Each assignment had called for a job, a new history, even a new personality.

This time all we had to do was write and sell infotech, and be regular cool nerdy folk.

We fit this description already except for the infotech, but we could fake it till we figured it out.

This wasn’t even as hard as it was to act like regular agents.

The three of us pooling our money could afford a small house all by itself a hundred miles from the city,

and with jobs that didn’t require much if any travel there proximity to L.A. wouldn’t matter.

And with an army base close by we could still head out Immediately for emergencies.

Keeping and promoting the rest of our team was Shade’s idea, and it turned out perfectly.

They moved into to three of the nearest neighboring houses.

Naturally Craig and Jen together. Just as naturally Ryan and Marc were together. Trudy was by herself renting.

Shade Courtney and I created our programming company by telling Ryan and Marc

to come up with something sweet so it was easier for us to act interested.

They decided we should pretend to be working on AI through a sort of digital natural selection.

Then they changed it to a digital representation of objects with completely accurate physics including

energy exchange and chemical reactions by

starting at an atomic level but scaling out when working with larger objects to

avoid using a redonk amount of computing power.

But then they changed it back when Jen pointed out that if we created the one it could create the other on its own.

Not that we could do it, but it was something to work for in between

defending our society from forces of evil.

Evil, lollers, more like defend our wealth and power from others wealth and power,

but I guess I did believe in some of the ideals I thought we were upholding, kind of.

After a few weeks of contouring ourselves into our new life positions, we

managed to confuse two private investors enough to give us a cool fifty mill starting funds

for twenty percent of our profits with no actual control of operations.

This was accomplished by abusing their sense of logic.

[i]I am super rich. Rich people are smart. Therefor I must be super smart.

I am super smart. I don’t understand what is being talked about. If someone is talking about something I don’t understand they must be super geniuses.[/i]

All it took was an hour’s conversation peppering in gibberish mixed with technical jargon to overcome their antintellectualism.

A few super computers and a gigantic cooling system spent nearly half the funds.

We might just have to produce some practical applications to keep this going.

*     *     *

On an unrelated note I wanted to make some reusable water bottles kind of like Nalgene,

but with home of poi lighting and effects. Make it a high end product that people would be proud of both for

it’s looks and the resources saved even compared with improbable 100% recycling rates

But Ryan and Marc shot that down pretty quickly so I just left it to them.

We, meaning me and Courtney, decided the only help normally needed for field operations would be Shade’s,

leaving Ryan, Marc, Craig, Jen, and Trudy to work full time on our semifake project.

Shade agreed except for Trudy. He pretended she was indispensable in Bo missions.

I was about to ask why, but Courtney flashed me a look telling me to just accept it and move on.

My group of four began retraining ourselves in acknowledgement of our lack of superiority shown by Blondie.

Our marksmanship needed to improve, along with our communication skills.

We needed to diversify our weapons arsenal, and diversify our own abilities,

meaning we had to crosstrain into other members’ specialties.

That along with adapting to the ever changing world of weapons tech

and adapting to the new era of personal protection suits kept us more than busy.

A few weeks into the assignment Ryan and Marc had finished off the whole water bottle thingy and

licensed it out for a few million plus a percentage of sales.

Those snooty nerd fuckers didn’t even apologize for talking shit about it.

The super quick albeit small return on their investment kept our investors happy.

The bad side of this was it meant we getting no where with our stated purpose.

We all got together to discuss the situation.

*     *     *

After meaningless salutations and bullshiting, I decided

as usual, that what I had to say was the most important and opened up with

“My belief is organic life is the only known way to create choice, and choice multiplied by reason

is the ultimate base of intelligence. So we must create digital life to attain digital intelligence.

To imitate life we must convert life’s attributes both internal and most likely external to an alternating one dimensional process.”

“This may be hard.

I think our efforts should be split in two. Maybe not ourselves splitting two different groups working on separate problems,

but rather separate the perspectives from which we think of this problem.

The first to fully understand how and why life actually is the way it is, both mentally (the complete picture of the decision making process) and the physical processes that create the environment in which the activity can take place, and of course self replication and improvement. Improvement may itself may be the single most important factor but I think we must explore the whole field to understand improvements full necessity.

