Author Part 9

(Chapter 62 of "Senses")

NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN

God, she's beautiful.

She has beautiful eyes, a beautiful nose, beautiful teeth, amazing breasts, marvelous curves, fabulous legs. And she's giving them to me. Me!

It was one of the better wet-dreams I had had in a very long time.

Mats, Scott and I flew back to the site where the "quakemaker" as we were calling it was, about 20 miles south of a formation Scott told me was the "Thor's Twins" Tom Clancy wrote about. I had my doubts, but kept them to myself. We had decided to take the long route this time, so that we could get some sleep on the way. Although I was fairly well rested I fell asleep within ten minutes of getting on board the ship and proceeded to have some of the most erotic dreams I had yet had in my young life.

And Dr. Angie Rameriz was the star of every single one of them.

I was dreaming I was having sex with her, nice and slow, my light skin against her dark skin. Amazing.

"Hey kid," she said to me after a climactic moment.

"Angie?" I said.

"Want to seriously fool around?" She smiled and gestured over my shoulder. There was Mats.

"Hey kid!"

I woke up and had to shake myself into current awareness. Mats had a hand on my shoulder. "Kid, wake up," he said.

"Are we there?" I asked.

"Will be in a few minutes." He released my shoulder and smiled. "Did you score?"

"I did," I said before I even thought about it. Then I looked up. "Apparently I talk in my sleep."

"You moan." I laughed, to which Scott's voice from behind him added, "Sounded like you were fucking her brains out."

I laughed even louder. Scott didn't swear often, so the effect was dramatic.

"Whomever she was," Mats added.

I nodded. "Whomever," I replied. Better an omission than a lie in my book. "She was worth it."

"Good." Mats laughed heartily. "Let's order a pizza and a some sodas from Janis and let's get this show on the road."

"Fine," I replied, sitting up. Man, oh man! I was actually starting to get really into this shit! I had slept with two of them, one recently, and now I was fantasizing about another? Oh, man. I was gone!

Although I had to admit, when I let myself think about Angie again for a brief moment, I found the fantasies returning. "I'm going to need therapy," I said to myself.

Scott heard me. "As soon as we work out why you're allergic to Karen you can have all the therapy you want," he remarked.

"Just what I need," I replied. "Psychoanalysis from another one of the sex fiends in this group."

"Don't knock sex," Scott shot back. "It's underrated, overrated, and misunderstood by most people."

"Excuse me?"

"Most people, especially men people, fail to see the intricacy that sex has within their lives. A man will screw most anything. Because of that alone it is both underrated and overrated..."

"And misunderstood," Mats interrupted, returning with the pizza and beer.

I took my beer and drew out a long swallow. "So you're saying Freud was right," I said.

"For males he was," Scott said, "according to Karen. She says that for females he was usually very much in the wrong."

"So how does your over and underrated and misunderstood system apply to women?"

"Many men don't know how to supply what many women want, so the women begin to believe that it's overrated. Or if a woman can control her ability to derive pleasure, it's underrated, unless the man..."

"Or woman," Mats said. "Don't let your hetero bias show through."

"Oh be quiet. You're hetero too. As I was saying, If her partner cannot deliver what she needs, then it's overrated again."

"I don't understand," I said.

Scott grinned and sipped his beer. "I said it was misunderstood," he replied.

I took a swing at him, but he had long ducked out of the way. "I'm going to need therapy just to recover from you two alone!" I shouted. Both men roared with laughter.

"Mission accomplished?" Mats asked Scott.

"Mission accomplished."

"Excuse me gentlemen," Janis said. "I don't mean to belittle a conversation about something that can never involve me, but we're coming close. We're only 3000 meters away. Arrival in 50 seconds."

"We must be leaving one hell of a wake," I said.

"We are," Mats replied. "We'll slow it down at about 500 meters. Scott, I thought you were working on a way for Janis to have sex." A statement, not a question.

"I've been preoccupied lately," Scott said. "Forgive me Janis?"

