Codename Archimedes
“Humanity can endure much, but it will not long endure the technologies of inhumanity.”
(Today’s story includes fictional discussions of artificially grown and genetically engineered humans, as well as harmful biological agents. Some readers may find this subject matter disturbing. Thanks for reading.)
Day 1, I guess. This is reality now. One of my predecessors must have requested journals, for there was a stack of blank notebooks and two crates packed with completed journals. A colleague after my own heart, for the written hand turns out to be the best thinker, or at least the best accessory to thought. So, I will think this through first in the writing, and then to get to the work—as the work now seems to be my fate.
The helmet is real. Up until the moment it was thrust onto my own head, I thought it was just a story. A tale we researchers told each other for some odd reason—perhaps as a way to reassure ourselves about all our lives getting increasingly more desperate. But, hey, it could always be worse, right? At least you weren’t abducted today.
So here I am, Aubrey Gross, thinking through the reality of my new existence.
What I know: I was abducted on a Tuesday in my home city of Kardisport. I imagine the Protectorate will have told my family a cover story, not where I really am, which is a lab of some kind—the kind of lab I’d have jumped at the opportunity to work in. If only I’d known the cost of such access.
Where I am: As near as I can tell, I am on a lone outpost on a frigid world, in total darkness. There is only one mode of communication—direct, face-to-face discussion with the AI facilitator on his next return to the outpost. He and the strikebots that took me left so fast, and regrettably, I was in such a state of disorientation that I could hardly form useful questions. Doubtless, this was to a purpose.
The atmosphere on the surface is not breathable. There was a belt with a nanosheet, so I poked my head up for several minutes. I did my best in that limited time to scout the outpost’s surroundings, only to retreat beneath the surface, for I’d have frozen within the hour for certain. I could not recognize a single star.
What I am doing: According to my facilitator, I am to do genetic research here, part of a secret program—highly illegal and unethical—in the genetic enhancement of our soldiers. This facilitator assured me that this work is essential to keep the Etterans from overrunning our forces. It is said the Etterans are doing it as well. He told me this, I should note. I’d never heard anything of the like, except from that AI—the one who has spirited me away to this outpost.
This AI facilitator—I suppose I should come up with a better name for him (I’d never seen the model before)—he told me that I will be released back to my family when my service to the Protectorate has been fulfilled. The stories about the helmet suggested that my term will probably be two years. If that is accurate—and everything else about the experience proved nearly identical to the rumors—then this place, this lab, will be my home for the next seven hundred days.
On this day—Day One—I will mourn. I will not work today. Tomorrow, I can begin. Today, though, I will think about my family, my friends, my home in Kardisport, which I have been taken away from against my will. I shall mourn the moment they placed that opaque helmet upon my head and my world went dark and my life stopped.
Tomorrow, I will work.
Day 2: I spent nearly all morning diving into the journals of my predecessors. I don’t have access to an accurate database to track the number of these predecessors and their tenures here, but it seems by the number of entries and the number of distinct styles of handwriting that the research must be decades old now. I find that encouraging, I must say. None of those scientists are here now, which means they must have been relieved after their term. It seems the rumors of a two-year tenure are accurate. If this is what I have been called to perform, then it is tolerable and a small sacrifice compared to so many of my contemporaries who have given their lives in defense of the Trasp Protectorate. This much I can bear.
My head, I realize, is still very foggy. The helmet did not merely blind me while I was in transit, but there must have been some pharmacological agent that rendered me passive and compliant, and now, its effects are still wearing off. My eyes wander off as I’m reading, and even when they do read the words correctly, sometimes I’m struggling to process all the information. The effect has diminished over the course of the day. To the extent that I can write legibly now, I can see that my hands are steadier than yesterday. I hope this improvement continues.
The research is ongoing. The problems are myriad. I shall record the big picture here to help me gather my thoughts. Perhaps this too will serve as a useful entry for my successors, as none of my predecessors has written a good summation. I’ve had to piece together an understanding from a host of different sources.
Problem Statement (in a single sentence): Manufactured humans are psychopathic.
Elaboration: Psychopathy is not an unwelcome trait in engineered soldiers—fearlessness being a common and useful trait in the naturally-born psychopath. But this breed of lab-grown human has proven untrainable, and, considering the set of hyper-engineered physical and mental enhancements that they were bred specifically to carry, they have proven to be extraordinarily dangerous—far more liability to the Protectorate than asset so far.
The euphemism my predecessors have used in shorthand is: “Ex-Res,” which took some time for me to decipher. Experiment Reset. I dare not allow my mind to wander too far into the reality of the scenarios I see in these pages. I shall write no more of it. I can hardly breathe.
