Despite his insubordination, Nik persuaded the Colonel to reassign his primary staging ground to site four. All he had to do was make up some elaborate bullshit about mission security, and the Colonel ate it up. It wasn't easy giving up the inviting climate of Australia, but having the opportunity to work with Valentine more than made up for it.
News of the missing recon team spread like a virus. Faces around the staging sites hardened with suspicion, some teetering on the brink of lunacy. Security teams were constantly monitoring the STMs at all of the staging areas. Every time Nik materialized, he was met with the cold, menacing gaze of a rifle barrel. Nik couldn't blame their paranoia. He would shut down the entire STM network if it were up to him. There was no telling anymore what could pop up in that little pod.
It took a while, but security around the staging areas gradually returned to normal when it looked like nothing would happen. Security teams remained, but they paid less attention as time passed. Yet, despite the apparent return to normality, paranoia had sunk its teeth deep into Nik, gnawing relentlessly at him like a parasitic infection.
Exhausted from the monotony of the day, Nik trudged back to the insulated shack he called home. When nightfall was on the horizon, he quietly slipped out of his metal hovel. It hadn't snowed in a while, but the chill lingered. Nik hurried to the staging area's solitary gate, his breath trailing behind him like ghostly puffs in the frigid air. As Nik's shadow crested the guardhouse, the servicewoman tore her eyes away from the flickering computer screen, glancing up at him. Nik casually waved as he strolled by. With a curt nod, she turned her attention back to the dull glow of her screen.
Nik's routine had become so predictable due to his regular comings and goings that even the guards knew it by heart. He'd leave at nightfall, spend a few hours at Valentine's, then come back just a little drunk. He had become quite skilled at acting drunk. They didn't even check his ID anymore.
Once far enough from the gatehouse, Nik quickened his pace, navigating through the cold evening toward the woodline. As he approached the ominous trees, a nearby chalet's warm, inviting glow beckoned him. He knocked on the thick wooden door and waited, shivering.
After a moment's wait, the door swung open, unleashing a welcoming warmth into the biting cold. An apron-clad woman with jet-black hair and eyes the color of burnished copper appeared.
"Good evening, Mrs. Cooper," Nik’s warm greeting was met with an annoyed scowl.
"Nik, I swear to almighty that if you don't start calling me by my first name, I'm going to punch you in the mouth so hard it'll wake up your dentist." A fisted oven-mitt accompanied Mrs. Cooper's dangerous tone.
"Er... Sorry, Erica." He fumbled.
"Good, come on in. Val's in the den." She said, letting Nik inside.
"Thanks." Nik smiled. He passed around Erica and turned left. An interesting fact about the Coopers' residence was its lack of an actual den. Nik clomped down a short set of stairs as Erica closed the door behind him. Before going any further, he stopped in front of an unseemly coat closet. Nik opened the closet door and reached down to a hidden latch buried under a heap of thick clothes. After careful excavation, he pried it open, revealing a metal ladder that descended into a small concrete passage. "Take this with you," Erica said, shoving a small tray of snacks into one of his arms. "And don't you dare drop it."
"Of course." Nik stammered. He nearly fell into the hole, trying not to let the morsels scatter all over the closet. His fingers clung tightly to the tray, muscles straining against the awkwardness of his posture. Nik wasn't used to climbing down a ladder while holding a tray in one hand. Still, he wasn't about to piss off the only person who could intimidate Valentine, so he took his sweet time.
As he neared the halfway mark, the trap door clanged shut above, its echo ricocheting off the cold cement walls. Nik carefully continued his descent.
When his feet felt solid ground again, he quickly readjusted himself before trekking down the corridor. The contents of the tray slid precariously back and forth with each step.
Eventually, the hall emptied into a large bunker room. He found Valentine sweating over the final touches of the room's renovations.
After seeing the completely outmoded utilities, Nik suspected this bunker was a leftover relic from the twentieth century. This was far removed from what he had imagined when Valentine unfolded his plan for a covert workspace.
Since the recon team disappeared, Nik began drafting a contingency plan for the STMs in case foreign affairs deteriorated. The powers that be largely ignored his ideas since they required collaboration with foreign agencies, which frustrated Nik to no end. After all, it was their fault that everyone was in this mess to begin with.
He had confided this to Valentine, not expecting what he would eventually be standing before. A fully functional, unnetworked STM.
