Chapter 243: (The Black Box)

The Black Box. The most high security research facility in the known galaxy, responsible for both horrors and miracles, the primary Black Box had a single entrance located on Terra and was protected well enough to survive the Event Horizon of a black hole or the system's sun going supernova.

It was not the only "Black Box" in existence.

One in particular was in deep space, between the stars, surrounded by dark matter, recently built and moved to the location. It gave out no emissions, no clue it existed, to the point that it could not even be accessed from its physical location but had to be accessed from an entirely different area.

The Black Box that had been built with one person in mind and everything and everyone within had been carefully chosen to assist the one person.

Which annoyed Blue Herod-38442 to no end. Herod had been specifically grown for advanced mathematics and theorems, had 'grown' from his crystallized seed code surrounded by particle physicals and quantum theorems. His playground had been complex mathematical strings, his playmates had been young green mantids, and by the time he was fully grown he not only knew these formulae backwards and forwards, he knew why the formulae existed, what it described, and how to apply it even in esoteric ways.

Before his first century was up he had collaborated on a team that increased the speed of standard hyperdrives by nearly 3.9%. His second century he worked on projects from hypercoms to dimensional string communications systems to neural encoding on fast-growth clones as used by the Clone Worlds Consortium.

He was celebrated in his fields of study, sought out for opinions, and his time was expensive enough that only the richest corporations and governments could afford to even contract him for a consultation.

He had volunteered for highly classified work, had gone through nearly a year of careful testing and having to take part in smaller projects just to be considered for a higher level of research.

At nearly 400 years old, he was considered the best in his field, understanding intrinsically parts of his field that others could not even intellectually grasp. From quasi-quantum mechanics to axion particle drift to sub-dimensional chaos mathematics, he was the master of them all.

Herod had been assigned to Black Box Six Niner Sigma Bravo One Zero as the project supervisor and manager and had eagerly looked forward to taking command of the projects. The Black Box had been built especially for the Overproject, outfitted with the latest and most advanced equipment, custom made software grown or created by the best minds of the Confederacy.

During the time he was in transit to the entryway he was informed, via courier carried datapack that was plug-in and read-once, that he was no longer the Overproject Manager and that if he chose to refuse his demotion then he was up for summary deletion or mandatory reassignment with long term memory erasure, his choice.

So with somewhat of an attitude he accepted his demotion and waited to be physically carried, in his disaster housing, into Black Box Six Niner Sigma Bravo One Zero. When he detected motion he felt a slight feeling apprehension, anxiety, and excitement.

He felt his housing get locked in, then the connections being made.

Herod materialized in an eVR room. Databoards were everywhere, many with constantly streaming and mutating code, particle folding programs were churning away, and scanners examining subparticles and dimensional foam eddies were working hard enough that the digital 'heat' was rippling around the displays.

In the middle of the room stood one of the Confed Agents. A short female with black hair in a 'can I see your manager' haircut, black chrome cybereyes, and no real memorable features beyond those two points. She was dressed in an older, more formal style, with a Confed pin on her lapel.

One by one over a dozen other Digital Sentience materialized in the eVR space.

"Take your seats," the woman stated. Her voice, like everything else about her, was unremarkable. Chairs, more like schooldesks than anything relaxing, appeared with a glowing cube that Herod knew would unfold into the only virtual terminal that would be permitted to interface with the rest of the Black Box's systems.

She walked them through activating the cube, synching it to their own code, let them know that their disaster housings would be put in the disaster vault of the Black Box, and told them that there would be no communication with anyone beyond the Black Box that was not authorized by herself or one of her sisters or the Overproject Manager.

That got Herod's notice. Normally the Confederate Agents did not stay on site, they usually moved on to the next assignment, and for more than one to be out in the open as an Agent was unheard of.

"There are no warborgs on site, nor are they any traditional facility security or protective personnel as you are undoubtedly used to," she continued. "This project does not allow traditional security."