The issue goes back all the way to the Founders—the first column. In truth, they brought knowledge along these lines with them from Earth. The problem our researchers are struggling with here is the same one that deterred them from using artificial wombs to jumpstart their dangerously small population. It is one type of horrible ethical conundrum to grow a psychotic pig in a bag for meat. It is an entirely different category of sin to grow the human equivalent.
I’ve had to take another breath. And I truly wonder now whether this duty I have been called to is a better fate than a front-line incursion on Burning Rock.
Ex-Res.
Until further notice.
Day 9: The AI facilitator returned. Much more is known now. The research is much farther along than the journals had led me to believe. The AI facilitator—whose codename is Prophet—informed me that leaving the journals is a tactic they’ve used to slowly orient new researchers to their life here. My codename is Archimedes, and I am the thirteenth such scientist to hold that name on this outpost. Prophet has informed me that I currently have no other identity. It has been erased to ensure that no one who participates in this program is ever unmasked and discovered. I will be reinstated to citizenship in the Protectorate when I serve my term to completion.
Those early journals, Prophet assures me, do not represent the current state of the program or its trajectory. Crops of experimental soldiers have not needed to be reset for nearly two decades now. I had no idea the program could possibly be that old, but, now that I know it to be true, certain things make more sense. The outpost itself for one. The more I examine my surroundings, the more it seems there has been a presence here for some time. Things I thought might have been repurposed and brought here used, now, I think are simply old components that have been here from the beginning.
I now have access to the full database on my specific component of the research. Perhaps their orientation tactic has worked. I am so grateful to know that I am not the one to have to perform that research at that juncture that I am much more willing to look at my task: microbes of some sort. There is still a component of the project that involves our crops of manufactured soldiers, but mostly, I will be working on microbial agents that the Etterans have been using against them—specifically targeting their unique genetics. It is still early, though.
Prophet asked me if there was any creature comfort I could think to ask for that would make my life here more tolerable—a robot companion, perhaps. The expectation is that I will work a sixty-six-hour work week. But that still leaves time for relaxation. They are willing to accommodate my personal desires in exchange for peak productivity during work hours.
The robot, I think, I will give a pass. But I wouldn’t mind staying up to date on the Eastern League play while I’m here. I love my football, and our Protons have a shot at the All Battery this year—maybe the next two or three. There’s a window, and for every fan, always, a hope.
Day 27: A world-shattering discovery! The viroid-type obelisk goes back to Earth, of course. But its importance to this type of research has always been a topic of some debate. I have closely followed the prescribed reading list Prophet outlined, and this is clearly the moment that reveals the true nature of my research. I will do my best to recap it here, as I find this the best way to crystallize my understanding of a complex new idea.
The psychopathy of the manufactured humans is not totally unrelated. Until now, I’d thought this to be an early distraction—simply part of the programming or orientation of new researchers. Now, it would seem that is not so. These quasi-viroid microbes, which the Earth researchers called “obelisks” for their shape, play a role in the human disposition, owing to their relationship to the gut microbiome. Fascinatingly, the absence of such microbes in our early manufactured humans played a major role in the shockingly high MT (Misanthropic Tendency) scores of the young offspring our research produced. This proved the most surprising and difficult obstacle to overcome in stabilizing the mental state of our lab-grown supersoldiers.
Traditionally, even with natural-born humans, it was well known that neglect—such as failure to touch, hold, and comfort human infants—resulted in babies that failed to thrive (leading to infant death in worst cases, in developmental and emotional disorders in less severe cases). Our horrible history as a species on Earth had produced many such case studies from which to learn, usually in the form of orphanages when war or widespread economic destitution resulted in large numbers of abandoned children in sub-standard care homes. The simple act of holding an infant changes its trajectory, physically and mentally.
This was widely known.
Less known was the second major obstacle for lab-grown humans. An artificial womb is a technological creation, obviously—not a living being. Humans are living beings, and like all such creations, are formed from other living material. In the case of mammals, and specifically one with such a long gestational period, the pre-natal environment is a living one, a vital one—a symbiotic relationship between child and mother is critical for the mental development of a healthy human. To manufacture that environment from inert technological matter and expect a human child to spring forth unaffected was a folly of horrific and hubristic proportions. We are not biological machines. Yet the humans before us who attempted this on Earth and my predecessors here both quickly found out that failing to respect that aspect of our humanity resulted in the creation of biological beings that carried our genetic structure, took our shape, and even some of our cognitive attributes, yet they had utter contempt for anything approaching what we might consider “humanity.” They were characterized by coldness, inability to form bonds, violence, emotional volatility, and a complete absence of remorse. Ex-Res. Over and over.
