The Island Project: A Thriller (15 page)

CHAPTER 37

HILO POLICE DEPARTMENT

16 OCTOBER, 2:30 A.M.

Detective Lee shut down his computer for the night. He turned off his desk lamp and grabbed the keys to his Jeep. It was late—actually—early in the morning. He had stumbled onto a lead after speaking with a woman earlier that day. She had spoken of a logo or insignia seen on a helicopter that had passed her house frequently over the last few days.

Lee ran the logo through image recognition diagnostics and came across some interesting findings. It turned out there was a company called CERTA that had a vague reference to having its headquarters on the Big Island—just off the eastern side of the island, inland from Hilo. Which would put them in range of where the woman had seen the helicopters flying by. He was unable to find much of anything else on them. CERTA didn’t have a formal website of its own. Lee had found a very generic reference that gave little—if anything, of a company description. But, the company logo fit the description that the woman had given him earlier.

99.98% match. It was almost certainly the same company.

But where did this place exist?
He had lived on the Islands his entire life and never once heard mention of this place.

Lee made his way through the office. It was dark—besides the light coming in from the parking lot streetlamps. He stepped out the front doors and used one of his keys to lock the doors behind him. Then he walked across the parking lot to his Jeep.

The newfound information about CERTA stuck in his head. It was
something
, at the very least—even if it didn’t turn up anything. Lee needed something to pursue since he was hitting dead ends everywhere else.

He decided he would leave early in the morning to investigate. He hopped in his Jeep, fired up the engine and drove up the road to his house.

CHAPTER 38

THE DEN

16 OCTOBER, 2:45 A.M.

The sound of the door opening awoke Kelly from her dazed state. She must have nodded off again. Whatever was in her system was seriously affecting her ability to focus. Last she remembered, Tom had disappeared into a hallway. He kept appearing on the different cameras throughout the building. First he had been chased through the lab and then through a hallway until she lost him when he ducked inside a room.

As far as the wildcat was concerned…the proof was right in front of her. It was obvious now. Kelly came to the realization that the cat was, in fact, not real. It was some sort of machine...or robot. Whatever it was, it was trying to kill Tom and had nearly succeeded.

Kelly felt horrible. She felt like this was her fault and, at the moment, she was more worried about Tom than her own safety. She was, however, feeling more alert. Her eyes could focus on objects, and she was beginning to have feeling in her arms and legs. She wiggled her body around and looked back across the room.

Braden appeared. He was dragging something…

It was Tom.

“Tom!” Kelly yelled. “What did you do to him?”

Braden looked up at Kelly, surprised. “Oh, I see somebody is awake.”

Braden dragged Bennett into the empty containment next to Kelly. She could see Tom was barely moving. He let out a groan, indicating he was alive, at least partially. Braden shut the door, leaving Bennett alone and tied up on the floor of the cell.

“This man is extremely lucky. I’m not sure how he got away from them…”

“What did you
do
to him?” Kelly yelled. Her voice exposed her fragility. It angered her that she couldn’t control it at the moment.

“He’ll be fine. They didn’t get to him. I did.” Braden directed his attention to Kelly. “Now…” he said with a cheerful voice that came across rather unnerving, considering the circumstances. He pulled up a chair and sat in front of Kelly.

“What exactly are you doing here?”

Kelly hesitated. She looked over at Bennett, hoping he would miraculously snap out of it and help her. But he was collapsed on the floor and unresponsive. She glared back at Braden and gave him a look that could freeze the sun.

“You’re
sick
. You know that?” Kelly said wrathfully. She was furious. She had no problem speaking her mind. Her tactic now was to be direct and demeaning. “Whatever you’ve created…those…
robots
. They’re monsters.”

Braden let her talk.

“You shot and killed that man…” Kelly pointed to the doorway where Tegan’s body still remained laying on the floor. “Why did you
kill
him? Kelly asked.

“Because he’s a psychopath,” Danner interjected.

“Quiet!”
Braden yelled at Danner, who was sitting inside his containment with his back to them. Danner had stayed quiet for the most part after Kelly had arrived.

Braden returned his attention to Kelly and continued. “Collateral damage. That man was getting in the way of my tests and I don’t want him or anyone interfering. Rick should never have involved him or anyone else in this.”

“What are you talking about…
tests
?” Kelly demanded.