She leaned against the table she was standing behind, her gaze getting more intent. "Additionally, there is no SUDS system backups for anyone on site. Not me, not your fellow researcher, not any of the engineers, not you."

She waited a moment then flashed the light that she was allowing one question.

"What are we going to be working on here?" one of the other DS's asked. Herod knew him by reputation, a DS by the name of Vanishing Point-333382.

"I am not privy to that information," the Confed Agent said. "Before you ask, only the Overproject Manager is privy to the full information on this Black Box's mission."

"Oh," another one, Cherubic Torture-82674, said quietly. Personally, Herod was surprised that an interrogation DS from one of the more... tyrannical... systems in the Confederacy would be brought in.

"With that, we will be changing locations to your assigned divisions. I am sure, when they have a chance, the Overproject Manager will speak with you. In the meantime, your areas of research are detailed in your solitary work areas," the agent said.

"Will we be working together at all?" Green Flowerpatch-558234 asked.

"I am not privy to that data," the Agent said, then pressed a button that had appeared on her table.

The world dissolved and Herod found himself in a sterile room with a virtual creation engine in the corner, a table with a chair and his virtual terminal on the table, a hand-scanner on the wall, and that was all. The light came from noplace and everywhere, there was no ambient sound.

Herod moved over to his terminal and punched it up then stared.

Vintoma particle research. It was old data that had moved on to Scoomin particles as they were more excitable and better for energy storage and data transfer over interstellar distances. He paged through, finding axiom data, quark data of all things, and research data on, incredibly, the Higgs-Bosun Particle, which was pre-diaspora.

Herod 'rezzed up' databoards, using his preferred black glass with chalk fonts, throwing the data onto the boards.

Not a single particle he was supposed to be working on had been researched in the last 6,000 years.

Curious, he put his hand on the hand-scanner. He felt it scan his core-code before he dissolved and moved through a datapipe with the thickest walls he'd ever seen.

All it did was lead him to a digital bedroom with empty bookshelves and a small digital nano-forge for him to be able to manufacture decorations and books. Curious, he checked to see if the digital nano-forge in the room was tied to the one in his lab.

They weren't. None of them were connected to anything but the room they inhabited.

Herod spent time decorating his room, wondering when, if ever, he was going to meet anyone else.

There was a pinging, alerting him that there was status change in the lab room.

Another hand-scanner. The previous one was labeled "Living Quarters" the new one was labeled "Physical Lab Access" and had a keypad beneath it.

Another ping and there was a datadisplay next to the hand-scanner.

Tell me they aren't designing the virtual space now that we're here? Couldn't they have designed it before we arrived? Herod thought to himself.

The data-display only showed a single code, listed as being the code for "Administrative Office" and it was currently greyed out.

Herod sighed and brought up more boards, putting up the computations that described the interactions between each particle and waveform, arranging them in a set of concentric rings.

Herod was staring to feel wasted here. He had put up theories and proofs from thousands of years ago and now was doing nothing more than just decorating his private space. He'd even been able to add a shower and a relaxation room.

Another ping, this one with a particular tone. Herod checked and found that "Physical Lab One" was not only listed but wasn't greyed out.

Herod typed it in as fast as he could, before it greyed out. He felt himself get pulled into another thick 'walled pipe' and was somewhat disoriented to find himself in the display and audiobuffer for a single holoemitter.

"You might as well come out, I know you're there," a voice said.

Herod exited the buffer, finding himself in a very busy lab area. There were dozens of humans all working on boards, on computers, one them examining code as it streamed down like a water-fall. Another pair of humans were looking at data that was being displayed as screaming human faces.

"You are Herod," a quiet voice said from behind him.

Herod turned around and frowned. The man in front of him was a powerfully built human with dark brown skin, a shaved head, and a thick unruly beard. With the exception of the beard he looked more like the military personnel that Herod had worked with.

"I am," Herod answered.

"Have you deduced what we are working on in this Black Box?" the man asked, sitting down in a chair and sliding a holo-emitter across the table to the center.