The first major breakthrough came when the researchers attempted to replicate a human pre-natal experience. Simulations of maternal heartbeat and voice, sounds and vibrations designed to replicate a human environment external to the womb—the world of a fictional “mother,” whose existence was totally fabricated. Hormone levels, particularly stress-related glucocorticoids, were varied to mimic the struggles of the mother negotiating a simulated human environment. Our researchers even measured this variable with an eye toward optimizing the pre-natal hormonal levels of a future soldier (or at least specific desirable attributes thereof). How much stress should the mother endure to produce an infant that will one day thrive in combat? They tested questions like this. Then they tracked the trajectory of these children through their accelerated childhoods, up until they got too mature and unstable to manage. Ex-Res.
The “obelisks” were the final piece. Just as the absence of a natural pre-natal environment proved prohibitive toward normal human cognitive development, a similar phenomenon was occurring with co-dependent viroids and bacterial colonies in the gut. Again, human genes and cells do not make a human being. We are not biological tech but living creatures. One cannot just print a desired genome and grow such an embryo in cell cultures and expect it to mature into a human being. Neither is a human mother a neutral substrate for growth. She is a link in the chain of life that extends back billions of years, and her body carries with it in that chain non-genetic elements that will be passed to the child in-utero. One of the challenges for our species in migrating to space was maintaining a healthy bacterial balance in an off-Earth scenario, where exposure to essential co-dependent bacteria was not a given. The transfer of such bacterial cultures from mother to fetus and newborn has proven essential for natural-born humans since our departure from Earth. Our researchers found ways to introduce such bacterial cultures, either in foods or through injections to the artificial placental matter or amniotic fluid. These groups proved far more stable than earlier crops of lab-grown humans. Still, though, they lacked emotional stability beyond puberty, proving utterly erratic, volatile, and unreliable into adulthood. Ex-Res.
The breakthrough did not occur until our researchers compared artificially grown subjects with those born to surrogates. The test group with natural mothers was the first to prove moldable, psychologically stable enough to train beyond puberty. They formed human connections and community, albeit loosely, but were trainable for our military’s purposes. They went on to become the first Trasp special units of fully genetically-augmented human soldiers.
Naturally, the program analyzed every last element of the test group’s biology that could be assessed, and the absence? The obelisks.
The group of fully lab-grown subjects was never exposed to these viroid obelisks, and thus tested as sterile. Somehow this resulted in extreme emotional instability. Needless to say, this discovery was a shock to the researchers. I find it difficult to believe myself.
It is still not fully understood, this relationship. The leading theory is that there is a feedback loop between the bacteria in a healthy gut biome, the naturally occurring viroid obelisks, and emotional regulation in the limbic system of the midbrain.
Why this seems to be the case is still unknown. The exact mechanisms are the subject of the research I am to perform and perfect. But the introduction of these obelisks to the completely artificial field in our fully-manufactured humans proved to be the missing ingredient. We can now grow entirely artificial humans, from a printed genome, in a totally artificial womb, from conception to birth, in fifteen weeks. These accelerated superbeings mature to the point of deployment for service in eight years as fully-grown, fully-trained combat specialists whose fighting prowess far outstrips even the most adept human combat soldiers. And they possess average to above-average emotional stability when measured against their human counterparts.
I surmise that there is likely to be a component of nanotech that is also employed to help stabilize the mind of these subjects as they undergo accelerated training. But, as such research seems to be siloed between different labs, that part is never explicitly outlined in the archives I can access here. This is speculation on my part; however, my field of expertise informs such speculation.
I cannot help but think that I am being pulled deeper into a pit I would have braved death to back away from at the outset. There are valid reasons our ancestors outlawed such exploration of our biology. The humans of Earth categorized this type of technology as “transhumanism.” My gut tells me this is far too neutral and generous a term for this category of thinking. In my view, the field would much more aptly be titled “inhumanism,” and its adherents aptly labeled the enemies of humanity.
Yet here I am, still reading—the scientist in me, still fascinated. It would be foolish on my part, and dangerous, to deny the intoxicating lure of such knowledge.
I am, from this point on, building an evaluation into my nightly routine. When I sit and meditate, focusing my mind on my family and my return to them at the end of this ordeal, I must also weigh my actions daily. I must assess what I will and will not do—how far I will go. How far can I go and still return to them the same man?
