Alex Q - The Becoming

The drones dispersed in different directions. Nate thought this was a touch of genius. Each one defaulted to its original flight path, so Boyd’s only option would be to track them all. The delivery drone dipped and dived, turning at breakneck speed in complete disregard for the safety of its human cargo.

The drone continued on the GPS guided path designated by master programming at the Amazon regional center. Karen gripped the netting and pulled herself over to Nate. Together they looked down at the building’s flashing past, squinting against the cool night air washing over them.

“Where is the Breckenwoods neighborhood anyway?” Karen shouted.

“It’s about ten miles from my apartment. Not too close, not too far.”

“We’re going to your apartment? Isn’t that walking into the lion’s den?”

“Look!” Nate shouted, pointing to a cluster of lights in the distance. “The delivery hub.” The drone sped closer and they could make out an area marked out in red encircled by floodlights. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“I hadn’t figured on that. The drone doesn’t land when delivering to this kind of hub.”

“Something tells me I’m not going to like this. How does it deliver?”

“They use a fast drop system. The net opens from fifty feet up, the items fall out and are slowed to a stop by anti-gravity fields tuned to the parcel lining material.”

“You mean we’re going to free-fall and hit the ground? We won’t survive.”

“Anti-grav technology doesn’t work on flesh. Falling onto concrete from fifty feet is going to mess us up pretty bad for sure.” He looked at Karen. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“I’m not. And besides, there’s no problem without a solution,” Karen said, looking at the ground rushing by underneath them. “Nate, there are pools in the neighborhood.”

“What do you think?” he shouted.

“Do we have a choice?”

Nate shifted his body to the edge and sat on the netting support frame. Karen joined him and they held hands.

“Ready?” She nodded. Doing his best to gauge their speed and height, Nate shouted, “Now!”

He opened his eyes and choked. Rolling onto his side, he coughed up pool water until he could breathe properly. Karen pulled him into a sitting position and thumped his back to help get the water out.

“Thank goodness. You stopped breathing. I had to give you mouth to mouth.”

“One of the perks of nearly drowning,” Nate said, smiling. He moved to stand, and stopped halfway, reaching around to cradle the back of his head. “Ow! That hurts.”

“We were on target, but came crashing through those trees. One of the branches must have knocked you out as you came down.”

He looked at the agitated surface of the pool. “We certainly made a mess of that, didn’t we?”

“The mosquito netting helped break the fall a bit, plus we landed in the deep end. Good luck upon good luck,” she said, helping him to his feet.

“I don’t feel lucky. What about you? Are you hurt?”

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’m a lot tougher than I look.”

“When we were falling, I was scared you might hit the poolside.” Nate surveyed the house at the end of the long garden. “We must have made quite a bit of noise.”

“They could be out.”

“Let’s take a look. We’re wet, I’m cold and we’re running out of options.”

They approached the rear of the house crouching low, staying close to the bushes along the garden boundary.

“It looks deserted,” Karen whispered.

“Hope so. What do we say? Sorry to bother you, we fell into your pool from a passing drone; can we borrow a towel?”

“Any other ideas?”

Nate straightened. “Guess not.” He walked to the door and knocked, bending slightly to look through the glass. “There’s nobody home. I hate to do this, but …” He wrapped his wet jacket around his arm and punched the pane out. Turning the key, they were soon inside. The lights came on automatically.

“Ta-da!” Nate said, spreading his arms wide.

“I don’t get it,” Karen said, “What about the alarms? All hell should be breaking loose by now.”

“We’ve got a powerful friend, remember. Practically the whole world monitors their homes using Quadnet. As we arranged for Alex Q to make us invisible to auto-face recognition, I figured the outside cameras covering the area outside the house would hide our breaking and entering activities, eh voila.”

“You mean you took a chance, Nate.”

“It’s all or nothing from here on in. Let’s take a look around, find some towels and food. A beer or two wouldn’t go amiss.”

“You’re incredible. I guess some guys don’t change.”

Nate moved closer and wrapped his arms around here. “Is that one of the reasons you love me?”

“Who said I did?”

“I did. Well? Do you?”

“Yes I do, Nate. More than anything.” They kissed and slipped to the floor, shedding their wet clothes as they went.

Agent Boyd keyed in his NSA security code and accessed the Amazon delivery drone database. He saw that seventy-five drones had deviated from their set routes and been diverted to the fourth floor of the Cybertronix building. After the escape, all drones returned to their designated flight paths, subsequently carrying out perfectly normal deliveries. In spite of the situation, Boyd was impressed. Rather clever: nothing to track and too many drones to follow.

A lesser man would have programmed the drone to take them to a new destination, which of course would have been easy to track. Dr Taylor was indeed a worthy adversary. What concerned him the most was the fact that it couldn’t have been done without the complicity of Alex Q. It is obvious they are cooperating to some degree, but what could be the basis of such an arrangement?

Boyd rocked back in his chair, interlocked his fingers behind his head and looked at the ceiling. Where will they go? What will they do now they are free? How can it affect my plans? Boyd considered the questions briefly. An equation with too many unknown variables was impossible to solve. He must think in terms of probabilities.

The agency’s surveillance capabilities were formidable, with almost total coverage in some city areas. Practically speaking, it would be impossible for them to move around freely without automatic face recognition notifying his team. No, for practical purposes, they were out of the equation. The program would continue as planned, but the extent of their liaison with Alex Q is also unknown. As a precaution, he would initiate a city-wide search using agents like they did in the old days, he mused, perhaps maintain physical surveillance in the vicinity of Dr Taylor’s apartment. He picked up the telephone.