Herod shook his head. "No."

"I gave you six days while I created this world, for all intent and purposes our world, and now I find out that you haven't even deduced why we are here?" the little brown man said, shaking his head. "Did you give one iota of one erg of one joule of thought in your digital sentience network to even considering what we may be doing here and why I assigned those particular particles to what is supposed to be my best particle researcher?"

Herod just stared. "Those particles are completely researched."

"Oh, you're one of those," the brown man said, his voice dripping with contempt.

"One of what?" Herod snarled.

"One of those that looks at early works and has already decided that anything that might be discovered in old theorems has already been discovered and there is no use in examining it more," the brown man sneered. "You are as useful to me as a Lanaktallan since you've got Lanaktallan attitudes."

He shook his head again. "Men like you, if you had your way, would have lost us the Mantid War."

"I am one of the foremost experts in ultra-diminuative particle theory," Herod said.

"Oh, are you now?" one of the other men said. Herod turned and stared. It looked like the other man, only clean-shaven.

"So you're an expert," another one said, not bothering to turn away from the datastream had had his fingers in as the holographic image of the data ran from the ceiling to the floor.

"involving even the most cutting edge particle research?" a third finished, not looking up from the table-holodisplay where the surface of the table was arranged to give 'depth' to any image.

"Tell me, Herod, do you know how type nineteen dark matter can be inverse phased and then inverted to provide a stable barrier through the subatomic foam to the area known as Dimension-Fifteen and what the radiation emitted from the type nineteen dark matter appears as in the human visual range?" the bearded one asked, leaning back in the chair.

"Inverted?" Herod said.

"Yes, inverting the particles making up the matter," the bearded one said.

"You can't invert particles," Herod said. "You can change their relative state, even their spin, and their charge, but you can't turn them inside out."

The bearded one glanced at the desk then scooped data out of the hologram in front of him, tossing it Herod.

"There. That's how it's done," he said. "Knowledge from over fifteen hundred years prior to the diaspora of Terra, before even actual superluminal travel was confirmed to be possible and utilized," the bearded one said.

Herod physically staggered with the weight of the datapacket.

"Put that in your secure memory. Now, Mister 'Expert', can you describe the particle interaction between dark-matter and what was initially mis-categorized as 'pocket dimensions' and how that interaction relates to inverted quark pairing?" the bearded one asked, although several of the other men in the room stated a few words from each sentence.

"Um," Herod said.

"Here," the bearded one tossed him another data-file. "Look at those. Return to me when you fully understand those theories and proofs."

The man waved his hand and Herod found himself back in his lab.

---------------

It took Herod nearly two weeks of working before he had the theories interlocked with the information that he had known since his digital adolescence. Some of the theories looked positively insane, but were solid and he was able to replicate them repeatedly in the one lab he had access to in the physical world.

It was somewhat humiliating to find himself called in front of the bearded human, who was always surrounded by over a dozen of what Herod had deduced were clones of himself. Every time he was questioned about information and data beyond the data he had been given, and it had taken a week before he had been able to give a single answer.

Now he had been called out of his lab again. When he materialized he found himself with the rest of the Digital Sentiences, eight Confederate Scientific Intelligence Agency agents, two dozen clones, and the bearded man at the front of the room.

No time was wasted as the last Digital Sentience rezzed into being behind their desk.

"You are all mostly caught up," the bearded man said. "Roughly where the initial research, development, and fabrication teams were when they proved their project not only was feasible but worked at interstellar distances."

He stared at them. "At first I thought I was going to end up working with the equivalent of Lanaktallans and had resigned myself to deleting all of you and starting over."

That got signs of anxiety and distress.

"You will all be working together at this time. The teams will shake out based on who works well with who for each practical field we will have to research," the bearded one said. "Before you ask, no, there isn't any other bio's in this facility."

All of the DS's looked around at the clones.

"What about him?" Blaster asked, pointing at one of the clones.