Pulling off such a feat had tested Nik's limits like never before, a challenge that would have been impossible to surmount without Valentine and Erica's help. The process involved a year of meticulous concealment, demanding patience and precision in equal measure.
In the stolen moments away from watchful eyes, Nik created save-states of STM components, keeping the batches small to avoid raising suspicion. The task was painstaking, yet he persevered until he had accumulated enough component data to proceed to the project's next phase.
That's when Erica's genius came into play. She had originally devised the idea of using a functioning STM to materialize parts for a new one.
Their secret project gradually took shape as the component data came to life in the staging area. Piece by piece, an uncharted vision materialized into reality.
Nik would then secretly hand off the parts bit by bit to Valentine, who could easily sneak them off the compound in his seemingly bottomless coat pockets. Security always screened him when he entered the staging area but never when he left it. The bulky parts were saved for last.
Erica ran a little market stall just inside the compound fences. She sold local groceries and dishes to the soldiers sick of the sewage the military called food. This privilege allowed her to bring her truck inside the wire. When she was finished for the day, she gathered all the garbage, and Nik would conveniently help dispose of it. Picking through the nauseating refuse made Nik want to hurl every time, but at least it helped them smuggle out the parts that were too big for Valentine.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The real challenge appeared when figuring out how to power up the STM once completed. It would be suspicious to have a multi-gigawatt spike on the power grid every time they used it. Nik came up with a solution: a power reservoir. It would slowly collect energy, like a dam collecting water, which could be released in a surge when the machine needed it. It could siphon energy slowly from the primary grid if they needed it. Still, to start it up, they had to find some way to fill it beforehand.
Nik and Valentine had been plagued by the problem for weeks when Erica Cooper saved the day again. One evening, she returned and handed over a half-empty fuel cell.
"Where the hell did you get this from?" Nik had asked, nonplussed. The proton exchange units were usually kept under lock and key. He forgot that Mrs. Cooper volunteered at the mess hall on the compound, where the cooks used the fuel cells to run the kitchen equipment. In typical military fashion, they had an overabundance of them in supply.
Nik suspected Erica had batted some eyelashes to get her hands on them. The unsuspecting cooks must have thought they were helping her save money on her electric bill. It took a few weeks, but eventually, they could siphon enough power to fill the STM power reservoir.
"Oooh, did Erica have you bring those?" Valentine said, snapping Nik out of his reverie. He stood up from working and joined Nik before the bootlegged STM. Valentine eyed the tray and took a couple snacks. "So yer re'y tah run 'er?" He drooled through a mouthful of cookies.
"Not yet," Nik said, taking a pastry off the tray. "We still need a second STM to connect it to have a network." Nik had been purposely avoiding this detail for a while. Once the STM was built, he had yet to learn where they would connect it since nobody else had access to it. He also couldn't leave the compound, so he would have to completely trust its construction in someone else's hands. The amount of secrecy involved made Nik uneasy.
"Why don't we go to my government?" Valentine suggested.
"They'll probably just do the same thing mine did," Nik replied, shaking his head. They stood in silence for a moment.
"I guess we'll just have to find someone outside government control," Valentine concluded. Nik had no idea who that could be, so he waited to see if Valentine had any ideas.
"You know, my wife's book club has-"
"Please, no," Nik interrupted. Valentine burst into a fit of laughter, filling the cold room with life.
"I was just kidding, Nik," he reassured after pretending to wipe a tear away. "Actually, there was a gal I used to work with back when I was a bureaucratic pencil pusher. She's pretty good with tech, a bit of an asshole, but damn trustworthy. I'm pretty sure she ended up marrying and having a kid. The little tyke should almost be a teenager by now. I wonder where she sent him for schoolin'. What was his name? Antone? Ayrin?" While Valentine mused, Nik tried to imagine someone as massive as Valentine crammed behind a desk.
"You think she can help us?" Nik prodded. He didn't like the idea of trusting someone he had never met, but at this point, he didn't have a choice.
"Of course, but I'll have to travel out of the country to deliver the parts."
"How are you going to smuggle them across the border?" Nik asked.
"We'll just disguise it as old computer scrap." Valentine must have already put a bit of thought into this. "And don't worry about getting it running. I'll take care of that." Nik stuffed another snack into his face. He always had an inkling that it would eventually come to this. The plan was to build an independent STM network that people could use in secret just in case the government or others decided to start real problems with the existing network.