The second how to translate our reality into a one dimensional format with only on and off to work with.

Think of it. How could we explain anything in one’s and zeros alone with no prior reference.

I hope and expect the two will explain each other, but we must at least recognize these two perspectives.

Let us first consider”

“Holy fucking shit” interrupted Courtney

“Holy shit what?” I replied knowing full well she about to mock the length, and presumed self importance, of my soliloquy.

“Holy shit, do you even know how gone you are?”

“It takes a little craziness to create something new, besides it’s fun, and despite that thoughtful comment, I think we should discuss some basic concepts of life from both angles.

Like the energy process.

In life there’s a complete full scale scavenging and transformation of free energy to its own energy forms and other necessary components.

In the computer world it is fed, or not, a simple standard single unit of energy without effort or the possibility of self control.

The need for consumable energy most likely creates need itself and the possibility of survival I suspect creates want.

Want becomes separate emotions that are moored in physical sensation and compressed memory.

These feelings based upon the desire to continue or prevent them then develop into a decision making process.

The decision making process being a main section and most likely the beginnings of we call thought.

Choice is then made when a majority of thoughts, feelings agree.

Or a different way of saying it is, thoughts are created by the memories, emotions, and sensations.

Past events being memory and emotions being compressed memory.

Each memory created in an effort to thrive or mearly survive, exist.

Existence made possible by energy.

It works both ways, forward and back.

Which in my experience shows the ring of truth”

“Missing like eight million steps and so far away from the level of complexity that it’ll probably mislead us more than it helps, but it’s a start.” Courtney

“Thanks Court.”

“Anytime.” she answered.

“Well what about working from the computers’ perspective. What’s a 1 what’s a 0″

“What if we ran a true dual processor one for input and one for reaction. creating rather simply a non one dimensional being

but something that can handle four possibilities

“What do you mean by true ‘dual processor’”

“One standard processor to interpret information that is dependant upon the reactions to the input

but itself creates the ability for the input to continue. A truly circular interdependent relationship”

“Ok, if I except that where would it lead us.”

“We’ll make the input realistic presenting real situations for the second processor to reprogram and react to and its survival will be determined by whether the reaction would have kept it alive in reality

“Yet again I ask how do you create choice, and if you simply state random chance I must say the ability will forever be limited to an inverse exponential figure of the input given.” Ryan

“How do we turn a guess into choice?” Marc

“We simply make it guess. But give it knowledge. Knowledge of the actions of others and its own past.”
“Giving it more and more complex questions and sometimes with more complex answers.” Court

“The first decision it must make is to reproduce, it’s the most basic life process.” Trudy

“The second is to grow more complex.” Shade

“Too allow complexity in these operations we must start with the simplest of commands, complexity is no where near second.” Marc

“The first should be memory.” Court

“No it can’t be memory that’s too complicated. I agree with reproduce then react, not grow.

Eventually they will need to grow but not next.” Shade

“How can they react when they have nothing to react with?” Court

“We’ll figure that out, but what will we have them react to is my question Marc

“We’ll start off with series of simple survival choices with limited response possibilities.

Those that survive our virtual world move on and will be given more abilities.” Ryan

“Along with memory it is essential to include the ability to at least conceive of the future, to allow for growth in between major choices of survival.” Court

“I believe dreams give us our conception of future. They give us a time where we make decisions forced upon us with no godlike control over

and we must and do respond but the choices have no real consequence just as the future does not directly effect the past yet defines it.

What ever that means.” I added

“I honestly have no idea what you guys are talking about.” Jen

“I don’t either, but I’m thinking that’s a good thing.” Craig said to Jen

I started in again “Another realistic factor is to have the possibility to delay response or even change the question forceably or at least approach it in a different way,

maybe even changing the situation by altering the enivronment.” then more confidently. “Yes, definitely, the ability to effect the environment creates freedom, which I think is a necessity to evolve and most likely to life itself.”

