How We Met

How we met

“Since you’re back, I take it Amid confirmed what I gave you was old enough,” Eric began as I was getting settled.  He handed me a glass of water as he sat across from me.

Pausing, I said, “How did you know I would end up taking them to Amid?”

“Only man in this region with the expertise to do the testing,” came Eric’s reply.  “Don’t worry.  There’s no way I would have tampered with the results.”  He sipped his own water, setting it beside him.  I pulled the birth certificate and photo out of my bag, intending to hand them back over.  “No,” Eric held up a hand.  “You keep those.  They’ll do you more good than they will me at this point.  And anyway, the government’s propaganda on the matter just about has me believing that I don’t really exist.”  He chuckled.

Taking out my notetab, after replacing the certificate and photo, I set it to record and said, “Well.  Um…you don’t mind if I record our conversations, do you?

“Not at all.  I, Eric Pohlman, consent to have my conversations with James Hall recorded and used by James Hall as he sees fit.  Good enough?” Eric asked with a smile.

“Yeah, that should do,” I replied nervously.

“Relax, sonny.  You look more tense than a man that’s been constipated for four days!”

“Mhm.  Right.  Greg,” I began, still not being used to using the man’s real name.

“Eric,” he corrected.

“Right.  Eric.  It’s just still a little hard to believe that you are who you’re claiming to be.  I mean, it’s been almost 500 years since the TDF was forced off Earth.  Even with today’s medical advances, humans don’t live much past a century and a half at most.”

“That’s true,” Eric said, leaning back and steepling his fingers.  “I agree that I have no right to still be alive.  Nor to look as good as I do, so to speak.  More on that later, though.  And yet,” spreading his hands wide, “here I am.  What does your gut tell you about me, James?  Not what do you want to believe, but what is your gut telling you?”

“My gut is telling me that to be in possession of such artifacts as you gave me, and to bear such a striking resemblance to the man in the photo, despite my disbelief, you must be Eric Aaron Pohlman.  Hero of Thermopylae, savior of North America, leader of the TDF and friend of the other TDF greats.”  Eric’s demeanor changed somewhat during my listing.

“I have been called many things, as you say.  Hero among them.”  He looked at me over his once again steepled fingers.  “But many a military veteran will tell you that heroes aren’t the ones who live on.  They’re the ones left behind in the ground.  No, I only ever did my duty to humanity and my fellow troopers as best I could.  As I already said to you, I’m not a heroer.  I’m not a hero.  But,” his demeanor brightening, “I am, or rather was, I suppose, friend to those others of the TDF leadership, as you say.  Though out of them all, James Christopher and I were the closest friends.”

“So when did you two first meet?  Was it at the Project?”

“Actually, quite a bit before Project Plymouth.  The military general in charge of the project came to me and asked for recommendations for a civilian lead.  Having known James for some years, I suggested him.  Within a week he was on-board and helping to recruit the best minds of the day.”

“So when was the first time you two met?”

“Fourth grade.  Amazingly enough I didn’t actually want to be friends with him at first,” Eric said as he began reminiscing.

As far back as first grade I knew James, though then only as a classmate.  At the time, everyone was equal.  By third grade we unconsciously started to form cliques.  Somehow I maintained my own neutrality, though James was not so lucky.  By third grade he was becoming an outcast.  My mother actually made me invite James over to play one day.  I knew almost immediately, though, that we would be the best of friends.  You see, both James and I early on were fans of science fiction.  We always dreamed of what could be.  When we’d have sleep-overs we would talk about things such as light travel, the Force, and so on.  It was a great time.

We would hang out at recess, go to band together, things friends of that age do.  By high school  our roles began to reverse in ways.  James remained an intellectual, taking Advanced Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics courses.  But he also joined the ranks of the jocks.  I also took advanced coursework, our schedules at school crossing every so often, but remained the aloof student I had ever been.  I still think I worked harder in school than he ever did.  See, he always seemed to come to concepts easier, understanding them faster and deeper than other kids our age.  Me?  I struggled.  In the long run, I think it helped me during and after the Project Plymouth days.  I was able to focus, almost single-mindedly, on something until it yielded its secrets to me.  

Knowing that we two are largely seen as the main drivers behind ATMO, and then the TDF, a friend of ours was as instrumental: Adam Green.  Where we specialized in bio-chemical studies he was an engineer.  Core courses in high school he took with us, but focused more on tech such as metal work, fabrication, etc.  He proved indispensable to ATMO.

