Becoming (Core Series Book 1)

  BECOMING

  Becoming

  By

  Ronnie Barnard

  Copyright © 2011 by Ronnie Barnard.

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher and author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Contents

  Preface 4

  Beauty in the eye of the beholder 6

  Job offer 15

  Recovery 57

  Escape 68

  Chase 80

  Core 109

  Decision 163

  Damian 187

  Host 208

  Infiltration 231

  Shifting 250

  Preface

  Silhouettes of tall buildings accentuate the horizon as the sun sets in the west. It is autumn in Brisbane, and the breeze that blows through the streets has a cold edge. The air is filled with a frail mist of electricity. Sparks jump from a street lamp and curve to the railing of an escape ladder, bounding and leaping down the pipe work. They pool momentarily at the brink of the gap, before vaulting to a window not far away.

  The sparks crackle along the edge of the window-frame and arc down to a metal screw on the side of the brick wall. There they accumulate, forming a pool of hissing, spitting, vibrating bands of electricity. Every now and again, the static electricity reaches out to zap the closest metal object. As the charge grows, they arc across the gap to a soda can that lies on the sidewalk, burning the can to a heap of smouldering aluminium. The sparks are excessive, intense; when the apex of ferocity is reached, a sphere of bright light erupts from the centre, shooting rays of blue-white light in all directions.

  Papers and leaves billow from the lightning orb that hangs precariously from the side of the building. Moments later, four black streams of liquid erupt from the centre of the sphere, shooting out a couple of meters into the alley, forming small pools that dam up against an invisible containers. A high-pitched noise scratches out its existence, sounding like a knife being dragged across a window. But then as quick as the streams have come, they abruptly end. A deafening silence ensues. When the sparks fade, a white smoke rises from all the objects in the alley, drifting slowly upward in the windless silence. The screw in the wall is luminous white from heat and smoulders with smoke.

  The four pools of rippling liquid each solidify into the forms of men. They are clothed entirely in long, black jackets (which are fastened across the chest with studs and inlayed on the shoulders with decorative silver buckles and leather straps), dark pants, high boots and cowboy hats. Leather holsters tied off around their thighs are visible through the open slits of their jackets. Each holster carries a shining weapon, resembling a forty four colt pistol, the barrels reaching down to their knees. Their grey-white skin gleams eerily in the light from the streetlamp, and they survey the backstreet with luminous red eyes. Together they move off towards the end of the alley where it opens into the street, walking with forceful strides in perfect unison.

  “Find him,” one of the four says, turning in an opposite direction. “I have another job to do.” His voice is a deep base, more a command than a suggestion. The remaining three watch him walk away before they turn and disappear in a blaze of black mist.

  Beauty in the eye of the beholder

  Far away from the city, in a suburb to the southeast, a garage was once converted to an office. Do-it-yourself laminated flooring gleamed, and a split-unit air conditioner had been recently installed by an exorbitantly paid contractor. A single florescent tube was the only light in the make-shift office. It was barely adequate. In the wee hours of the morning, when darkness pressed in from the cracks in the doors, the shadows cast from that bulb were enough to drive anyone insane.

  A man in his late twenties sat behind a computer terminal, compiling and running his code for the hundredth time that evening. He closed his blue eyes and rubbed them with his knuckles, then scratched at the brown stubble that roughed his cheek.

  He watched as the program sprung to life and the progress bar on-screen climbed to one hundred percent. He automatically grabbed the mug of coffee beside him and swigged a big mouthful. His face twisted and he nearly spat it out.

  “Yuck! Cold,” he muttered.

  A small round ball hung from the ceiling in the centre of the room, at the end of a short metal tube. It started to shimmer and then beamed with light. A low rumbling rippled through the air, disturbing everything in its path. The cold coffee vibrated in his cup. A smell of ozone drifted across the room, filling his nose with a tingling feeling. It reminded him of a time when he was young and playing with matches: he would light a match and inhale the flint as it flared up. The memory of the scent of flame was overwhelming—for a moment he had to remind himself that they were only memories. What is a memory, really? Today he is creating solid objects from nothing more than a drawing inside a computer program.

  If this works, he will have created the world’s first holographic projector. He had been working on this project for seven years; he spent all of his savings and every available hour building and perfecting the technology. It needed to work, tonight. It was his last chance.

  The floor below the light source shimmered, stretched as thought it might catch fire. Slowly, a circle formed from the focal point of the light. The circle grew in size, expanding from the centre, leaving in its wake a rippling pool of clear water. The edge of the expanding circle was alive with sparks that arced to the floor in all directions without inflicting damage, like the sparks inside a static globe toy.