*     *     *

“It’s not getting it do complex things it’s getting it to want to do complex things” Shade

“Should we include a value on speed, I mean if the purpose is to produce

something that thinks faster than us if not better than us, well then I think we should some how inculcate a preference for expediency.” Trudy

“How could we do that,., maybe time alive is inverse to ability to make mistakes to a point, not absolute.” I

“We should allow for rest. Make choices necessary but not a constant pressure, at least not always.” Court

“It would be amusing to make death a removal from a system rather than destruction.” Marc

“And ship them off to computer heaven?” Trude

“Wouldn’t that be sweet?” Shade

“We should make it like reality, physical destruction apparent with the possibility of existence on another plane, however unlikely I

“But certainly a bad decision shouldn’t mean death, maybe multiple bad decisions or major bad decisions.” Shade

“A lesser punishment, the equalivent of pain.” Trude

“Yeah, I hadn’t made that connection yet, but thats totally what I mean.” Shade

“Make zero and one bad and good. A lack of one’s equals death., and maybe too many of them.” Marc

“That’s a good way to translate into one dimension

turn everything into good and bad pain and pleasure

life and death.” Shade

“You can’t boil life down to good vs bad it’s so much more than that.” Trudy

“No you can’t but it’s a good point to build from, and I believe it should start as simple as possible, but I freely admit this idea may be completely wrong and may

be what I see as the first misstep, the initial programming may need to include all the base properties that will exist later.” I

“I don’t see how we make a nonliving thing want something I don’t think it’s possible.” Ryan

“But it is.” “Or I don’t see how we could in the first place. We are purely and simply made of a few basic particles, or possibly strings, and yet we do think, we do want.

And since we do we must assume it’s possible somehow.” I

“So you think there is a natural tendency to or natural imbalance toward ability to want like the imbalance toward matter rather than antimatter.” Marc

“Yes I believe that’s true despite never exploring the thought fully or anywhere near that direction” I

“Meh” Ryan

“We have enough for a start?” I said looking mostly to Ryan, but also taking in others responses.

“Enough to fuck around and feel like we have a focus I guess.” Ryan

*     *     *

We had been given an assignment for the end of the month.

It seemed rather straight forward so we decided the best way to spend our time

till then was to go to the New found Glory concert on the 25th, leaving a few days to recover

before the mission.

Trudy unused to our forms of preparation asked “How the fuck are you going to fuck around at a concert when you should be

preparing for a fucking shootout?”
“Shade…” Court

“Look,.,., a NFG concert is like a thousand times more intense than a firefight, and its an

intensity that breeds more of itself leading you to a point where a shootout is kinda fun.

And that’s when you’re at your best when you’re having fun.”

“What?” Trudy

“It helps ok.” Shade

[i]The wall explodes into a dust cloud she appears crashing through head first as rubble rains down. Look left look right. Fire fire. Fire fire. One two. Three four.

She finally hits the floor looks staring up, currently forward, and fires, fires. Five six they drop, as she rolls to her feet sprinting forward.

At the intersection where the bodies of five and six lie she turns left ever so cutely. She runs on. Pulling out an automatic shotgun, she shoots open a doorway following with a few scattered shots

to clear her path. She throws the gun forward crossing arms and pulling out two grenades with each hand, the pins attached to her vest. She backhands them into the room

as she pulls out her hip sheathed P220s. She enters without slowing, a moment before the grenades explode. Bullets thunk into her suit jarring her yet failing to make her

stumble or lose control. The four guards react to the grenades emulating their behavior as she passes to the next room fire and fear riding at her heels. She pulls her backpack forward

opening it as she slows nearing the next intersection. Without a glance elsewhere she pulls out three mines setting them to five, ten and eighteen seconds. She picks up the ten and eighteen

second mine one in each hand as she starts them all. Taking shelter in a doorway the five second mine explodes with a massive force. She throws the second in

before the fire recedes. Time slows as four seconds melds into eternity as another explosion is felt, but lesser, further away. She waits a second longer and tosses the next. Attached to her vest

by a bungie from the backpack she fires a bolt into the wall, reloads the P220′s, closes her eyes, absorbs the concussion wave and dives into the three floor crater.

She bounces down once, observing. The second she adjusts her angle and aims at the single open area over and over not able to make out individuals through the dust.

The third decent she fires head shooting the remaining guards, detaches, and remotely kills the power as she pulls on night goggles. She pulls her final mine from the pack and places it on the wall.[/i]

Before me the wall erupted and with it my last hope. But the fire receded before it consumed us. A ghost walked in. A clunking thudding sound retreated towards the corner where our assailant waited for us.