A curious and unrelated side note: I have been venturing up to the surface periodically to observe the stars. I have never seen nor heard of any similar pattern of rotation to this ice world’s. The stellar bodies I have noted in the sky do not move in any traditional pattern, which leads me to believe the world I am on is rotating in an irregular fashion, and quite slowly at that. I have certainly completed at least two rotations, yet there is still no sign of sunlight. Not even distant sunlight. Nor is there any evidence of a gas giant or dead star this body is orbiting. A rogue planet perhaps? Still, I have spotted no familiar stars or celestial formations in this perpetual night sky.
Day 66: Prophet returned again. I have completed my orientation period. I thoroughly understand the research of my predecessors and the program’s expectations for my period of exploration. It is far darker than I could have possibly imagined at the outset.
I still have no evidence the Etterans are doing research of this kind beyond the declarations Prophet continues to make that it is so. And I know the history of brinksmanship in the field of biological warfare, what it did to humanity, to our course on the Earth, attacking each other indiscriminately with pathogens.
I have been instructed that the Etterans are targeting our “specialists”—Prophet’s euphemistic term for the artificial supersoldiers this program has manufactured. They are, allegedly, attempting to expose our supersoldiers to self-propagating obelisks that disrupt the stable balance that helps them to maintain emotional stability, essentially returning them to their psychopathic state. The chaos that might result, Prophet declares, is unknowable. And, because the human immune system has co-evolved with these obelisks as a feature of the microbiotic landscape, their bodies have no defense against such infiltration. The immune system doesn’t recognize the obelisks as foreign, so vaccination of any kind, in theory, would be futile.
I have thoughts, of course. The simplest solution, I suspect, would be to engineer obelisks that are hyper-stable, such that any exposure to the foreign obelisks would fail to take root. This would be similar to a seed being unable to sprout because the grasses in the field around it are too healthy and aggressive, affording the invader no access to nutrition. Similarly, in the body, a foreign obelisk could not overgrow a cultured population that was far more stable and in balance with its host biome. This method would protect both the obelisk and the microbiome, maintaining the stability of the exposed supersoldier before any symptoms manifest.
On its face, such research doesn’t seem even slightly unethical. In fact, it may save billions of lives if some nefarious actor were to use such a tactic to target normal humans. In the past, though, this was the very justification. In order to test viral countermeasures against potential pathogens that could evolve, scientists convinced themselves that it was justifiable to create them. It did not go well, to say the least. And with the clarity of hindsight, one finds it far more difficult to presume the beneficence of the researchers who claimed to be well meaning while engineering such atrocities.
I see myself here now, at that juncture, only engaging in another type of biological arms race. My opponents I cannot see. I am told they are quite far ahead of me—so far, in fact, I cannot see their backs to know they are even running against me.
My predecessors in this lab have run, though, quite far. There are permutations of scripts they have written for possible obelisk cultures by the thousand. Similar to how we might breed for a genetic trait in a supersoldier, they have experimented with the coding for certain attributes for the obelisks. They were looking for the most destructive possible outcomes. These must fulfil two traits: First, the desired obelisk will overtake the native population completely; and second, the new obelisk population will destroy the infected subject’s mental stability by disrupting their bacterial microbiome.
It is very difficult to believe that such a small change—a bacterial imbalance—could produce a full-blown psychosis in a subject. The modeling, though, would suggest it is so.
Side note: This is my nightly call to self-report on the ethics of my actions. I have such limited information that it is nearly impossible to properly regard my role in this project thus far. As I think through the mechanism of action for such a … I’m not even sure what to call it, as pathogen isn’t technically the correct word. Weapon is an apt descriptor. I cannot even fathom the pernicious nature of such a bioweapon. My instinct is to deny my mind any leeway to think through the consequences. Yet, I have been forcing myself to do so. For I do not wish to be standing at Trinity, unwittingly, staring down the destruction my genius has wrought and powerless to wrest my creation from the very hands I have gifted that unnatural force.
I must compel myself to imagine the size and shape of the mushroom cloud I am bringing into being. This is what I envision when I close my eyes and think earnestly on the worst possible outcomes.
In a single word: horror.
The incubation period will be slow. Even the modeling for the most aggressive forms of these invasive obelisks shows weeks before significant infiltration of the native biome. It would be weeks more before the new culture exterminates the native, stable species. Mental stability will degrade slowly over this time, resulting in a new type of pathogenic infiltration that has months to spread throughout a completely unwitting, completely defenseless population before a single symptom ever manifests. Its spread, in an interconnected and warring culture, like the Etteran Guild, will be complete long before they have any cause to think they have been attacked.