“You’re interested…I can see that. I’ll tell you, but first you tell me what you’re doing here,” Braden asked and folded his hands together.

Kelly looked down, pausing for a moment. Then she spoke. “We were hiking—in the reserve. Then we came across the building. We were planning on just passing by, but…we noticed…” Kelly looked over at Tom. “We could see into the building. We saw the cats in here…we thought they were real.”

A smile spread across Braden’s face. “They
do
look real don’t they?” He seemed pleased to hear Kelly’s comment. He clearly took it as a compliment to his creation. “So you happened to stumble across the building while you were out hiking. You looked inside and saw the poor, trapped kitty cats and you wanted to save them? Is that about right?” Braden spoke with gross enthusiasm. He blinked quickly while he spoke.

“Am I right?” he asked.

Kelly stared at him. “Until we found out what they really are…killing machines. And you…” Kelly looked away disgusted. “You’re a murderer.”

The smile faded from Braden’s face. “Wrong place, wrong time. I suppose.” He sounded slightly defeated by Kelly’s accusation. Braden paused for a moment as if deep in thought. Then changed the subject.

“You asked about my tests…
yes,
I’m testing. I’m testing them in a live environment. They need to be released into an uninhibited ecosystem where they can evolve on their own. Free to explore, adapt…and hunt. You see, the only way to actually advance their behavior is to remove them from a controlled environment and place them into the wild.”

“They’re dangerous. Can’t you see that? They could kill an innocent person out there,” Kelly said agitatedly. 

“Yes, they
can
be dangerous. They can also be controlled,” he said.

Braden got up from his chair and began pacing. “It’s
all
about control, and they abide. They’ve always come back to me.” He paused. “Well, until yesterday…but I know what went wrong. I know why she didn’t return.” Braden seemed to be thinking as he spoke—as if he was working something out. He realized he was losing his concentration and focused again on Kelly.

“You see, the technology surfaced rather easily. Robotics have made leaps and bounds over the past few years, especially in the area of prosthetics. People who have never been able to use their legs are now walking around like normal human beings—even running and jumping. There are some who have never been able to write a letter or hug another human being with their own fully functioning arms, hands and fingers.

They can now do that with the help of science. It’s because of us—and we help people every day with it,” he said—pointing at himself proudly.

Braden continued pacing back and forth as he spoke.

“For example, a man with no arms can now pick up a spoon and feed himself, just as he would if he had real limbs of his own. He can do this simply by
thinking
it. A sensor of electrodes is implanted in the motor cortex of the brain…the cortex being the part of the brain that controls movement and motor skills…the person’s thoughts are relayed from the sensor to a computer, which sends instructions to the robotic arm—and there you have it.” He spoke quickly and animatedly. “So the brain controls the robotic prosthetics and the person is able to perform necessary functions to survive.”

Kelly looked over at Tom. He was still lying down.

“This is all good and has been a major breakthrough in neurorehabilitation as well as sustaining rehabilitation for para and quadriplegics. However the downside, is that in order for it to be of practical use, we needed to find a way for people to control it without being tethered or ‘hooked up’.  Unless they wanted to carry around a machine with them while they went on a date…” Braden smiled at Kelly as if he had just told an amusing joke. Her impassive expression remained unfazed.

“Anyway, we took that award-winning technology and began to insert it into other fields: Medicine—we developed a surgery sequence carried out entirely by robots. Routine C-sections can now be completed without a doctor being in the room. Surgical procedures become templates and they can be performed again and again with precise execution. In the military, we have created robots that can handle life-threatening tasks that may be too risky for a normal human being to accomplish. Soon, we will have robots doing the job of a soldier—and we will spare hundreds of thousands of human lives.” Braden looked off into the distance, as if he was experiencing a vision. “However, we soon realized after field-testing many different subjects that the communication needed to come from the device itself and not rely on a host to inform it. You see…”

He placed one hand behind his back and paced.

“We have these brilliant machines, but they are entirely dependent on humans to manually control them.” Braden looked at Kelly as if to see if she understood where he was going. “The robots are only as good as the intelligence driving them. So in order to create smarter robots we needed to refine their AI to account for human error. We also needed a way to operate the robots without having to be physically attached to them. Therefore, we developed a way to communicate with the robots remotely, as needed, and let their on-board intelligence make the functional decisions. This way they begin to learn and store the data from their exercises and encounters—so that they become, in a way, self-sufficient. Soon they are solving problems that they were never trained for, and they are able to develop a solution
much
faster than a human can process. The solutions to their decisions are weighed on success rates, and they can learn and store their success and failures into their memory. Over time they operate with very limited need for human involvement of any kind.”

