and set him on top of the poker table as they threw up poker chips and the pot money into the air. The chips fell back upon them while the paper money slowly floated down like confetti at a victory parade. Then, they called everyone who was in the living quarters to join them at the laboratory. Now, recomposed, Darren quietly spoke.
“People, people, we need to verify one more thing. See this fruit,” handing it off to Mark, he continued, “Mark, you have to analyze this object and must match it to be the complete recreation of the apple that originated from the DNA entry in our test ‘bio-electro DB’. Can you do that?”
Mark took the fruit from Darren and looked at it closely. In a sudden and to everyone’s surprise, he took a big bite out of the small fruit and yelled, “It tastes like an apple! I think it’s real. But, whether it came from our sample DNA, I will need to run some tests. It will take me a couple of hours. But, baby, I think you did it, man!”
“This goes for celebration!” Cindy brought out a bottle of champagne from the fridge and popped it open. She took a big gulp and handed it off to Darren who was still standing on top of the poker table. He stood up and took a sip and passed it on to Mark and on and on.
This was when the other ten half asleep scientists came down in PJs after hearing an alarm followed by an urgent announcement to assemble downstairs during their resting hour. Confused, sleepy, they mulled around the table, trying to learn what everyone else was celebrating.
“What’s happened?” “What is going on?”…, “What’s the celebration for?”
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After heavy drinking and celebrating, Mark woke up with a big headache. After quick shower, he went down to the lab with the sample of the apple. He ran a detailed analysis to determine its origin. With that data in his hands, he opened the PA system and announced, “Folks the apple is from our sample DNA! It’s an exact match!”
All of the team members awoke from the loud sound of the PA that disrupted their sleep. But, Darren, who had consumed most alcohol during the binge drinking session at the urging of the team members, was submerged deep in sleep and missed Mark’s declaration.
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According to Darren, it was an accidental discovery. Therefore, he needed to get to the point where he could recreate the same results with consistency. He spent the next six months fine tuning the algorithm and finally, got to the point where pre-sequenced events could be entered into the bio3D holographic program to isolate a small item at any stage of the process. Hence, capable of making a small target element to be persistent at the end of a robust closure of the program.
The team had a round table meeting and had created a complete report, detailing the results of their experiments, the design of the machine, the algorithm to control the biological growths, persistency vectoring algorithm, and other important information with respect to the research.
Then, one spring day in 2170, Darren and the team leader, Dr. Jonathan Mercy, had contacted Dr. Chandler with the promising news. Following that call, Chandler had scheduled a visit to the lab the next day for a personal demonstration.