Then, the targets of this attack will slowly become more aggressive and increasingly more psychotic. Even if they suspect a biological attack, it would take months for them to rule out potential viral or biochemical agents. Even if they looked at the obelisks, which would be highly doubtful, they would see a species so similar as to be nearly identical to the native culture. By then, even with an antidote obelisk, presumably the one I am charged with creating, nearly the entirety of the Etteran population will have gone murderously insane—even their most brilliant scientists.
The Etterans are our sworn enemies. Even they do not deserve such a fate. No human does. Save, perhaps, the ones who could participate in the bringing of such a monstrous innovation into being, and, of course, anyone who could sanction using it.
In total isolation, I have little cause to think my writings are being monitored now, but in case I am wrong, I will keep further such musings to myself. I do declare my loyalty to the Trasp Protectorate to be complete. I will not engage in sabotage. I will do my duty.
Day 184: Two weeks ago now, the research hit the point where modeling could do little more to advance the project, even though modeling is highly preferable from a safety standpoint. As useful as it can be to perform predictive modeling before real-world testing, we cannot know for sure how a biological agent will react when exposed to such a complex system as a mammalian body until the agent is actually introduced.
I had been preparing myself for a very difficult conversation with Prophet when he returned, but again, whoever it is overseeing this program, they have anticipated this problem and even the absolute abhorrence I would have for human testing.
Prophet appeared today with an android named Richard, a model I had never seen before, or at least, I cannot recall having seen him. He looks perfectly human. If it were not for the exactness of his movements, I would struggle to pick him out as artificial. No doubt a form of technological camouflage the Protectorate employs so that such a bot can blend seamlessly into the population.
Richard was carrying rodents with him—lab mice. This batch has been bred to work as a baseline testing model. I can request genetic variations as needed, but for now, I am to begin with these.
Prophet has told me that Richard is programed to self-delete files associated with this project, so each time he appears on the outpost, it will seem to him that it is his first time here. He is high functioning but not very intelligent, narrow programming. He knows how to care for the animals and to breed them, and he has taught me to do so as well.
Soon, I will begin testing the pathogenic obelisks on these little creatures. The thought of it does pull at my gut a little. Appropriate, such a little tug for such little creatures. So helpless. So utterly unwitting and incapable of fathoming their looming fate.
I have no sense of how successful I have been at creating either antidote or perfecting the pre-existing pathogenic obelisks my predecessors designed. The mice will tell me. If I am successful, I shall decide what to do from there.
Side note: It was nearly two weeks ago that the research reached this point of stagnation. I could not proceed until Prophet appeared today with Richard and his mice. I decided to take the time to organize and archive data, both from my work and my predecessors’. In the process of exploring the database, I accessed the local architecture for the project files, but I was also, with a little effort, able to view the higher-level architecture for the outpost. Of course, I was unable to access the program files for other research I am not authorized to see, but I was able to view the file names. These codenames were not well masked. The metadata suggests an abundance of technology equally as dark as the current project. I should write little more. I am not the type of wizard who could move freely about such a system if I wanted to, and I don’t. But such people exist.
I suspect one of two things. This program and this outpost are so secret and well hidden, the Protectorate isn’t overly concerned with anyone outside this facility stumbling upon it or infiltrating it. Its secrecy is its security. Or, and I hate to even think it, but it is a possibility: when I have completed my term here, I am never going home again. They may kill me.
Day 256: Like most real science, especially cutting-edge or new science, there is far more failure than success. But a known failure, in its way, becomes a success. You learn what doesn’t work, narrowing the scope of possibilities, hopefully, to the limited window of successful methodologies. This is true, not just in science, but in life. Failure educates.
All this talk of failure is inspired by a lot of it. In truth, I’m not saddened by it. My greatest hope, in fact, is that I will honestly be able to report to Prophet that this type of biological warfare is impossible. That would be the best outcome for all parties. This repugnant weapon of war would never exist, and we would know the Etterans could not use such a thing on us. In that case, my work here will have been for the good. That is the only possible good outcome I can envision, and the failures are teaching me that such an outcome is not likely.
Though I have failed to infiltrate any of the rodent test groups with an obelisk culture that negatively affects their temperament, I have been able to replace the existing culture with an engineered one. It is only a matter of time before I isolate the genetic signatures in these obelisks that guarantee infiltration. Then, I can begin to alter the genetics elsewhere, inevitably leading to some negative outcome in the subjects’ mental states. How bad this becomes is anybody’s guess.