  The man marvelled at the scene taking shape before him. The edge of the lake filled with reeds and small rocks, while leaves sloshed in the wake of small waves that rolled onto the shore. Everything was scaled in miniature—the software automatically formed the model to fit the size of the rendering environment. He had uploaded the first three-dimensional model he could find: Lake Louise in Canada, chosen because he always dreamed of one day living next to a large lake in Canada, far away from his tormented youth.

  The reeds swayed in a soft breeze; the trees rocked gently to the music of the waves rolling and crashing against the rocks. The man stepped into the scene and expected his feet to penetrate through the illusion. Instead, his foot stepped up onto solid ground as he placed it on the lake shore. He ran his hand over the tips of the miniature redwoods that stood like soldiers around the shores of the lake. The leaves felt real, although tiny; the wind blew on his skin and the smell of the forest brought back memories of his childhood. He used to run through a forest like that. He used to stop at the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley, where a waterfall hid a deep pool below. He used to stare into the distance, dreaming of a future when he would escape from all the heartache, pain and poverty.

  He walked to the edge of the lake and dipped his hand into the clear water. It felt cold and wet! He shook his hand and dried it on his pants.

  “Wow! This is amazing,” he said to the open air. He never, not in his wildest dreams, had imagined this experiment would work so well.

  The only thing he needed now is a client, one that would pay him for his hard work. At last he would receive the recognition he’s been looking for all his life! And maybe improve his financial sit
uation, too. He rubbed his tired eyes again—they itched from long hours spent staring at the computer as he wrote the controlling software.

  Without the software and the Nanites, the lake would just be a pile of dust. His paranoid side, afraid that someone would steal his invention, drove him to write a cipher and store it where no one would ever think of searching for it.

  For the next hour, the man tested the program, uploading scene after scene. Each time the rendered result was perfect, solid and awe-inspiringly beautiful. There was no way he would sleep tonight, even though he could feel the weariness creeping up on him. His shoulders hurt like hell and his eyelids weighed a ton; his only solace was that, tomorrow, everything would change.

  Finally, around three in the morning, a thought welled up from deep inside his sleep-deprived mind. What if he rendered a human body? Would it be...real? The water felt wet, and the ground...well, the ground felt like dirt. Would a human feel like a human? Up to now, he had only created inanimate objects: the lake, cars, houses and those sorts of things. He felt his inside twist and turn, his breathing got heavy and goose bumps ran lightly up his arm as a memory from his youth jumps to the foreground. During his lonely childhood, his biggest dream was a girl would immerge from nowhere. She was beautiful beyond imagination. Long blond hair ran down to the middle of her slender back, her tanned skin was perfect, the face of an angel and when she looked at him with her water blue eyes, he would crumble under the emotion. He imagined she would love him unconditionally and they would be happy together as she transports him on fantastic voyages of emotion. It was just the silly daydreaming of a lonely teenager, but now he could make that dream come alive. Well, maybe not the happily-forever-after part—but at least he could render the model. Given enough time, he would be able to simulate human behaviour using software. Maybe someday that silly dream could become reality.... The adrenaline surged renewed life through his tired bones.

  Jason was not the sort of guy who always gets the girl, but he’s also not shunned like the plague, either. He was perpetually shy. When he was young, he could never find something to talk to girls about. In fact, they were afraid of him, for what reason he would never know. As an adult he found it easy to talk to people, but he preferred not to be social. Friends were few because his interests were technology, computer games, computers and science. Other people his age liked to go to pubs and clubs and dance all night, get drunk and watch sports. He found these activities to be boring and a waste of precious time. He would much rather play a computer game, read a book or write a PC program. He found many of his peers to be unintelligent and really boring. What could be more entertaining than a good space movie about what our future as human beings could be like, or a scientific paper describing a new quantum theory? These are the things that tickled his fancy and built within him a confidence that he was on the right track.

  Science fiction has always been the precursor for science, because it is born from the reality of scientific capability and human desire. Authors of science fiction novels push the envelope—they create compelling fiction from a concept that is grounded in reality. Jason wished that he could create something from nothing by just typing into a computer program, and so that was what he had worked to do. It had certainly been a troublesome and exhausting path, but here he was. Today he had made history; tomorrow he would announce it to the world.... Before sleep dragged him off to bed, he would try to indulge in a childhood dream, and satisfy one of his oldest fantasies.

  Eager, he cleared the last model from the software, loaded Chrome and started to search for a female model that resembled the girl from his dreaming. Search after search revealed hundreds of models from familiar sites, but none of them came close to the image of his dreams. She would have long, white hair, water-blue eyes, large breasts and a strong, athletic body with six-pack abs, and yet be feminine in every way. When she smiled, all loneliness would melt away, leaving him relaxed and in control.

  The search took most of an hour, and he was about to choose a model that closely matched his mental requirements without quite meeting them. Then, on one of his favourite model sites, he found a file that had been uploaded less than ten seconds ago from an anonymous user. The female model matched his every requirement, except that her hair was brown. It was a small price to pay for a model of such quality, however. Her polygon count was massive. Best of all, the three-dimensional model was free of charge. He could not believe his luck. Today is truly a glorious day.