When we graduated we all continued on to post-secondary schools where we furthered our passions.  James started at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and finished his collegiate work at Madison prior to being brought on board for the project.  I, meanwhile, did my undergraduate studies at UW-Green Bay before continuing on to graduate work and research at MIT.  Adam attended solely the Milwaukee School of Engineering, specializing in advanced robotics and propulsion.  We brought him onto the project early as a sub-head in vehicle research and development.  I remained as a sub-head for physics, one of my several specialties.

Another member of the leadership in the program was Melinda Viste, whom James eventually married.  We brought in various other civilians to assist in the technical phases of Project Plymouth.  Largely, military participation was kept to a security level as well as test subjects.  The various project heads were given military commissions on bequest of General Lathrop, the military lead, as he felt it would put his men and women more at ease while working with us.  We harbored no illusions; we knew we were putting people’s lives on the line with our work.  Theory, after all, can take you only so far before it must be tested in reality.  But everyone at that time felt it was worth the risk.  The Coalition Wars had taken a bad turn for the Allied Nations, and the Coalition Nations made no secret of their plans for the world after conquest. It would practically have been a return to the Dark Ages.

We worked on the project for years, coming closer and closer to creating the super soldiers the Allies wanted so desperately.  Then the Coalition collapsed when its leader died.    That’s something that really never made the history books you know, just how important one man could be.  People across the region had flooded to him.  He used his charisma and newfound popularity to unite the Arab world under one banner, one he used to declare war on Israel.  The West, being tied by treaty to Israel, had to respond.  And so the Coalition War began.  It ended much the way it started, though.  The Arab leader suffered a massive and fatal stroke.  Without his leadership the various factions he had united in cause splintered.  The war was over for the West.  They left peace keepers in Israel to protect its sovereignty, of course, but disengaged from major combat operations and cut back on wartime expenditures.  Our project lost its priority status.  We could feel the prize; that which we worked and sacrificed for was just within grasp, but being quickly pulled away.

Finally we received notice that our facility, Project Plymouth in its entirety, was being shut down and shelved indefinitely.  I can’t blame the politicians who made the decisions.  We had failed so far to deliver as promised.  Knowing the end was near we took imperfect calculations and guesses and decided to try them in real life.  The human integration lab, hastily built, was brought online.  Some of the power shielding had yet to be fully installed and we used sub-standard pipes when requisitions for the proper ones were refused.  It was a situation built to fail.  But we pressed on.  We brought in the Marines, hooked them into their womb chambers and sedated them.  Slowly, we began filling the tanks with chemical reagents, ionizing the mixture as we went, testing the conditions we were creating.

The tests looked good, so we kept going.  We increased the power, pressure and chemical levels, literally forcing our nanites into the very cells of the Marines.  We could see the pain they underwent in their jerks and spasms.  Even sedated, a few came through, opened their eyes, scratched at the sides of the tanks containing them, looking for any way out of the pain.  They screamed.  Raw pain, indiscernible as anything comprehensible.  Through the chemicals, through the transparent metal tubes, their screams came.  We pushed on, forcing more power, more of the chemical bath, and more of the nanite slush into the tanks.  The tanks themselves had been designed to withstand many atmospheres of pressure, so they were in no danger of rupturing.  The rest of the equipment, however, was not tested at the loads we were incurring.  Cracks began forming in the pipes leading from our storage tanks to the pumps, from the pumps to the wombs where the Marines were.  Gas alarms began to sound.  The chemicals were vaporizing and leaking through the seals.  We didn’t stop.  We were only seconds away from finishing.  With the chemical catalysts at full concentration and the nanite slurry injected in the tanks all we needed to do was polarize the Marines’ tanks to force molecular bonding of the base nanites.  We engaged the conductors and there was a spark.  The escaping gases ignited, the flame flowing back into the storage tanks.  We scrambled to stop the chain reaction that was about to occur.  If the fire reached the chemicals in the storage tanks they would ignite, causing a tremendous explosion. Such a blast would tear open the slurry tanks and release all the nanites we had created.  Being preprogrammed, the nanites would activate in the presence of sufficient energy, bonding where they could and seeking access to more power where they couldn’t.  They would compromise the containment of our high-yield power lines.  There could be secondary explosions, the entire base blown up by the combination of dangerous chemicals and raw power that were about to mix.