I do have another hope here as well, though. These rodents were engineered by the Athosians, meaning they are artificial beings. Like our supersoldiers, they were grown from genetic blueprints. At some point, the Athosians must have encountered this barrier and engineered an artificial bacterial and viroid obelisk co-dependence. Perhaps, and this is a great hope, I am only discovering a way to disrupt this engineered pathway—a solution that would fail in a natural born human. That is a real possibility. If that is the case, then the only beings affected by this research would be lab-grown humans. Still a potential horror, but not a species ending one.
Side note: A concerning development. In his visits, ever since his earliest appearance, I’ve made it a habit to ask Prophet about the news, both from home and from the war. That news was a comfort to me. Updates from the outside world have lifted my spirits—to know that all is well in Kardisport eases the isolation. To know that our lines aren’t buckling to Etteran pressures, similarly, gives me relief. During his latest visit, Prophet was evasive, worryingly so. I hardly know what to make of it, as I have no precedent to compare this recent reticence against. He merely told me that updates may not be forthcoming in his scheduled visits, which seem to be growing further in between.
Day 410: The work continues. I have not seen Prophet in two months. Richard continues to bring new mice according to my genetic specifications, but the limitation in his programming prevents me from learning much about the situation outside the outpost. Even when I mention to him directly that he has visited the outpost before, referencing our previous conversations, he insists that I am mistaken. I even showed him a video file of a conversation we had the last time he was here as he entered today. His programming wouldn’t allow him to believe it. He stated that I was mistaken, that there are other bots in the Protectorate that look identical to him. The robot is not an avenue for gaining access to news, and Prophet is still nowhere to be found.
I do wonder how quickly that would change if I sent back a positive progress report with Richard. It’s not as though there isn’t progress to report. I’ve made clear breakthroughs.
I am working in stages. I think this methodology is different from how many in my position would proceed—much more cautious.
Instead of trying to achieve simultaneous success on both fronts: infiltration and affect—I am not proceeding to the second stage until I have a cure in hand for the first. That is, my task is to develop an obelisk strain that both takes over the native culture and subsequently destroys stable cognitive function. I will not research the second effect until I have the antidote for the first. I think this is safer. I strongly suspect that having a countervailing strain for the first problem will mean that I already have the cure in hand if I should succeed in creating a monstrous obelisk strain.
Like so many elements of danger in this research, this avenue also brings a terrible risk with it. If I have the cure on hand already, then the powers that be won’t be so reluctant to release such a terror upon the human race. Indeed, its use becomes much more likely, I fear.
To create such a destructive force without its antidote, though? Would that not be madness? Or is it madness regardless?
These are questions that must be asked. And I do. I do ask them. But the isolation, I fear, has rendered me incapable of judging the ethics of the situation properly. I think this was a question I could have answered clearly before coming here, and certainly I’d have struggled far less months ago. This level of extended isolation is not healthy for the mind. I feel as though this was a simple black-and-white answer once for me. Now? Once you stand on the line for so long, how much more terrible is it really to take one small step over that same line. Live there for a year and suddenly, with the line behind you, it’s difficult to know whether it’s still there at all, and it’s even more difficult to guess your orientation in relation to it. Am I over the line? Is there even a line? Was there ever?
I shall read back over my earlier entries. I suspect that will help.
Side note: Richard and I had quite a heated conversation about my moving the location of the rodents. This was curious. He didn’t know for sure where he’d set them up before, but he seemed to think that they should not have been put in the annex to the hot room, where I moved them last month. He insisted on bringing the new shipment into the lab room where he’d delivered them previously. I wouldn’t allow it. The robot was adamant, even though I promised him I would simply move the mice back to the annex the second he left. I had to tell him five times, and he only agreed to the relocation when I explained to him that it was the off-putting smell of the cages that motivated me to move them in the first place. “This reasoning,” he stated in his robotic way, “is acceptable, Archimedes. I will deliver this shipment to the hot room annex as you request.”
I found that odd. I shall have to think on it.
Day 610: Prophet has finally reappeared again. The longest gap so far—90 days this time. There is concern among the program’s overseers that I am withholding. They have a belief that my personal classification system is more than the quirk I explained it to be.
I do not label test sets in any regular order. Rather, I assign each test set a random set of numbers and letters. It makes my work quite difficult for them to keep track of. For example, if I had seventeen test sets numbered regularly, even though that is an odd number of experiments to run, it would still be quite easy for them to notice if results were missing for set #9 if I had results for 1-8 and 10-17. One random set out of seventeen, though? That is easier to miss, especially as I enter results only after assessing the data sets. There is no missing metadata. So it is difficult for them to know whether there are missing mice.
