Doctor Spencer knew that loneliness was like a canker in a person’s mind. It gnawed away at them, creating personality defects that may never be healed. He did not know this because he was a doctor, his doctorate was not in such a field, but he did know it as one.
Doctor Emile Belial Spencer knew it because to be the head of his field meant sacrificing such things as family and friends. It meant long hours in his lab, thinking thoughts that few could understand, and beating himself up when those thoughts would not produce the results he wanted. He often considered the subject of loneliness, though he would never identify it in such stark terms, and it was this subject that filled his mind as he sat and waited for clearance.
He watched the receptionist and thought of loneliness. Her dark hair was plaited in a single thick strand that reached halfway down her slim back. He guessed that she was a little younger than him, old enough to have a little grey that she wore unselfconsciously, but still young enough that her eyes held a quiet mirth. She chatted with another woman, but they were too far away for Spencer to hear what they were saying, and he was glad of it.
He liked watching people speak without hearing their words. He liked to imagine their conversations. Sometimes their imaginary dialogue could coincide with whatever problem he was trying to solve, leading him to the solution.
Sometimes a random person would become his muse in this way.
At other times they led him down a more soulful path, and he thought of loneliness.
“Doctor Spencer?”
He looked up into the guard’s face. To Spencer, he seemed little more than a boy.
The Doctor pinned the offered ID card to his shirt pocket, noting the chip embedded in it. The guard ran through the same prepared speech Spencer had heard so many times, so many – in fact – that he believed he could probably recite it by heart. He couldn’t lose it, and it had to be returned each night before he left. Any infraction would be considered a security breach, and any misuse punishable by the harshest measures.
Spencer tuned out the guard’s words, nodding in all the right places by mental muscle memory alone, then followed the guard through the series of security doors until the guard excused himself and Spencer found himself alone.
The following door was above the guard’s pay grade.
Spencer took a deep breath and stepped into the lab. Around him, scientists busied themselves on the various consoles that monitored the machine that hung over them like the sword with which it shared its name. For the moment no one noticed his entrance, and for this he was grateful. It did not do for the weapon designer of the Damocles Project, the most technically advanced weapon of war the world had ever seen, to be so awestruck by his creation.
It was not his alone, of course. He had designed the magnetic rail gun that was the machine’s main weaponry, but he knew little concerning the rest of the construction. So, though he had a broad idea of how the machine would function, he had little idea about how it would look.
Doctor Spencer found himself unprepared.
It looked as if the machine had been crucified, hung by its innards as an offering to a techno-deity of chrome and steel. Its heels hung almost to the concrete floor. Umbilicals made of steel snaked across the ceiling, five of them that connected the machine to the horseshoe of computers that surrounded it. Each of its wrists was suspended, and what served the thing for hands hung limply. Its head – no more than a wedge filled with cameras and sensors – drooped forward.
Spencer had not been sure what to expect, but what confronted him still managed to deny his expectations. It was seven foot four inches tall and no wider at the waist than a normal athletic man. There was something spidery about the machine. It only had the usual amount of appendages, but they were too long and though all their joints were in approximately the right place there was still something unsettlingly alien about it.
It terrified him.
It was beautiful.
Spencer recognised his rail gun running the length of one forearm, and he thought of the tests he had run on its viability. He shuddered.
“Emile?”
He recognised the voice and cringed inwardly. He knew Doctor Sarchie would be there, but he had forgotten how grating he found the man’s incessant upbeat tone.
Spencer set a small smile on his face and turned to watch the Doctor approach.
Sarchie was a small man, and he carried more weight than Spencer remembered.
“How long has it been, Emile? Gosh, it must be five years?”
Spencer felt himself nod. It had been about that. They had spent some time working together on a special project at Lockheed before the funding was rerouted to something they believed to be more important, which probably meant more lethal. Spencer was not sad to see the project fold.
Sarchie looked up into the place where a face would be if the machine had such a thing.
“Is it the first time you’ve seen it up close?”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen it at all.”