Nik believed that if the network was allowed to evolve in the hands of ordinary citizens, it could become even more pragmatic than its current state. This might pave the way for Valentine's envisioned peaceful future. Sure, the idea was far-fetched, but who could tell what the future held?
For now, the critical hurdle, as Nik saw it, was ensuring this technology landed in the right hands. Nik decided to trust Valentine's judgment.
"If you trust this person, then so do I," he said.
"Terrific!" Valentine said, delivering one of his iconic slaps on Nik's shoulder. "So what are we going to call it?"
"Call what?" Nik asked, rubbing his shoulder.
"This new network of ours," he replied. "It's gotta have a name. You know, to make it official."
Nik considered it. After a minute, the perfect name came to mind: "How about we call it the Bilocation Network?" He looked over to see if Valentine approved.
"That sounds official enough," he nodded.
"Good," Nik said, "Because I'm officially appointing you its chairman." Valentine opened his mouth, but only silent astoundment came out.
***Ari***
"The adjustments to all passive functions are complete." Ari scanned the array of brain activity graphs and charts sprawled across his screen; each spike was a beautiful checkpoint in his mental evolution. He looked over the monitor at his clone, fresh out of the STM chamber. "How do you feel?"
"An average mind might miss the subtle shifts," the clone mused, exploring the new sensations in his cerebral landscape. "But with the restructuring we're undergoing, even the minor modifications are hard to ignore."
Ari nodded in agreement. Each refinement made him feel like a sculptor chiseling away imperfections, revealing a more perfected version of himself with every modification. It became much easier for him to respond efficiently to his environment.
The constant intrusions by the Colonel and other officials were annoying. Nevertheless, Ari realized he could easily eclipse their incessant demands with energy and focus to spare.
The added efficiency wasn't all that unexpected. Still, the speed he and his clone were able to gain in their operations was edifying. He had wanted to make a second clone of himself to speed up work, but it became unnecessary once they improved their focus patterns.
Ari pondered the potential accomplishments of humanity unfettered by distractions. The thought would have sent chills down his spine before, but those seemed unnecessary now, so Ari didn't allow it. He was in control. Suddenly, a message popped up on his screen.
"Urgent. From Colonel Parker," he relayed to his clone. The other Ari wandered around to the screen and read over Ari's shoulder.
Subject: Urgent Update Respond upon receipt
Body: The investigation of the missing special reconnaissance team has been terminated. I have received intelligence from higher up that foreign governing bodies have contacted us with disclosure of access to STM technology.
For the time being, these parties have kept knowledge of the STM's existence completely confidential. Nevertheless, they are willing to go public if we do not enter into a cooperation agreement to utilize the technology across borders.
A list of actors with access has been included in the attachments. Our priority now is to broker a neutral stance and establish safety measures in the ongoing operations of
Project Silent Echo. Please be prepared to leave operations to serve as an ambassador to US envoys should the need arise. Doctor Krylov is the only other Silent Echo personnel to receive this update. I will address all other personnel about the situation as it develops.
Colonel Sebastion Parker
US Department of Technologic Affairs
Commanding
Once the message was fully digested, Ari opened the attached list from the Colonel. Ari's eyes skimmed swiftly through the details.
His clone shrugged nonchalantly, scanning the list. "Pretty much the usual suspects. Just the countries we've already had on our radar." Ari nodded in agreement. They had both known for a while that foreign governments had control of the STM. They deduced this was the only outcome because anyone else would have tried to do something stupid by now. Contrarily, a government would take time to turn its inefficient wheels to make silly, actionable decisions. Completely expected.
His fingers hovered over the keys, the soft tapping replaced by a heavy silence as his gaze remained glued to the glowing screen. "Now that we have official confirmation, it's time to activate our contingency measures." Ari knew what needed to be done. His clone nodded in agreement. Ari swiftly keyed in a brief response to the Colonel.
His clone didn't spare another moment before busying himself with more analysis of the STM code that represented his occipital and temporal brain lobes. Things were beginning to come together nicely.
"Nik isn't going to like this news," Ari said.
His clone's lips curved into a wry smile, the irony not lost on him. "Isn't it peculiar? Nik always yearned for the STM to become public knowledge." Their fingers continued to fly across the keyboards, the only sound in the room being the soft click-clacking of keys.