General Lathrop snapped to action, jumping across catwalks and the Marines’ tanks to get to the manual shut-off valve for the chemical feed line.  He got there but a moment too late.  The ignition had reached the chemical tanks.  Time seemed to suddenly stop.  The tanks bulged at first, then the pipes.  Rivets and bolts popped.  Flames came out of joints in the line.  The pipe in front of the general burst.  He had such a strangely surprised look on his face as he was thrown back.  Heat.  Such intense heat.  The flame reached the exploding chemical cloud and ignited it.  The general was consumed mid-air.  A concussion wave swept us all off our feet.  I saw the nanite slurry tank cracking along its height as I was tossed to the ground.  Rending metal and liquid flow met my ears, coolness washing over me as a wave.  Emergency protocols took effect and cracked the Marines’ tanks, throwing their occupants onto the floor as well.  We scientists got up first, drenched and throwing up the slurry.  The Marines were awake, the pain proving more powerful than the sedatives, and were writhing on the floor.  I looked around at our lab.  Twisted metal, burst tanks and scorched walls greeted my gaze.  In one corner fluttered to the ground still burning remnants of a camouflage uniform.  Spotting a power conduit near the slurry tanks, I saw the nanites eating their way through the insulation.

James and I locked gaze and nodded in agreement.  “Everyone out!” he called while I made my way to the closest wall panel, entering the code for emergency evacuation.  We and the lab guards helped the Marines to their feet and started getting out when finally the nanites ate through to the power conduits.  The final component of nanite bonding was coursing through the chemical-slurry bath flowing around our feet.  That feeling of total paralysis and utter helplessness was so incredibly angering and humbling all at once.  All of us seized up where we stood, falling to the ground atop control desks, chairs, and each other, our bodies wracked with electrically induced muscle spasms.  The cold about my feet started to creep along the rest of my body.  It was as if I was slowly being immersed in a vat of ice-water.  Seconds seemed like minutes as wave after wave of electrical energy washed through my body and I sank further yet into that icy darkness.  The cold enveloped me, cresting my head and coating my lungs; I couldn’t breathe.  Then, all at once, the waves of pain and agony stopped.

I crumpled onto the ground, my body a mass of lead.  Slowly I crawled to my knees, grasping the edge of the table I had fallen on and pulled myself to my feet.  Melinda was closest to me, she as I just beginning to recover.  I looked around and saw that, with the exception of the Marines, all of us were coming around.  The Marines, however, were still somehow being wracked with shocks.  I ran to the power switch master panel and threw the breaker, shutting off power to the whole lab.

We were in total darkness then, save the light from the hallway seeping in through the lab doors’ windows.  Someone stumbled toward them and thrust one open.  We helped the Marines to their feet and guided them up the stairwells to the surface.  Emergency personnel were just arriving as we breached the outer doors into the cool Wisconsin October evening.  Once the soldier in charge of the base guard was told what happened, he put it on immediate lock-down.  All of us, civilians and lab guards, were cleared medically but were placed under ‘observation’ in one of the base’s barracks.  The Marines were quarantined in another.  They remained in critical condition for a few days.  The day after the accident, we were part of the initial on-site team to investigate the lab.  After only a few minutes, though, we were pulled out.  The chemicals, after being in contact with atmosphere overnight, had turned corrosive and chemically eaten away what the nanites hadn’t.  The whole underground complex smelled of electrical fire and chemical burn.

The military brought in investigative teams who later concluded that enough electricity had passed through us all to light up Chicago for a week.  As it was, some of the Marines walked away with some fractured bones and mild burns which miraculously healed within hours of their release.  We were repeatedly interviewed by multiple investigators.  The Marines, who were under sedation through much of the experience, remembered very little, save extreme pain.  Our accounts, on the other hand, corroborated the military’s pre-established opinion:

Scientists of the failed Project Plymouth disobeyed moral guidelines and took it upon themselves to continue unauthorized human experimentation in the misguided attempt to save the aforementioned project.  Consequences of their actions were the loss of billions of dollars in government funds by way of lost data and material in project resources, as well as the immeasurable loss of one Lieutenant General Nick Lathrop.