"Forgiven," Janis replied, as if sharing a private joke. I let the comments slide. "Thirty-five seconds."

We munched our pizza in silence for a moment, while I was thinking about the whole enormity of where we really were and what we were really doing. More than 2000 feet below the surface of the ocean! Here I am, not yet even out of college (the first time I had given that some thought in several days) and already I've been in space and under the sea. I suppose when I look back on it all that I was just too stunned to do anything but move along with it all. I guess I half expected to be shrunk and injected into a human body next.

"Time," Janis said. "The object is ten meters ahead."

Mats took a deep breath. "Okay guys," he said, "let's go up to the cockpit and have a look."

I realize I haven't described to you yet what things outside the ship looked like from within the ship. That's because even as a writer, words fail me. The absolute enormity of space cannot be adequately explained to a person who hasn't been there, and very few of us have been there. If you don't believe me, try this: go rent a Hong Kong action film called "The Killer". It's directed by John Woo and stars Chow-Yun Fat, and it's a bit tough to find, but trust me. Watch the film, then try to briefly and fully describe the gun fight scene in the church at the end of the film.

My point? There's simply too much information. You see so much stuff that you're simply over-awed by it all. Words will fail you.

But underwater? There's been a million Cousteau films about the sea life, so I thought that when we arrived at the main viewport in the cockpit there'd be a million things to see. I certainly didn't expect this wall of black staring at us.

"Why can't we see anything?" I asked.

"There's no direct sunlight this far down," Scott replied. "Most everything that lives this low is visually blind."

"But I thought some things glowed."

"Some do," Mats added in. "But I think you've fallen victim to the 'Too Many National Geographic Specials' syndrome. There is some fascinating shit down here, but you need some amazing light to get to see it."

"So why aren't our lights on?"

"When the lights go on, there's a possibility that the machine out there will recognize that something other than the fishes is in the neighborhood, and my feeling is that it will try to contact me at that time. I want to do everything I can to avoid a scene like what happened in Greenland again."

I only nodded to that, and took another long swig from my beer.

Scott, with a mouthful of food, said, "Let's think this through. You said last time that you had the words 'next command' ricocheting through your skull."

"It wasn't pleasant," Mats replied.

Scott finally swallowed with a swig of his beer and then continued. "What if you have a command ready when it tries to contact you?"

"Great! But what command? I didn't program this thing."

"Well, it seems that you need me for that part. The problem is, how do I get the information when the access point is you?"

"Can Mats just tell us what he hears?" I asked.

"It might happen too fast, and the information could be a reinterpretation from Mats' own thought processes. I would need an exact representation of the data as it enters into Mats. Hmm. Janis?"

"Yes Scott?"

"Is it possible for you to hear the data as Mats gets it?"

"Yes. In Greenland I only returned to the landing group when Mats collapsed. I have an obligation to his well being due to our link."

"You didn't by any chance record the transmission stream from last time, did you?" I asked.

"I did. It is done as a verbal command structure."

Scott laughed. "I can't believe we missed that one. Okay, Janis, when this new object contacts Mats, I'll need you to put what he's hearing on speaker. Translate it to a speed we can work with, say around 400 Hertz spoken?"

Mats finished his beer. "So it will contact me, then I'll respond with whatever you give back to me as a response?"

"Exactly," Scott replied.

"How do we keep it from hurting?"

"I don't know. Janis, play back the recording from last time, per specification please."

From Janis' speakers came a nondescript voice saying "next command" over and over again. In addition there was some high pitched squealing, and a low rumble.

"Supersonics and subsonics on a thought wave?" Scott asked, slack-jawed.

"Correct," Janis replied.

"Is that even possible?" Scott shook his head. "Wait a moment. Wrong question. Could these be data streams?"

"Affirmative."

"Fascinating."

"What does all this mean?" I asked.

Scott faced me. "What it means is that the machine wasn't just looking for a verbal response. It was looking for data as well!"

Mats' face lit up. "I couldn't provide it, so it started a search in my brain."

"Your brain couldn't handle it, so it shut down."

