Anyway, Ivan wasn’t all robot; he’s got a few chunks of human brain matter in that neosteel skull plate, but that’s all there is to his humanity.
I mean, it wasn’t hard for them to fabricate the exoskeleton; there were plenty of android models to work from. Even so, they brought in the most prominent robotics engineers not already chained to the other corporations.
Dr. Ronald Calloway was the head of the Ivan project, and he’d worked core-ward for dozens of years on some of the best pieces of robotics known to man. His big achievement was the Iso-Clean Mark IV, a learning- algorithm servant-bot for lazy rich people. You remember that one, right?
He definitely had money, man, but Keritas offered him ever so much more. Other researchers from the pinnacle of all fields came and went: antimatter physicists, starship engineers, augmentation specialists, neurosurgeons. They all came to bring this hulking beast to life.
Ivan’s final specifications included a full neosteel skeleton with dissipating mimic-flesh coating it. An internal reactor, codenamed OLGA, in a fortified chest cavity produced countless gigawatts of energy. It was supposedly enough to power the dissipation shielding of the skin to withstand brief immersion within a star. That wasn’t even the most important function of the device.
His sight, hearing, indeed all senses were augmented to more than triple the finest after-market modifications available to the public. He had strength and speed of unholy proportions. He had a heightened human brain capable of eidetic memory and rapid calculation be it in a laboratory or on the battlefield.
The most frightening piece of Ivan’s hardware was his energy release mechanism and how they intended to use it. They pulled out all the stops, you know? Ivan was the finest and most potentially destructive force to exist, and they wanted to make more.
Lots more.”
Dr. Calloway entered the complex, bidding his usual passive nod to the walls of receptionists and security personnel. The elevator he took dove to the accustomed cool of the distant basement, where the sparkling lab greeted him.
The nearly assembled body of Ivan lay on the table in the central isolation lab, locked and shielded by excessively, in Dr. Calloway’s opinion, redundant security.
He walked over to their personal break-room, setting his briefcase on the counter. He poured himself a cup of fresh coffee. A colleague, by the name of Dr. Trevors, was seated at the table, reading the news on a digital pad.
Looking up, Trevors smirked. “Big day today.”
Calloway nodded, taking a sip and grimacing at the lousy flavor.
“What’s the delay been, two weeks now?” Trevors asked.
“Three,” the robotics specialist replied. “The damn neurosurgeon had to dig out the implants in some captured dignitary or something. As though they couldn’t find someone as qualified to help us instead.”
“Another one to give clearance to? You know: the two week process by itself?” Trevors said. “We’re on the home stretch here; they don’t want to have to bring in more people
Calloway waved a dismissive hand. “They should have had back-up candidates approved and ready. The billions, trillions spent on this project and you’d think they’d appreciate more efficiency.” He took another swig. “Ugh, Gods… you’d also think that they could—”
“Afford better coffee? Yes, I’ve heard that one before.” Trevors shrugged, returning his attention to the news reports.
Scowling at his colleague’s lax attitude, Calloway drained the remaining coffee and stepped out. In truth, the constant close quarters in which they worked and the frustration of delay was beginning to wear on the pair closely associated with the project. Various people came and went, but Trevors and Calloway worked in uncomfortable proximity, twelve hours a day, for years.
“…and it’s almost done,” Calloway muttered as he stepped towards the entrance to the isolation lab. An exciting prospect for him, to see the grand scheme-
Sighing, he palmed the outer lock and set his chin into the retinal scanner. Green lights flared, and he punched in his seven-digit access code.
An error light flashed. “Dammit.”
Twenty minutes later, after a group of five heavily armed and trained men swept through the lab to ensure a complete lack of anything resembling intruders, Calloway tried again.
This time the code was successful, and the outer door opened.
Sanitizing product and fans scattered the thin hair upon his head, as always eliciting a grimace from the aging man. “Why this is necessary I’ll never understand…” he lapsed into his usual mutterings and complaints. He withdrew a small key from his pocket, three-pronged. Into the locking mechanism of the inner door, he set this key and waited. A green light shone, and he turned the key two clicks left, three clicks right, and one click back left. He punched in one more keycode.
The door opened.
“Good morning, Ivan,” the doctor said cheerfully, his annoyance tempered by finally being through the security countermeasures. “Today we should get to see you up and about for real.”
The slab of metal and synthesized flesh on the table gave no reply, lying as a brainless lump of trillion dollar parts. Truly the only task remaining was to get Ivan’s augmented human brain installed.
For weeks, they’d done countless testing of Ivan’s motor functions with a simple processor linked to controls. Bent sections of starship hull plate lay, discarded in one of the testing areas from the strength demonstration. A hideous indentation was smashed into a concrete wall as one of the idiotic and now-fired techs had not slowed Ivan’s impressive sprint quickly enough in the speed test.
A capacitor chamber had nearly overloaded at a demonstration of Ivan’s power output, an action which very well could have caused a cataclysmic explosion that would have destroyed a quarter of the Keritas complex. This was at a tenth maximum load.
“We’ll never have to worry about using that function, now will we my devastating little pet?” Dr. Calloway practically crooned. His affection for the project appeared excessive but not so much that Keritas thought he needed to be removed. “You’ll always win without it. I just know you will.”
In the unlikely event of a detachment of Ivan-units being unable to secure an objective or certain varied circumstances, the Annihilation Nexus portion of his namesake would activate. In tandem, their reactors would release an energy stream straight into the core of the planet, the intention being to cause a world-shattering event. Then in the aftermath, Keritas could in theory send a ship to scoop up the undamaged Ivans, recharge them, and haul them to the next objective.
Dr. Calloway was almost sad to see the project at its end. Once they had a viable prototype, the schematics would be carted off to a manufacturing center for production, and he’d likely not see his precious children unless on the opposite end of their promised brutality.
The doctor ambled through the lab, checking over some of the instruments and analyses. System diagnostics spooled through the large monitor. Everything displayed green lights.
Stepping over to the table, he ran a hand over the remarkable synthetic skin that coated the structure of the human-in-appearance body. Cold and lifeless at the moment, it was remarkably smooth, soft. “Like real flesh,” he murmured, always astounded when he felt it.
The airlock hissed open. “Is it really such a surprise?” Trevors asked as he stepped into the room. Calloway felt a pang of irritation at his fellow doctor’s air of smug satisfaction. Trevors, the impudent cad that he was, did create the design for the flesh and was instrumental in altering it to suit the energy dispersion and channeling functions.
Calloway didn’t answer his colleague. He stepped over to some charts and pretended to sift through the documentation. In truth, very little could be accomplished. Countless simulations and tests had been run to determine Ivan’s viability, and the final stage was only minutes away.
“Or hours,” he said, again the annoyance at the delay springing to the front of his thoughts. He turned to Trevors, who scanned over the same diagnostic data. “When did you say the surgeon was supposed to arrive?”
