Hi All, Hope you are all safe and well. Just wanted to share this Early Adopters short story I wrote the other week. I did it in the form of a MilliTech internal report. Hope you enjoy! D.T. Report of: Director Pitts
Report to: MilliTech Management Committee Project: Powerpack Project Classification: Above Top Secret Date: 21/07/ 2076 Report Detail: It is with deep regret that I write to inform the Committee that project Powerpack has failed. You will have learned by now the salient details of yesterday’s events, however as senior executive on site, I will relay in more detail what transpired. I arrived at our Powerpack facility in the Pennines at 8.30am, greeted by Professor Lendt. After a brief tour of the facility, the third that I have been required to endure, myself, Lendt and his three subordinates took the secure magna-lift the further ten floors straight down to the facility core, so that the reactor test could commence. Once we were suitably ensconced behind the safety glass of the reactor viewing platform, Lendt was at pains to tell me of the advances his team had made since my last visit. I informed the professor that for the good of the project and himself, we hoped that this was so. Lendt was left in no doubt how highly MilliTech valued The Artifact donated to him or how many other good uses it could have been put to during his years of failure. For his part, Lendt seemed unfazed. Less nervous than usual. He gave off the air of a man who had succeeded in bottling lighting. For once, he was as eager to get started as I was. If only we had known. We were soon joined by the familiar blue glow and incessant hum as the reactor below came online. Lendt gave the signal and I made the call, with more confidence than on previous occasions. Contacting Grid Control, I gave the order to switch all of our facilities to back up generators, then looked over to Lendt for the final all clear. He gave the instrument deck a final check, before throwing me a nod, grinning manically as he did so. I wasted no time in ordering Grid Control to kill the auxiliary generators and stand by. The deep thrum from the Powerpack reactor intensified, pulsing through us bodily. I held my breath, expecting the usually anti-climax. To my surprise however this time Powerpack took the strain. The test was successful. The facility was powering everything we have, worldwide, from a clean, renewable, inexhaustible resource. It was ten minutes into the test when things began to fail. I noticed the irregularity among the cacophony of noise all around us. The professor tried to dismiss it at first, but there it was. Undeniable. Deafening noise with guttering spaces in-between. We looked down to the reactor core below us. The engineers milling around had picked up on it too. Hastily they checked readings, made adjustments and grew gradually more impatient with each other. Behind the blue central core of the reactor, a stranger glow began to pulse. Around fifteen minutes into the test, a rhythmic thudding developed, building to sound above the general operation of the facility. Lendt was visibly panicked by now and looked to make his way down to the reactor floor to direct matters himself. His aides moved to stop him and it was at this point that the figure appeared, looming against the central plexiglass wall of the reactor core. They all froze in terror. It was then that all hell broke loose. The steady thud, thud, thud continued, now competing with myriad alarms shrieking across the facility. We all knew what was coming. I gave the order to kill the feed, instructing Grid Control to come back online. I then contacted facility security to begin full lockdown. Less than a minute later The Artifact had breached the core from within. Once awakened, it was only a matter of time. The force of his escape shook the facility. Suddenly there seemed to be fire, explosions everywhere. He climbed from the wreckage he had just created and stumbled unsteadily across the reactor room floor. Two engineers tried to intervene, to calm him. Their commitment must be commended and their families suitably compensated, but clean up were still prising their corpses from the reactor room walls this morning. The rest had the good sense to stay back. From there it didn’t take The Artifact long to smash a hole out of what had been his blissful prison for the last seven years and back up towards the surface world. Lendt voiced a childish hope that the perimeter force fields would hold him. Robustly I informed him that this was a pipe dream. Within five minutes The Artifact was gone. Initial incident reports suggest that the facility was infiltrated by our own rogue asset Doctor Robert Cline, codename Mainframe. Once his digitised consciousness had breached our firewalls, he had murdered the facility AI, keeping its cadaver operating long enough to provide cover. Mainframe had then been free to undermine the virtual reality construct that had bound The Artifact in familial bliss all these years so that we could syphon his fathomless power. I must stress that The Artifact is now on the loose, potentially anywhere and in an unknown mental state. I question whether we have the resources (without help from our external partners) to be able to recapture this asset even if we can now locate him. Although the latest test proved that the Powerpack concept developed by Lendt works, without The Artifact, or similar enhanced individual, the facility is now a useless waste of money. Yesterday’s events were an unmitigated disaster. In retrospect, I should have considered the possibility of Mainframe’s intervention, especially after the recent breach at The Hole. As such I take full responsibility for these events and do not hesitate to offer my resignation. I only hope that the Committee, recognising my years of dedicated service to the company, can consider some modicum of mercy. I await the Committee’s decision.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
BlogThis is where I will put semi regular musing about things that interest me. I cannot guarantee they will do the same for you guys Archives
May 2022
Categories |