"So we need to get the machine into a verbal mode only," I said.

"Give the man another beer."

Mats went to the bridge fridge (his term) and got another round of beers, passing them around. "So how do we give it the correct command to go into verbal mode only?" he asked.

"Give me a minute," Scott said. "I'll make a list."

So while Mats and I got well into our second beers and third slices of pizza, Scott was scribbling furiously on a notepad. When he was done he showed the list to us.

Verbal Mode

Verbal

Voice Mode

Voice

Vocal Mode

Vocal

Ignore Data

Reset Vocal Mode

Reset Voice Mode

Reset Verbal Mode

Speech

Speech Mode

Reset Speech Mode

"You can also add the words 'only' or 'exclusive' or 'not data' onto any of these commands to get the desired result," Scott said. "I've had to make a couple of assumptions, but these should cover it all."

"What assumptions?" Mats asked.

"I'm assuming there is no password protocol. Think about it - you have just built a machine keyed to your own thoughts. Wouldn't you assume that no one else can do it based upon empirical data alone, and also wouldn't you assume that you've keyed it to your individual brain waves, not brain waves in general?"

"You don't know that," I said.

"True, but I think the assumptions are valid. Successful hacking is derived from making good assumptions." Scott took a swig at his beer. "I am a successful hacker."

Mats drank down the last of his beer and sighed. And belched. "All right Janis, let's do it. Turn on the exterior lights."

Even with the lights on we couldn't see much. The ocean bottom is kind of murky, and not everything had yet settled from our rapid approach to the site. Either that or the currents down there were pretty strong. I never did take the time to ask.

The machine noticed us, however. "Next command" came through the speakers in the same no detail voice. Mats sent several commands quickly, and we finally heard, "Verbal command exclusive, Dr. Hopkins."

"Who?" Scott and I both asked simultaneously.

Mats recovered slowly. "How should I respond?" he asked.

"Look," Scott replied, "When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes!"

I laughed, catching the almost exact quote from Ernie Hudson in the original "Ghostbusters".

"At least we know who we're looking for now," I said.

"Get a status report," Scott added.

The voice came again. "Status non-functional. Immobile. Significant water and structural damage from event 001. Computer systems failing. Project total operational failure within 30 days."

"We cut it close," I said.

"It's dying?" Scott asked.

"And lonely," Mats added. "Janis isn't passing everything on to you guys. There's just too much being said. I can process it though, and Janis can help answer questions.

"It's been here over five years. That's a long time for a damaged intelligent computer to sit alone at the bottom of the ocean."

"We need to get as much information from the machine as we can, Dr. Hopkins, before it finally shuts down," Scott said. "We still don't know anything about the command structure. We should retrieve it and take it to the lab."

"Agreed," I added. "We need to see how this damn thing does the things it does. We've got to be able to stop its brothers before people get killed."

"Now who sounds like a superhero?" Mats asked, grinning.

"I know, I know. It's a shame that I haven't got the super muscles they do. Or a face I can set into a permanent grimace when I finally see the bad guy."

"Or the love interest with the mondo breasts that these magazines seem to have?" Scott added. We all laughed.

"Okay," Mats finally said. "Let's get this done. I'll try to tell the machine that a retrieval process for repairs will begin, then I'll need your help," he pointed at me, "to get it on board. From the sounds of things we may need to do some excavating. Scott, why don't you get on the horn to the lab and let them know about the developments here?"

"Will do," Scott said, leaning towards the radio link.

"How do we get it on board?" I asked. "Do we have some kind of robot arm we can use, or are we going out into the water?"

"Neither," Mats replied. "We do have a robot arm, but we aren't using it for the same reason that we won't go out in suits. The pressure would be far too great. Basically we've got to laser the sucker out using Janis' weapons systems and then open our cargo bay to the water and scoop it up."

"Oh joy," I said. I spent the next hour moving boxes out of the cargo hold so they wouldn't be either in the way or damaged when the exterior door was opened. The young ones always get to do the grunt work.

Continued...