They scrambled and screamed afraid of another such explosion. Pause. Pause, nothing. The ghost silhouettes a bowling motion and I hear an all to familiar sound of a C-13 frag rolling. It and they explode.

Courtney turned around and smiled at us. She signed for us to follow her showing that she at least was having some hearing problems. We ran past bodies turned a few corners

and entered an executive office. An executive office with a private access elevator. We entered it and as the doors shut the tension drained away, not because we were safe it was just that Santeria was playing. I mean how can you not be relaxed to Sublime. We went straight to the roof despite Shade wanting to stop at the sixthninth floor and entered the helicopter as Trudy let the copter drift past bodies still twitching and bleeding all across the roof. She did nice work.

*     *     *

A concert a mission and a good meal later we got back to our conversation.

“Going back to good and bad, from the very start I think we should strive to make what we see as good as what they see as good so we have the same goals.

And later when using real world situations we should occasionally check the projections with reality as a form of calibration.” Craig

“Dude you’re jumping ahead like super far.” I said

“I know, I just thought it needed to be said and I though I would get lost in the conversation and forget it.”

“Oh, ok, kewl, sorry”

“Kewl”

“At first I believe they should receive free energy and allow for exponential growth, but eventually they must at least partially convert their own energy to maintain life”

“That’s hardly important now we need to focus on the creation of memory, replication and growth.”

“Look at us we expect constant growth it seems fucking hardwired into us to just expect it, and

it’s quite possibly going to destroy us.”

We have control over its environment

we can limit their growth easily without making the programming more complicated.”

“If we intentionally change the environment it will destroy the evolution,

once we start with rules we must stick with them, otherwise I guarantee the system will crash. In all ways.”

“And I suspect that if we are to create something superior to us we must provide it with at least as accurate representation of its environment as our own preceptions.”

“I believe to be accurate we must allow for free growth initially because it’s there, but later they must choose to lose numbers to grow individually.”

“That would leave an ultimate survival of the fittest mentality.”

“Ooorr to grow more complex. Allowing for internal growth and external.”

“Can we stop now?” Ryan

“Sure., and you’ll be glad to know we have an assignment coming up on the 28th.” Courtney

“Glad you’re adding even more to our workload?” Marc

“No its just us three and Trudy”

“Then why do we care?” Craig

“Vers might get shot.”

Marc “Yes” overlapping with “Sweet” from Jen

“Super sweet” Ryan

“Super sweet times like 17.5.” Craig

I leaned over to Shade whispering “I get the feeling he added that .5 on just for effect.”

*     *     *

“Cofffeeeeeeeee!!” I yelled to Courtney all weak like, after rolling over laboriously and seeing she wasn’t there.

Ten seconds later she came in bearing coffees and danishes.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

We ate for a while slowly coming alive staring at the coffee and each other.

“Do we have to do it on the 28th”

“The smash and grab?., not really we could move it I guess. Why.”

“There’s a Rise Against concert I really wanted us to go to on Thursday.” I

“They’re like three days apart.”

“You’ve obviously never been to a Rise Against concert. We’ll need at least two days to recover and four to be at our best” I

“Are you serious? This from the guy who went through the continuous 72 hour Bo training course that ends in a fight with a

professional mma fighter and ankle locked him?”

“I’m telling you Rise Against is intense.”

*     *     *

[i]The crowd divides down the middle the strongest and fearless taking a spot along the front line.

Tense slight agitations reverberate through the crowds like a pulse, yet no one moves.

The music builds slowly upon itself gathering speed and energy, the feeling grows within.

We grab it and become it, and as the first vibration of the first note of the refrain drops, the crowd drives and is driven together.

The note climaxes, the sides collapse, bodies collide from all directions with their own force plus all those behind him.

The crowd mixes as the second verse is played, but some realize what should and now will happen and begin to separate again reforming as each sees fit.

The verse is sung all around, and it all repeats.

The Red Sea opening to the beat of Rooftops.[/i]

*     *     *

Three days later we descended upon the port of Baltimore.

A medium sized port by most standards but absolutely vital as it’s one of four capable of receiving crude in the US.