To Spencer, his own words sounded strained, as if he was on the verge of tears. Either Sarchie didn’t hear it, or he chose to ignore it.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it,” Sarchie replied and led Spencer to a console on the machine’s right, where a young assistant monitored fluctuations in a long series of interactive graphs. It meant nothing to Spencer.
“I forget,” Spencer said, “what is your role exactly?”
“Oh, Virtual Reality implementation. I designed the interface between the pilot and the drone, essentially making the whole thing as autonomous as possible. The idea was to create a seamless interaction where drone functions were controlled by autonomous functions in the human brain.”
“So, is it?”
Sarchie looked confused for a moment.
“Is it what?”
“Seamless?”
Sarchie’s face cleared, and he barked with laughter.
“We’ve certainly not had any complaints.”
Spencer thought he saw a flicker in the assistant’s face as if the young woman intended to say something, but it was gone before he could have been certain.
“So, Spence, they’ve decided to change the projectile payload, I hear…”
The conversation didn’t last much longer after that. Spencer was unclear why he had been called to the main lab when an assistant could just as easily make the adjustments needed, but when a government R&D facility asks, you tend not to make too many complaints. Sarchie nodded in agreement, his gaze moving to the crucified machine that hung over them, and Spencer wondered what he was thinking, but it was then that the project head let their presence be known.
Chief of Operations was David Jones’s title, and Spencer wondered if anything about the man was real. In his experience, the less grand a person’s title was, the less you could relax around them, especially when they worked for governmental R&D.
Jones was a little taller than Sarchie, but still half a foot shorter than himself, with skin so pale it was almost translucent. He looked like an approximation of a human created by a race who could not see colour the way we did, and Spencer surmised there was probably some kind of genetic disorder that ran in the Chief’s family.
Jones led Spencer away, out from the horseshoe of computers to a long, narrow room better suited to the testing of firearms than an actual lab. It was away from the main horseshoe of computers, and for this he was glad. He preferred a little solitude, and he had no desire to look up into the war machine they were building for any longer than he had to. Besides, it also took him away from Sarchie.
Spencer studied the equipment, feeling Jones’s eyes on him.
“Satisfactory?”
Jones spoke in single words, his tone clipped, perfunctory. Spencer considered asking him why his task could not be performed by an assistant but envisioning the painfully single-syllable conversation that would ensue, he decided to keep his grievance to himself.
“Yes, more than adequate. Thank you.”
Jones left without another word, and Spencer pushed it all from his mind, settling instead to complete the thankless task ahead of him. The change in the projectile payload meant a change in the rail run design, and though a computer could easily create a profile of those changes it required a human to sign off on them before construction.
Spencer recalled his designs from the project’s cloud and sat to review them.
The rest of the day swept by once the numbers started to hit him. The calculations and adjustments captivated him as beauty might another man. The formulas drew him in, effortlessly eating away at the remaining hours of the day. Spencer had no idea that the main lab space had emptied, the horseshoe of computers in the main room now manned by a skeleton crew, until he walked through it on his way back to the main entrance.
The Machine was still suspended there above their heads, the computers around it still monitoring and measuring. Perhaps it was the late hour, but the machine’s presence was even more overbearing than it had been before. Spencer felt it looking at him as he walked by, and it may have been this that caused him to approach the assistant at Doctor Sarchie’s section of the horseshoe.
It was another young woman, her hair was cut in a savage crop, and what was left of it was the deepest red Spencer had ever seen. He expected heat to emanate from her and had to resist the urge to put his hand out to feel it.
She nodded as he approached, and an uncertain smile flickered across her face.
“Doctor Spencer?”
Somehow Spencer expected her voice to be more confident than it appeared, but it belied her severe appearance. Her voice was soft and sounded almost like she was singing. He smiled; he liked the way she said his name.
“Yes. Head of Weapons Management.” He felt stupid saying that, but the title slipped from his lips without consulting him first. “An old friend of Doctor Sarchie.”
“Old friend?” The words smiled at him, and Spencer was surprised at how quickly he had warmed to the young woman.
“Well…” He let the word trail off and smiled back at her.