Braden looked up.

“Think of an airplane. For the most part, the plane flies itself. These days Autopilot is capable of handling almost one hundred percent of the functions involved with safely flying an aircraft.  Humans are really only there in the case of error. But even then, we’re not perfect. We make mistakes too…it’s inevitable. Much like autopilot, our robots have stored functions and are trained to handle most any pre-determined encounter. They are even able to learn new functions based on MMM, Motion-Mirroring Memory. But what makes these machines so fascinating…what makes them a miracle of science…is the integration of nano-communication.”

Kelly was acting interested while she tried to think of a plan of escape. She glanced over at Tom. He was rubbing his chest and he seemed to be blinking his eyes—as if trying to focus. He was still lying on the ground but he looked to be gathering himself. Kelly felt more at ease. She could see Tom didn’t appear to be hurt badly. She looked away and attempted to listen to Braden.

“Nano-communication opened the door for us to interact with the robots without having to be tethered to them in any way. Years ago, Dr. Perry founded NanoCom. He led a team experimenting with RNM, Remote Neural Monitoring. Through their research, they found a way to actually etch nano particles onto microscopic electrodes that could attach to the cortex of the brain. No more strings attached—literally.
Huge
achievement, I might add—history-making scientific breakthrough. Then they were able to communicate with a person from a computer, without the person having to be hooked up to it. The information was passed through a wireless network, just like a household mobile device. But they ran into a problem right away. The human brain was unable to process the infinite amount of information that it was now exposed to 24/7.  The test subjects felt like they were going crazy and also becoming considerably depressed—
suicidal
actually. The data transfer alone that was passing through their head was hovering around twenty billion bits per second. It was an explosion of information that tapped into all of the human senses at once and resulted in driving people mad. Besides that, the connection wasn’t secure—which made things very risky. They needed to develop a way to securely neutralize any unwanted transmissions so they could regulate the data exchanges. You don’t want people hacking into your mind, right? It was again, Dr. Perry, who developed the solution…and he named it MindGate. It’s essentially a communications pathway using compressed data in MEF, Multi-scale Electrophysiology Format, protected using 512-bit AES encrypted algorithms. It’s extremely secure and virtually impenetrable. A sentinel at the gate of your mind, if you will. It solved all of the issues about unsafe data transmissions and allowed the subject to trigger the electrodes on demand. It was a technological breakthrough and put the power of control into the mind of the host. The host could communicate how they wanted and when they wanted. And once the power of truCloud technology was established, it brought management of all functionality into a new level of accessibility. VA’s became standardized and, suddenly, everyone had their own personal Virtual Assistant,
including
those equipped with MindGate.”

Braden was so impressed with himself he couldn’t hide the smile from his face as he spoke. He went on.

“The difference being where most people used their mobile device to communicate with their VA, the host used, what we call Synthetic Telepathy, to communicate with theirs.

“
Telepathy?
”
Kelly said skeptically.

“Yes.
tele
meaning “distant” and
patheia
meaning “to be affected by”. Since they are controlling actions and directives with their mind, it is considered a form of telepathy.”

Braden sounded as if he were delivering a lecture.

“
Bingo—
a person could now communicate with a virtual cloud of information using only their thoughts. And they could access it
anywhere
at
anytime
. The ‘technology of the future’ that people have been talking about for years is now available.

And there’s more…”

He stopped pacing and locked eyes with Kelly.

“We’ve developed a way to manufacture it,” he said confidently.

“Wait a minute, you’re manufacturing—mind control?” Kelly suddenly sounded interested.

“We’re manufacturing mind
communication
.” Braden ran his hand through his dark hair and adjusted his glasses. He looked up at Kelly. “We’re calling it ‘The Shot’ for the moment.” He smiled, seemingly pleased with the title. “The reason for the name is because we can actually insert the nano-electrodes into the bloodstream and they are smart enough to attach themselves onto the cortex. No surgery, no recovery period—it’s virtually non-invasive.”