“Why don’t I get to have guns again?” I

“Cause any of your errant shots of which I’m sure there will be many, could blow shit up.”

“But they get to have guns?” I

“They’re actually trying to blow the whole place up. So anything exploding is a good thing to them.” Courtney

“And we knew about this weeks ago but didn’t prevent it, because?” Trudy

“We need the info these guys have more than cheap oil, and there wasn’t any safer way to entice them to surface.” Courtney

“It’s a highly valued target for them, with relatively minimal security, leading to a high chance for success Shade

“And I’m going in by myself because you think, they’ll think I’m a diversionary tactic and commit their resources elsewhere.” I

“Yep” Shade

Courtney “Our targets are former military and most likely still are, though not openly,.

These guys are generals in terrorist costumes they won’t commit till we do and we won’t so…”

“Besides if you fail. it’ll drastically reduce greenhouse emissions for like months” Trudy

“Increased coal and ethanol production would negate the environmental gain., and I’d be dead.”

“You should face minimal, 5-10, combatants, and since we won’t be actively involved we can observe and call out any threats.”

“Whatever, lets just do this.”

“We’ve got every imaginable form of surveillance in here you shouldn’t underestimate the value of that knowledge.” Shade

“I’ll be fighting hand to hand I won’t have time to listen to you. Hell I won’t have time to listen to me, just act observe react, rinse repeat.”

“Set me down.”

“You don’t even know where you’re going.” Courtney

“Yeah I do, Marc transferred the layout into a metroid map. I played it all week.

The highjump boots are in the Jahre, spin attack is on dock eight, Craig and Rydly will be in the control tower,

and apparently I’ve already got the varia suit.” I

“You sure could use freeze beam” Shade

“We should be able to do that.” Trudy

“Really?”

“Yeah”

“Well you guys can work on it after I’m dead.” I

“Okay” Trudy

I snarled, slipped on the carbon-nanofiber mask and jumped down onto dock three about a quarter mile from the tower.

The copter though unheard will have been detected and the nearest sentinels should be on their way.,

I needed to stop thinking in Courtney’s detached semiobjective perspective and just let it flow.

Besides being “bullet resistant” my suit had a killer sound system.

I jacked up Catalyst and rounded the corner.

*     *     *

[i]Block left, transfer to right. During switch and slide, step with right thrust kick.

Finish arm break which reverse pivots into back roundhouse of next.

Switch pivot and direction right thrust to lower stomach, finish with knee to head.

Run., taking shots forward, right sweeping right block, slide in, chin crank.

Don’t stop. Enter tower taking shots, double clothesline, relax let slip past forearms slit throats.

Up stairs. Run up stairs. Run up stairs.

Throw knife into stomach of left guard driving up and into front guard using body as shield

thrust onto target one. Turn into shots of target two, block left wrapping around right arm, wrap left tripping from behind with right leg.

As he falls thrust left, break, twist right, break.

Reverse pivot, back fist not landing but setting up perfect right hand into and through target one.

One in shock the other unconscious I grab a headset fallen on the ground “Running might be a good idea.”[/i]

*     *     *

I woke up back at home and mumbled about coffee. Transforming, the mumbling got louder eventually

turning into a creative series of curses till I realized no one was around.

Using all my strength, power and skill I managed to stumble downstairs

to find Trudy, Shade and Courtney sitting on the floor eating breakfast, and YES, drinking coffee.

I stole Courtney’s cup and began the process of becoming human again. “There’s a whole meal for

you right here.” Courtney said talking and sipping what supposed to be my coffee.

I sat down asking “If you had it all set up why didn’t you just call me down?”

“It’s not cool yet and us normal people like hot food.” Trudy said finishing

off her plate and stealing a piece of my bacon.

“Besides you need your beauty rest.” Shade

“That’s for sure” Courtney

“Hunh?”
“You’ve got bruises all over babe.”

“Ah well I guess that explains the pain and soreness better than just being coffee deprived.”

“At least they aren’t puncture wounds.” Trudy said in way that would have been far too cheerful coming from anyone else.

“Eh, whatever. So what were you guys talking about?”

“Shade and Trudy.” Courtney

“Shade and Trude, what?”