"That's me," the bearded man said.

"Him?" San Diego Sunrise 42743 asked, pointing at another clone.

"That's also me," the first clone said.

That got silence.

"Take two days off. Defrag, run memory scans, but specifically, I want you to do bias weighing table purges. Make sure that your bias tables are all blank two days from now," the bearded human said. "Dismissed."

With that, the clones, and the bearded man, all got up and filed out the door.

Herod was surprised to find he hadn't been pulled back into his room. While he wasn't normally a sociable creature, he found himself joining in the conversations where everyone introduced themselves and their specialty. Neural network scientists, hypercom engineers, stellar cartographers, the list made no sense to Herod.

Still, he found it refreshing to have someone to talk to aside from the bearded human, which all of the DS's agreed was somewhat, to use an ancient phrase, an arrogant dick.

Try as they might, none of them had any clue what kind of Black Box Project they might be working on.

------------------

Two days later found him being shown the various physical labs, the AeVR labs that connected them, how there was no 'jumping' between labs, either a DS had use the holo-emitters to 'walk' down the hallways, or go through the AeVR labs.

At the end of the tour the bearded man, who had a dozen or more clones in each lab and at least a half dozen presences in each AeVR lab, brought them all into a large room that sat empty except for a single nano-forge that normally would be found in a larger colony creation setup.

"This is where we will be creating the physical proof to rebuild what we are researching," the bearded man said. He looked over the gathered DS. "Do any of you know what we are working on?"

All of the DS shook their heads.

The man sighed. "All of this intelligence and not one of you have figured it out, even after I let you intermingle and compare professions and areas of expertise."

"How about a clue?" Vanish asked.

"Terran Descent Humanity's greatest advantage to large scale warfare," the bearded one said.

"Planet crackers?" Trifold Carthage-38572 said, recoiling slightly.

"While this research was used in early planet-crackers primarily used during the Mantid War and the Combine and Imperium Eras, no, we aren't working on planet crackers," the bearded on said. "Good guess."

"Cloning?" System Duplicate-736721asked.

"If it just involved cloning, all we would need is me," the man stated, curling his lip in a sneer.

"What is it?" Herod asked, sighing.

The man pointed at the empty room. "We will be examining the SUDS network and the Gestalt Cohesion Backbone and determine how and why there is leakage between the two systems, manifesting in the appearance of data from a sentient race's quasi-sentient sex in their tri-sex biological system."

"Wait, we're working on the SUDS and Gestalts?" Flowerpatch asked.

"Yes," the man said.

"Nobody even knows where the hardware for those systems are actually located, much less how it all works. That's why no new races have been added to the system," Herod blurted out.

"Your premise is based on the information you have available, but it is flawed due to missing critical information," the human said.

"What information? Every researcher has done at least basic examination of the SUDS system. While we understand and can even upgrade the 'subject' side of the SUDS system, the primary system itself is completely lost," Carthage said.

"Not completely," one of the clones said.

"lost to everyone," another one said.

"who still exists," a third said.

"even in this room," the bearded one said.

"OK, how are you doing that? None of them have comlinks, there is no data-connection between all of you, how are you doing that?" Flowerpatch asked.

"How is directly related, although that information is actually lost on what went into enabling me to do it," the bearded one said.

"OK, who are you?" Violet Fields-663219 asked, standing up. "You've provided me with data you claim is thousands of years old that I've never even seen or even heard hints of. Who are you?"

The bearded man smiled. "All of you are wondering if maybe you've seen my name on scientific papers, all of you are wondering why I am the Overproject Manager of Overproject Eagle Beak and you are not," he said. He looked at one of the Confed Agents. "Are they cleared to know?"

She nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly.

"You want to know who I am?" all of the clones asked, turning and facing the DS's. All of them made it plain they were moving their hands differently, shifting their weight differently, or just breathing different from the others.

"Yes?" Torture asked, flinching slightly.

"I am Legion."