In the Cybertronix car park, a black Dynoglyde Sedan lifted slightly on its axles and silently nosed through the heavy traffic leading to the suburbs. The onboard traffic control adjusted the trajectories of the oncoming auto-drives to give it clear passage as it accelerated.

“I’m on my way out. I need to get to the store before it closes. You’ll be the first one to complain if there’s no Hoopos at breakfast,” Carla said.

“But, Mom, I need this.”

Lord, this boy is a challenge sometimes and no mistake. “It’s a computer game. Nobody needs a game. You want it because you’re game crazy.”

“This isn’t just a game. There’s never been anything like this, and it’s free,” he said, hoping this fact would sway her.

Carla sighed, put down her bag and looked at the face she loved so much. “Tell me again what you want me to do.”

“Awesome. It won’t take long. Thing is, they’ve got these new rules, to protect kids,” he said, stumbling over his words in his eagerness, “Kids under fourteen got to get their parent’s permission.”

“Have to get, not got to get. How does it work? You know I’m not good with computers.”

“There’s nothin’ to it. Sit here, in front of the webcam. It’s got to … has to see both our faces an’ thumbprints at the same time. Put yours there,” he said, pressing Carla’s thumb onto the touchpad. “An’ I put mine here. Then you look into the cam and say what you read on the screen. It’s way cool. Just say your name where it says Mr or Mrs at the top.”

Carla peered at the text. “It looks a bit strange to me.”

“Awe, Mom. It’s all part of the game, to make it realistic. Pleeaase! It won’t work otherwise.”

“If you promise to do your homework, young man.”

“Promise. I’ll check out the game and afterwards I’ll get it done. I will, Mom.”

Carla cleared her throat and began reading. “I, Mrs Carla Jackson, hereby state that my son has my full permission to become a senior team member on the Earth Collision Project. He is fully authorized to carry out Earth collision experiments with near-space objects, monitor the results and take any necessary action to save planet Earth. What in the world …?”

“Thanks, Mom. It’s a fantastic game. I get to choose how big the asteroid will be, how fast it’s going and all kinds of other stuff. I can even decide where it hits, and what it’s made of.”

Carla stood and put on her hat. “Remember: homework. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. Great, Mom. Later.”

The first page of Earth Collision displayed fields for inputting information, either in keyboard of voice mode. He chose voice.

Asteroid Diameter? “100 miles across.”

Composition: Ice, porous rock, or iron? “Iron.”

Angle of Impact? “Default.” He left this at the suggested value of forty-five degrees.

Speed? “Maximum.” The speed was set at forty-five miles a second.

Distance From Earth? “Thirty-five million miles.” Seems a nice round figure.

Impact on Land or Ocean? “Ocean.” Should make quite a splash.

Which Ocean? “Pacific.”

Ocean Depth at Impact Point? “One mile.”

Calculate Possible Remedial Actions? “No.”

Simulation is running. Impact in five point six four days. Log in often to track trajectory and take remedial actions to avoid or minimize collision damage. The Earth is in your hands! We salute you.

Space object S2019JP68, or Scion 6 as it was called for convenience, rotated slowly in the frozen emptiness of space on its thousand-year long journey around the sun. The gentle rotation gave no indication of its speed of over forty miles a second. At a mere ninety-eight miles in diameter, the solid iron core of the mountain-sized rock had long ago radiated all of its heat out into space.

It was one of the larger space rocks routinely monitored, due to its near Earth fly-by, which brings it within two hundred thousand miles at its nearest point. The event was not unique and not considered a danger by the scientists at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Facility in California. It was close, but too far away to be a potential hazard. Currently, at a distance of thirty-seven million miles, the fly-by would occur in approximately five and a half days.

A completely separate branch of NASA monitored the relative positions of more than twenty-five thousand orbital satellites and around seventy-five thousand pieces of space junk orbiting the planet. It also routinely and periodically checked trajectories of the eight deep space probes currently operational.

The technician’s attention was caught by the flashing red text on his display. A soft voice repeated the message: “Trajectory deviation, probe Deep Pluto Nine.”

“Confirm,” the tech said and waited two seconds for the reply.

“Confirmed.”

He waved over his section leader, who came over and looked over his shoulder. “What have you got?”

“Deviation on DP9. Not sure why at the moment.”

“We need to find out if it took a hit or something else happened to set it off course. Ask Operations to check the onboard logs, see how much off-track it is.”

The technician pressed his earpiece and nodded. “Thanks. Operations says at this distance it’ll be over seven minutes before the onboard log transmission reaches Earth.”

“What about tracking?”

“Coming in. Looks like it’s going to slam into Jupiter.”

“Damn. Nobody expected that, I’ll bet. It won’t make much of a hole, but its an awful lot of tax dollar credits gone to waste.”

“Do you think Operations can correct the flight path?” the technician asked.

“Not our problem. We monitor, they operate. That’s how it works, buddy.” The section leader walked off and the technician went back to his crossword. Two minutes later the voice of his terminal AI informed him, “Tracking complete.”

He checked the results and pressed the call button. The section leader reached over his desk and picked up the phone, looking over at his technician through the glass panel of his office.

“Tracking’s done, sir. It’s not going to hit Jupiter. DP9 is going to slingshot around it.”

“What do we know about its trajectory after the sling-shot move? We need to know where this thing is going. Check with Goldstone, extrapolate all known extra-terrestrial trajectories within the Solar System. ”

“I already did it. DP9 is going to rendezvous with an asteroid designated S2019JP68 in seven hours.”