Some die. More may get born than they know about. I may have run entire sets without their knowledge. I may know far more than they do.
That is possible.
Prophet finds this intolerable. He also finds my progress lagging. He, too, is unhappy seeing the non-test sets being housed in the hot room annex. But I told him in no uncertain terms, just as I told Richard, I am not going to live in a space that reeks of rodent urine. They will stay where they are. All the mice. Every last mouse that can be accounted for.
Side note: I spoke with Prophet about the end of my term. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say that I spoke at him about my expectations. It was not a discussion. He ignored the topic almost entirely. I was so persistent that ultimately he could not leave without giving some reaction.
“The length of your term is indefinite, Archimedes,” he stated. “Many factors affect its duration, including but not limited to the state of the war, the availability of an adequate replacement, the progress of the research itself, among many other variables. The single fastest way you can ensure your release is the successful completion of the program’s objectives. Nothing short of that achievement ensures your release at this juncture.”
Day 684: I have cracked the infiltration problem. For nearly four weeks now, I have been optimistic about strain 8aV76ih1. I have now tested it against the fifty most potent infiltrating agents. No single infiltrating strain of obelisk has survived 8aV76ih1. It is stable. The rodents enculturated with it show no ill effects. They are well adapted and emotionally stable, and once inoculated with the strain, I have failed at every turn to re-introduce a competing obelisk culture. It is the winner. I have the antidote.
Side note: Not until now did I appreciate how monumental this moment would be. What I do now may determine the future of worlds, of entire sectors, whole branches of humanity.
How naïve I was to believe they might not kill me for this. The window of outcomes that ends with me alive and the galaxy untouched by this horror is now exceedingly small.
I shall have to be ever so careful and deliberate. They can never know I have the cure.
Day 716: Prophet has returned again. He was surprised to find my mouse hellscape. I scolded him for insisting he be allowed to enter the hot room to inspect the test sets.
“Not a chance in hell you’re going in there,” I told him. “Over my dead body.”
“I cannot be infected,” he replied.
“But if you carry a single virulent obelisk out into the galaxy with you, in the absence of an antidote, you may kill millions, and that would be a best-case outbreak. No one enters that hot room without an explicit research purpose. Observe the video files if you must witness the horror show.”
And so he did.
Prophet saw what happened to the infected rodents. In fact, the video files were far more revealing than the cages themselves in any single moment, as it took weeks for the carnage to manifest. When it did, though, it was complete—a slow and winding road from minor erratic behavior to full blown psychosis, violent outbursts, and ultimately cannibalism and carnage that overtook the entire population of rodents. The closest viral analogue to the behavior, according to the databases, was a zoonotic condition known as rabies.
I explained to Prophet that this weapon was far from any possible state of deployment. “I have no antidote yet,” I told him. “If this gets out, there’s no guarantee it could be contained in human populations except by isolation. There’s also no telling what it will do to human populations yet. I will need specific humanized rodents to test these strains on. Then I need to develop the antidote. I can give you specifications for Richard’s next delivery. New rodent populations, new cultures.”
“This is excellent progress, Archimedes,” Prophet told me. “You may return home yet.”
Side note: I made a very human error, asking Prophet about the war. I have been here in isolation so long, I made the elementary mistake of ascribing human emotions to an AI like him. I thought he might be more likely to answer that question, given the signals he sent me mimicking satisfaction at my progress. That made him no more likely to answer my question, of course. Prophet did not answer.
Day 857: The Final Day. After the longest isolated interval of my stay, Richard finally returned with a new batch of humanized rodents, bred specifically to test the effects of the ten deadliest obelisk strains on neural function. These mice were bred with human genetic traits in the limbic system and gut, and they were enculturated with gut bacteria common to human subjects—as close a test subject to humans as we could get without engineering higher mammals.
“Where is Prophet?” I asked Richard when he appeared at the lower lift doors. “He has not been back in nearly a hundred fifty days now.”
“I do not know,” the robot replied. “I have not been in contact with Prophet directly myself in seventy-six days.”
“That seems a long time.”
“It is an irregular interval. Yes, exceedingly long.”
“How goes the war, Richard?”
“I have been instructed not to engage with you on such grounds, Archimedes.”
“I must speak with Prophet, though. It is imperative to the project that we communicate, and he has not been to this outpost in some time.”
“I see.”
“Is it possible that his ship has been damaged or his base of operations destroyed?”