  Using modelling software hacked off the internet, he quickly created a virtual environment small enough to be scaled to full-size when rendered in his holographic projector. He places her in the scene and started the upload sequence.

  On the couch was seated the naked goddess of beauty. She appeared while he was looking at the monitor and tracking the progress of the projection. He had not had the time or inclination to animate her, and so she sat motionless. The only thing that moved was her hair, which blew lightly in the air currents. She was absolutely beautiful. She was perfectly proportioned from top to toe, with large breasts and an athletic build. She was one meter sixty seven tall, with long brown hair, an angelic face and water-blue eyes. She was skinned with a flesh-like texture that fit her perfectly. It had no shadow highlights anywhere—all the finer details of the lip contours and the eyes, the nipples and the belly button, fit the contour of the wireframe model underneath perfectly. Not one pixel was out of place. Jason had to pinch himself to believe that this was a true model, and not another fantasy.

  His eyes followed her curves—down her neck to her beautiful, perfect perky breasts; down her nave to her pubic hair and her long, slender legs. He could not help blushing and awkwardly looking away. He reminded himself that this is only a three-dimensional model. It may be the closest he would ever come to a live woman, but it was still only a model.

  He walked over and sat down beside her. Her head rested elegantly on her right hand, which was perched on top of the couch. He had angled her sideways, crossing her legs at her ankles.

  Jason waved his hand in front of her eyes to make sure. She was inanimate. Her chest did not heave and her eyes did not blink: they were empty and devoid of life, they were motionless. He touched her hair.

  It felt like real hair.

  He stroked the side of her cheek. She felt so real—her skin was soft and elastic, young and lovely. He couldn’t help but feel his own stubble-covered face to compare. His had the same elastic properties, but hers was softer and had no temperature. She had taken on the ambient temperature of the room.

  He slowly ran his hands down her arm and touched her breast. It was soft and flexible, something he had longed to feel.... He immediately pulled back, forcing himself to focus.

  He examined her face, looking for imperfections in her complexion. He checked her body for dents in the polygons, but couldn’t find any. The modeller was a genius, he must have spent years working on her. And then to go and give it away for free?

  That the perfect model must also look like the perfect girl of his imagination was more bizarre. But then, he reasoned, he imagined a woman that any sixteen-year-old boy would fantasize about.

  A yawn pulled him back to reality and he stared at the cheap plastic, electronic watch strapped to his wrist. The digits showed that it was five thirty-two and fifteen seconds. Morning already!

  He glanced again at the model’s perfect body; the image of her naked breasts forever burned into his mind. Then he walked to the console screen. The man was absolutely exhausted, and content with what he had created. He dismissed the scene and watched as it demounted. The walls of the holoroom returned, and all the nanoparticles flooded back to the source.

  The last object to disappear was the female model. In shock, he realized that she was watching him. A smile curved at the corners of her mouth; her blue eyes were filled with life. Her hair blew with the air current from the demounting process. And she dissolved into dust.

  Quickly he looked back to the scene
in the software, disbelieving. In the program, she was still looking towards the wall, still facing the direction that he placed her in. But he could swear that she looked his way before she dissolved.

  It was not possible.

  He rubbed his eyes once more. You are tired, he told himself. But he couldn’t help but save the scene, with the intent to return to it later, when he awoke.

  He always kept a full audit trail and recorded all model adjustments and animation changes for debugging purposes, so that he could return to any moment in time during the run to find faults.

  You are tired, he told himself again.

  Still, he was curious.

  He opened the model site and refreshed the page from which he downloaded the female model. The browser sought the address, and eventually returned a four-zero-four URL Error: “The page cannot be found.”

  This was impossible—he downloaded the file from the server hardly half an hour ago. He tried again, and then returned to the previous page, searching for the model. She was nowhere to be found. The model creator must have realized what he had done and removed the model from the server; she was so perfect that there was no need to give her away for free. The man decided to send the web admin an email to inform him of the download, and to request that he contact the creator to obtain permission to use the female model and enquire about pricing.

  He sent the email and hit the sleep button on the keyboard. The PC whirred and the screen fell blank. Then the room was quiet.

  The man headed to his bedroom. It had been a strange day, one breakthrough followed another, ending with his boyhood dreams coming to life, so to speak. The memory of the model’s naked body was still fresh in his mind. Exhaustion and arousal fought for dominance, but exhaustion finally won. He fell face-first into his pillow, smelling the stale odour of the sheets as sleep snuck up on him. His mind drifted to her again. How strange, the things that happen. Strange, how life has a way of working out, even when you don’t want it to, or when you’re not looking.