He glanced over the screens, three of them. The first screen showed a series of graphs that updated dynamically. The second was an interface with tick boxes and a free text box, and the third…
“Are you playing a game there?” He said as he leaned closer.
The woman laughed.
“That’s a low-resolution feed from the pilot’s virtual world, essentially we’re seeing what they are seeing minus any haptic feedback produced.”
“Haptic feedback?”
“Physical sensations. The program can reproduce physical sensations based on what the unit produces. We can make the pilot feel the sensations the unit feels, well, would feel if it weren’t made of steel.”
She glanced up to the machine, past Spencer, and he noticed that her eyes seemed suddenly sad, and he felt his mood shift in sympathy to it.
“It’s all fake of course, a simulation based on cold data. There are no nuances. We can calculate the likelihood of sensation, but the randomness of actual life experience is beyond us. The program is clever, but those who have tried it for prolonged periods say they can feel it’s not real. The contradiction between that which they see, and the unfulfilling tactile sensation triggers the realisation that the user is experiencing a simulation.”
Abruptly her words dried up in her throat and her eyes moved to him.
They were pale blue, almost white.
“I’m sorry.” She paused as if searching for the words. “It’s a fascinating field.”
Spencer knew they were not the words she wanted to say. Her eyes did not say “fascinating” to him, they were wide and sad, and said something closer to “heart-breaking”.
“That’s okay.” He replied, and for a moment neither of them had anything to say.
“I didn’t see you earlier.” Spencer continued.
“Banished to the graveyard shift.” She said in a way of explanation and smiled.
“I must be going.” He said, and then in a way of explanation, himself added. “The first day in a new job is always draining.”
He excused himself and made his way back to the reception area where he deposited his pass card into a lock box for safekeeping. Each morning he would be stopped at the gate and his face would be compared by computer to his photo on file. Then he would have to supply a thumbprint to retrieve his pass card, regardless of how well the reception staff got to know him.
He would never be a person to them, just a potential risk being assessed.
Spencer left the grounds and went directly to the apartment he had rented for the duration. Its walls were bare, and the bedside cabinet held no photographs of loved ones. He read without seeing the words and drifted off to sleep.
When he woke the following morning, he left a little earlier than he needed to and found a local cafe. Here he selected a corner seat and watched quietly as the people around him began their day. A trucker guffawed loudly at lewd jokes as he sat on a stool at the counter, behind him a businessman examined the national press, occasionally glancing up as each bark of laughter broke his concentration. Slowly Spencer ate pink grapefruit and toast with a potful of black coffee as he watched the interaction as if watching a live-action soap opera. When he completed his breakfast, he left a tip wrapped in a tiny drawing of a rose on a paper napkin.
He never learned that the staff there kept the drawings, and they slowly lined the staff room wall over the following months.
When he got to the lab the morning moved slowly at first, the numbers not captivating him as they usually did, and it was nearing the end of the day when he finally saw Sarchie. Uncharacteristically Spencer found himself pleased to see the other man.
After a few pleasantries, Spencer asked what he was eager to ask.
“Ah, that would’ve been Sharleen Cooper,” Sarchie answered with obvious distaste. “What did she do? She’s already on thin ice, I can tell you. If you raise an official complaint, I’m certain something can be done about her.”
Spencer listened, a little aghast at Sarchie’s outburst. The usually overly pleasant man was spitting rage at merely the thought of the young woman, and this only increased Spencer’s curiosity.
“She didn’t seem that kind of person.” Spencer offered.
“Oh, come on! The woman is incendiary. There’s a reason she even looks like a match!”
Spencer felt a smile tug at his lips before realising that Sarchie was completely serious.
The two men finished their coffee and slipped the paper cups into the trash. Spencer kept his tongue still as they made their way back to the lab, letting Sarchie grumble about Sharleen Cooper. He admitted that he had transferred her to the graveyard shift, to monitor the machine’s downtime and categorising the data recording during the day. The little man lamented Cooper’s usefulness as a researcher, wishing he could force her out through lack of competence but found his plan frustrated by her sheer ability.