“Them, you know, together and stuff.”

“You two are a thing?” I said pointing my fork accusingly.

“How could you not know?”

“It’s not like anyone told me.”

“It’s not like we haven’t been completely obvious.” Shade

“I guess I’m just tarded, ok, lets leave it at that. What specifically were you talking about?”

“Moving in together.” Shade

“Trudy’s moving in? Sweet!”

“Actually I was thinking about moving to her place.”

“But her place is boring, our place is the shiznit.”

“Boring?” Trudy said kind of stunned and maybe a little hurt.

Courtney closed her eyes and nodded.

Shade “We need a little more privacy Vers. Not everyone is comfortable running around having sex with everyone everywhere.”

“Well they should be! But you still should move in here I was planning on building an addition anyway.”

“How are you gonna manage that? The others are getting no where fast and have eaten through

nearly all the seed money securing the site.” Courtney

“Mr. Titov was getting paid 30 mil upon taking out the port.

The transfer had already taken place, probably at the point they could prove they had taken

the control tower, so I just transferred it from his to my account.”

“Money that should have gone directly to the general blackopps budget.” Courtney

“Wait, he was getting paid? I thought he was just a terrorist.” Trudy

“Hardly anyone is that loyal to country or even religion, but nearly everyone is loyal to money, like Vers here.” Shade

“Bullshit I’m in it for the chicks. But if someone’s willing to pay that amount to destroy something I deserve to get paid just as much to protect it.

Anyway I’m not entirely selfish we’re gonna use some of it on weapons tech.” I

“That’s why we needed the secure location?” Trudy

“Yep”

“I think we’ve successfully proven our inability to actually invent, why would weapons be any different from computers.” Shade

“We have access to the patent office, most anything we could want has already been invented we just need to steal and adjust it to our needs.” Shade

“Stealing, what the government does best.” Courtney

“So back to my main point you guys should live here. I’m gonna rock this place out.”

“Sounds fun.” Trudy

“You’re gonna do some crazy shit aren’t you? I’m in.” Shade

“Sweet.” Courtney

“What day is it?” I asked

*     *     *

We all met up at “the shop” as we had taken to calling it. Courtney was filling in the others on the plan to “borrow”

improve and produce patented or government funded weapons tech.

“Why?” Ryan

“You guys aren’t smart enough to design a natural evolution. And we aren’t good enough to take on everybody else.

Not without help, and the government right now is a lot more taken with quantity over quality and won’t be able

to keep us ahead of the game anymore.” Trudy

We all gave her a wtf look.

“But AI through computer evolution will easily take us to and through next gen technology including weapons.” Ryan

“Yeah but you won’t be able to do it. As Trudes said you aren’t smart enough.” I

“Then who is?” Marc

“Nobody. Just as there probably aren’t any better field agents that us, but we can’t beat everyone else all the time

and you can’t create a whole new field of science out of thin air.” Trudy

“So we give up on anything longterm, go for the quick fix, and hope?” Jen

“No. The major threats have been delt severe blows and are in rebuilding mode. We and our allies are strong.

I doubt there will be much activity for several years.” I

“Next gen weapons should keep us far enough ahead for the forseable future, and as a long term solution

we’ll need to train the next generation of BO agents.” Courtney

“Shouldn’t headquarters be training the next group already?” Marc

“They have. The #2 team just finished training, they’re based near New York.” Jen

“The 2 group sucks as is apparent by our knowledge of where they’re located.” Courtney

“In a few years we’ll be past peak, essentially retired, who cares what happens.” Shade

“We’re kinda saving the world here.” I

“And he’ll be sure to short civilization stock.” Trudy

“Just look around no one on this side of the globe is half as good as us and we’re just barely getting by.

Soon our only advantages will be experience.

As far as our own abilities go I believe we’ll need to start utilizing some standard and some nonstandard performance enhancers.

But further down we’ll need a group whose abilities, both mentally and physically, far exceed our own to meet ever more challenging situations.” I

“We were force fed training and knowledge 24 hours a day from the very day we were recruited there’s no way we someone could do much more.” Craig

“Yeah but you could start earlier, and if you started early enough you could create a whole different way of thinking for them to have, where the things we try so hard to accomplish

become natural to them.” I “An existence full of combat scenarios and tactics, economic projections paired with philosophical situations.