“My chain of operations is clear, Archimedes. I may only break protocol on these grounds if the project’s completion is imminent and communication with command vital.”
“Both conditions are met, robot. This set of mice is the final test group. In fact, I have cleared out the hot room. Would you help me to carry them all the way inside please? I have already prepared the field.”
“That is irregular and against protocol.”
“We have had this conversation before, robot. Many times. Is it not true that you may leave the rodents in the annex?”
“That is true.”
“It’s just a few more steps to the hot room.”
“That is true as well.”
“Come down with me, please. I’ll help you carry the mice. You can tell me how the war progresses. It may help me decide how to proceed with Prophet.”
“Yes, Archimedes. I could do this. I am quite capable of carrying all the mice myself, though. It is a small delivery.”
As we walked down to the research labs from the upper level, the robot carried the humanized mice in two cages. He told me the lab that bred them was having difficulty fulfilling its orders, that I would have to breed them here myself. Then he explained that the war had taken a decidedly unexpected and frenetic turn.
“In what way?” I asked him.
“There is speculation that the conflict is near its conclusion. There is even talk of an armistice. Yet at the same time, the lines have become more unpredictable and frenetic than they have been in decades.”
“Is it likely that Prophet may have been impacted by this development, Richard?”
“I cannot calculate the likelihood exactly. However, the odds that he would have neglected to visit this outpost in the interval you specified earlier are very low. It would not be flawed logic to assume something may have happened to his ship in transit or to him directly while he was visiting another outpost. He also could have been impacted by the attack on Raal, possibly even damaged beyond repair or entirely disintegrated.”
“That’s terrible news,” I said as we arrived at the hot room annex.
“A complication to the program if true. May I set the mice here, Archimedes? I have some instructions specific to breeding this group. Since this is my first time to this outpost, I don’t know how familiar you are with the process.”
“Please, set them in the inner room, robot, as we discussed previously. I’d like to breed them directly in the hot room to minimize the number of times I must go inside during the final phase.”
“Ah, I see. This is part of your safety protocols, Archimedes?”
“A very important component of it, yes.”
“As you wish. Please instruct me on where to set up the cages, as I am unfamiliar with the layout.”
I brought in several empty cages from the outer room as Richard entered the hot room. I had been thinking of this very scenario for months, ever since Prophet failed to appear.
My memory of this dumb model was the only variable I had doubts about. I was afraid he might be able to escape the inner vault. In no way was I a structural engineer, but I had eyes. I could see now that this android was a very limited multi-use model. Could it beat me in a fight? Without question. Was it any match for the vault door of the hot room? No. Certainly not in the timeframe it would take me to commandeer its vessel.
I was thinking about the different possible problems I might encounter after I locked the robot inside the hot room. Was there anything left I needed to ensure I did beforehand? No. I was certain. Nothing I hadn’t already tended to.
Richard was dutifully instructing me in the breeding process, as though I wasn’t already well familiar. As though we hadn’t had the same conversation a half dozen times before. He waited as I walked out, bringing back two empty cages each time, testing, familiarizing the robot with the sight of me walking out and coming back in. Then, as it was nearing the end of its demonstration, I told it I must relieve my bladder. Biological needs. Such models were programmed to understand animal necessities.
“I will await your return, Archimedes,” it said.
Presently, it is quite confused, locked in the hot room. I am certain it is too simple a model to realize my reasons for locking it inside the most accursed room of this accursed outpost.
The knowledge in this pit must never escape. I do not know what other horrors exist in the archives here that I didn’t have clearance to access. But, for my part, the genetic code for the ten apocalyptic strains of obelisk never made it to paper nor computer archive. Every last possible biological sample has been incinerated. And, most importantly, the only place the antidote resides is in my memory.
I don’t know who might read this. I hope no one, ever.
However, if it is human eyes that have breached these pages, know this: hell resides down the trail I was forced to cut here. I have covered it over for good reason. Humanity can endure much, but it will not long endure the technologies of inhumanity. If you need proof of this, pull up the archive and query the folder KEN-MEET-a, and view the file within titled “Success!” which I named thus in a fit of ironic madness. Then imagine what would happen if what you see on that file wasn’t rodents cannibalizing each other in a fit of psychotic rage, but people. Then imagine it happening all over the galaxy. Then remember that the antidote to that outcome dies with me. Then remember that the codename Archimedes is anonymous and that I lied about my true identity and my home city to protect my family. You will never find me.
Then, do as I did, and if you do not have the means to destroy this place outright, as I did not, leave and never return. Forget you were ever here. For the sake of humanity, forget this place ever existed.