As they neared his section of the horseshoe, Spencer saw the usual assistant there, obviously someone that Sarchie found more agreeable, and as he watched them interact, he noticed something about his long-time colleague he had never realised before.
Doctor Terrence Sarchie was nothing less than an old-fashioned sexist.
The remainder of Spencer’s day was no better than the morning. His mind would not settle on the numbers as he required it to do. Instead, he found himself thinking of the fiery-haired Sharleen Cooper, and in the predicament in which she found herself. He wondered what exactly she had done to encourage such wrath from Sarchie, or whether she did anything at all, and he pondered on ways he might be able to help the young woman escape any barriers Sarchie might put in her way.
The noise of the laboratory was always muted but as time wore on it became more muted still. A burst of noise signalled the change of shift and suddenly Spencer found himself in the middle of a ghost town.
He waited half an hour, shut down his computer and made his way out to the horseshoe.
“Hi,” Sharleen said as he walked into the main lab. She was wearing a t-shirt that said something that he thought was vaguely inappropriate. He thought it was something he should probably be offended by, and it was certainly something he would never repeat.
“Hello, Sharleen.” He replied and watched as she grimaced.
“I prefer Charlie,” she replied, “sounds like you’ve been talking about me.”
“I admit curiosity, Charlie, but I am a scientist.”
“Sarchie?”
Spencer nodded, and again Charlie grimaced.
“He doesn’t like me that much.”
“Well, he has always liked me.”
Charlie laughed.
“Unlucky you.”
Spencer glanced over the monitors, settling on the one that showed a point of view of a country scene. The view shifted to the side and a person’s profile came into view, backlit by a setting sun. It looked, to Spencer, like a scene from a romantic movie.
“I was wondering why the little man had such a bee in his bonnet about you.”
“He’s not the only man who has found a bee in his bonnet when I’m in the room Doc,” Charlie replied sardonically. “He has been one of the more irritating ones though.”
She followed Spencer’s gaze to the monitor and watched the scene in silence for a moment. His eyes moved to her, then back at the screen.
“He thinks I’m some sort of hippy conscientious objector because I want to put niceties into the VR code. I think he thinks that not frying the pilot’s cerebrum is somehow pandering to progressive politics.” She paused and glanced over to the machine that hung behind Spencer.
“None of us talk about what Damocles is, do we? We talk about weapon systems and VR interfaces, argue over its payload and talk about surface stresses, but we don’t talk about what it is.”
She sighed, and she lowered her head, glaring at the machine as if personally aggrieved by its existence.
“What kind of name is Damocles anyway, it should have been called Thanatos, the god of death, but then,” she smiled and looked up at Spencer, “Sarchie did call me a beatnik once, so I don’t think his understanding of language is all that advanced.”
Spencer laughed, but it contained little humour. He could understand why Sarchie found Cooper such a problem. She was not a drone he could point in a direction and then gleam for data he could take as his own. She was not a meat puppet that would sit obediently as he spoke her ideas back at her, relabelled as his own.
Quite out of nowhere, he thought that he would be proud to have a daughter like Charlie Cooper, and the thought shocked him.
“Are you okay?”
Spencer realised he had been staring at the young woman.
“Yes, I’m sorry Charlie. I was wondering, what is it that no one talks about?”
It was Charlie’s turn to stare, her face set and her eyes suddenly taking on a suspicious cast. The moment pulled tight around them, and Spencer thought he had somehow misspoken.
“You don’t know?”
Her voice was small, and he barely heard it.
“Know?”
She pointed at the machine, but her eyes did not leave his own.
“Somewhere in that mass of electronics and metal is four pounds of human brain.” Her eyes then moved to the machine but struck with cold fear, Spencer’s eyes refused to move from her face. “Someone is in there, trapped in a machine designed only for murder.”
Spencer thought of the rail gun he had designed and of his empty room devoid of decoration. He thought of his empty life, and he considered the legacy he would leave when he left it. He felt sick and alone, and he knew that he had reaped exactly what he had sown.