Invention into evolution of design, fiction into theory to reality to creation, creation altering society and belief, and”

“How them drugs treatin you Vers?” Shade

“”It’s true. I mean not in the fucked up way he said it, but we could change the way children learn producing what would amount to a human weapon.” Courtney

“They wouldn’t have to be just a weapon. They could still be as human as anyone if you did it right.” Trudy said earning her a questioning look

from both Shade and I but I think for entirely differing reasons.

“We’re not going around stealing five year old phenoms.” Shade

“Five would be too late” I

“The right type of people would beg for the opportunity for their kids.” Courtney

“Hell I would.” said both Trudy and I causing a strange look festival.

“Well that proves my statement.” Courtney

“We could start a school system recruiting from the best prospective parents promising

the best possible education for their kids.” Trudy

“It would need a whole school systems worth of educators.” I

“We can sift through and select the best teachers who happen to have elite children and bring in both.

It’ll add a personal incentive to the teachers to make the school as good as possible.” Trudy

“It’s true, I would have to do a lot of the combat educating, at least the technical stuff anyway, and having added incentive would make me work harder.”

“You just suggested we have a kid so you wouldn’t get bored at work” Courtney “Wow”

*     *     *

We spent the next few weeks training with different bullet and explosion resistant fabrics that might protect us better than our standard issue government model.

Which means I ran around while Trudy, Shade and Courtney shot at me.

We retarded the rounds by using a slightly less explosive powder and used a softer alloy for the slug, but they were still shooting me.

Some of the suits were made at the shop according to spec but the more complicated nano materials we had to go steal directly.

It became readily apparent, as I developed a full body welt, that most of the claims were falsified but a few proved protective and durable while allowing for a free range of motion.

At least it gave us something to do till Coexist came around and then a week later on the 1st we were planning to take out some antiscience

nutjobs in South Africa that were promoting some not good ways to cure certain diseases.

I pointed out that we have plenty of antiscience nutjobs right here in America that were costing just as many lives

to go kill, but I guess preventing the use of cancer vaccinations stifling funding for

stemcell research or not lowering the cost of actual medication didn’t seem as urgent.

*     *     *

So we went to Coexist. Me, Courtney, Shade and Trudy.

We get there and it’s this big three room place with everyone just showing up and things just getting started, but there’s already that buzz.

The one where you can straight up feel something amazing is about to happen. Everyone’s dressed to the nines in one way or another, fully alive.

And we met all these infinitely interesting people, and had the most life changing conversations.

But between me and Courtney, it was amazing. We,. I mean we,, we felt love, love for those around us and everyone else in everyway.

But towards each other we developed something else. Something built of love but more complex more complete and stronger, far stronger.

We could feel each other directly not needing to listen or look for response another sense of my thoughts and sensations mixing and reacting with hers.

Her excitement joining my own spawning more of itself to be met by more of hers and cycling.

Pure unadultered joy from movement to moment. The myriad fantifal sensations of dancing. The beat crashing into and through us.

We felt it all. It can’t be explained any further, it isn’t something words can represent.

*     *     *

I woke up demanding coffee to no avail so I made the journey downstairs to find the others just as before except they had WAFFLES this time.

Blueberry Waffles, jesus. “What are you gibbering on about today?” I said sweetly

“Your ‘addition’.” Shade

“I caught a glimpse of the prints it’s fucking huge.” Courtney

“It’s going to be a school. The school. The one we talked about.” Trudy

“But they started surveying weeks ago, before that.” Courtney

“I already had it planned. I was just talking about it with everyone to gauge their reaction, I do that with a lot of things.”

“So you’re attaching a full blown school system to the house.” Shade

“No.” I began. “It’s going to be a few hundred yards that way”

“How do you consider that an addition?” Shade

“It’s not but here we’re digging out two more basements I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

“Why basements rather than extending the other floors.” Trudy

“Building down is more environmentally sound. It leaves more green space, and will use less energy for heating, well, cooling.

Also it’s more structurally sound, and will last longer.” Shade

“How are you doing all this for 30 million?” Courtney

“All the workers are mexican.” I

“I thought we supported immigrants, but not paying them less than standard wages?” Courtney

“Those guys all get paid top dollar they just happen to do four or five times as much work as us lazy ass americans.” I

“Oh, cool” Courtney

“So we’re really doing this?” Trudy

“Yep.” “Who made the waffles?”

“I did.” Trudy

Looking at Courtney I said “I think I might start to like her more than you.”

Earning me an orly look “Remember that raver girl Rambo,., She’s coming over tonight.”

To Trudy I said “She wins. Good waffles though.”

*     *     *

Over at the shop Ryan had us test out some sort of heat ray.

He got really upset when I called it that taking about how it was some specially focused radiation.

I forget what else, but I gathered it was like a laser with radiation rather than light.

“But the effect is it makes things very hot?” Courtney

“Yes.” Ryan

“So it’s a heat ray.” Trudy

“No it’s..”

“Let’s go fuck with em.” Shade

It was disturbing to see how easily the suits melted. I guess they’re going to have to become multidemsional integrated defense systems.

Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to reengineer with the trickle down effect of technology tending to be more like a waterfall in weapons tech.

Besides my fear of being cooked, I was a little concerned with Ryan gutting me when he found out the school would be done in less than a year.

I gathered everyone together hoping they could protect me.

“So umm Ryan uh, the schools gonna be done in about nine months.”

“That’s cool.”

“It means we’ll have to start searching for prospective students, teachers and staff right now.”

“It’s cool.”

“Really?”

“We got a pseudo life system set up. I think if we leave it alone long enough something will evolve. So having something else to do is a good thing.” Marc

“How long till we see results?” Shade

“Well our evolution took a few billion years,. considerably less than that.” Ryan

“K then.” Shade

*     *     *

“The way I see things we’re going to need an entire community to support and populate the school. I’ve got

the buildings and infrastructure mostly worked out for a 1000 person community. It’ll be as green as we can get and

completely self sufficient

“You don’t think this goes beyond our duties?” Craig

“Of course it does. Do you think our duty to the government is more important than our duty to the future?

And since when did it become a bad thing to go beyond.” Jen

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant more like why are we the ones doing it.” Craig

“Cause no one else is.” Jen

“And no one else is going to. We should be growing in leaps and bounds from generation to generation but we aren’t.

We’re stuck in the slow motion of the middle ages where it took the reign of a king just to

make small political adjustments.

There were few educated intelligent openminded creative to make the changes necessary. Their society was

almost completely based on superstition and religious bullshit, with nearly everyone falling in line expounding the problem.

Just a few individuals sent us forward, and these individuals were harrassed and obfuscated in all

possible manners by society when they should have been trying desperately to help.”

“And today five six hundred years later socially whats changed.

Even with seven billion people we only have a few thousand working on truly new technology and theory,

and most of these will accomplish nothing as creativity has been beaten out of them by our pathetically regimented education system.

And even the top tier scientists have to beg and scrape for funding of even the most Immediately necessary research.

The rest of society still bases their understanding on superstition and oral tradition slash bullshit.

Sometimes I wonder if they’re all scitzo. I mean honestly the only difference I see between a religious person and a scitzo

is the scitzo wants it to stop.”

“We need to move a large portion of society into science 25 maybe even 50%.

And the rest of us need to support them as best we can for our own good. If we did that we’d grow exponentially.

Not in numbers but internally, socially and in quality of life. And a school, a real school, the way school should be is step one. One of hundreds

maybe thousands to transition the world into the brightness of knowledge out of the false warmth of ignorance, step one.

Step One.”

“You think we can really do this?” Jen

“None of us are educators how can you think we can make an ideal school?” Ryan

“Because each of us has a set concept of reality based on fact and we adjust to new information altering our preceptions and readjust.” I

“Meaning we observe something, try to gather more info, adjust and react. This is the base of learning, it’s all we need.” Courtney

“That and I was gonna bring in Deb Harbal. She knows more about learning and how to learn that any ten people.” I

“All that talk and you’re bringing someone else to run the show?” Trudy

“I’m a sex addicted paid killer who throughly endorses drug use do you really think I’d be a good teacher?” I

“Yes.” “Yes.”

“Yeah.” “Unhun.”

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