The investigators recommended strenuously that we be removed from any military affiliation, that our names be redacted from official records, a cover story put in place, and Project Plymouth itself redacted.  The military leadership and government oversight committee agreed.  Those years of our lives were completely blanked out.  We and the program simply ceased to exist.  The lower-level scientists’ names were put on top of ours where needed for official documentation of the time Project Plymouth had existed.

We were able to maintain government contacts through back channels and so learned that the Marines actually manifested the nanitic abilities we had sought to grant them, though only for a few months.  Several high-level black ops after the end of the Coalition Wars, those involving precision infantry strikes, were carried out by those Marines.  The scientists yet in the government examined them but were unable to understand what exactly granted them such abilities.  We had little doubt about the possibilities of them finding anything, as those of us who knew what to look for had been black listed.

And so ended the project that was started to save the Western world.  A project that took the future of a team of four scientists and turned it into a pipe-dream.  No employer, university or otherwise, could find out why we had permanent black tabs on our files, only that we did and were considered ‘undesirable associates and employees.’  Adam, James, Melinda and I eventually gathered what resources we still had and formed an R & D company for vehicle, computer and bio-tech advancement, working with our strengths to make a living.  It was hard going.  Our initial years we worked more as ad-hoc faculty and advisors than independent developers.  But the work always proceeded quickly, much to our mutual amazement.  We didn’t question it at first, figuring it was karma’s way of paying us back for the loss of our past.  Once we were able to start directing our own research we made one remarkable innovation after another.  Adam managed to retool existing engine technology to produce nearly 80% more efficiency than standard with 80% less waste.  He also figured out a way to create large battery-forms for electric vehicles that held triple the capacity in half the space of industry-leading vehicles.

James, Melinda and I were able to engineer the first bio-tech computers of any size that were stable.  They ran silently, 30% cooler than any existing computer could, and on about 37% the power.  It was all innovative use of existing technology to be sure, but all were nonetheless breakthroughs.  Eventually we were even able to market some of our products to the government through 3rd party vendors.  By this point it had been years since our involvement with the Project.  We had put it behind ourselves as a failure and black-hole in our lives that we just barely managed to escape.  That is, until an old friend came to visit.

During Project Plymouth, the guards specifically designated for the Project, an independent detachment of the base guards, were commanded by a Captain Meng Thao.  He was a Marine of impeccable character.  He certainly would have been a colonel were it not for his intense loyalty to his friends and comrades.  Meng volunteered early in his military career to become a member of various special operations units.  One of his early commanders, a then-Lieutenant Colonel Lathrop, saw a talent in Meng that he couldn’t let go to waste.  He encouraged Meng to become the best he could and to use his skills in more and more covert missions.

During one mission in particular, rather than leave a member of his team behind alone Meng kept his team from evacing to help their injured comrade.  Took two months of negotiations, but he and his men, including the recovering team member, were finally released from custody.  At that point Lieutenant General Lathrop found a new job for the disgraced and out of favor Captain Thao, one he assured Meng should win him back some points.  It didn’t, of course, as he was found to be complicit in the events that led to the destruction of Project Plymouth.  The military ‘allowed’ him and his direct subordinates, Lieutenants Jessica Broon and Claire VanIven, to gracefully retire from active service.  They, too, were blacklisted.  Ex-spec-ops people, though, can find ways to make a living where most cannot.  They became soldiers of fortune, mostly taking on jobs as escorts for a private international shipping company whose ships often passed through pirate waters.  While doing so, fate had them meet up with the only enlisted guardsman present in the lab that last night: D’Andre Fremen.  After the Project, he had been shuffled around different posts, always seeming to find trouble.  In truth, he had learned his lessons from Meng too well.  It was constantly a buddy of D’Andre’s who started fights.  D’Andre always, following Meng’s lead, finished them.

Meng’s small crew worked and saved enough to start their own private protection firm.  It was during this time that Meng heard of a small upstart R&D company by the name of NAR Defense.  The website of the company had no pictures of its founding owners.  But Meng followed his gut and talked with some contacts who introduced him to others who eventually gave him four names they had heard connected with the company: James, Eric, Melinda and Adam.  Verifying the names through other sources, Meng went to verify them in person.

On that day I had asked James into my lab.  An experiment of mine was producing a very odd result.  Sitting at my lab bench facing we watched the footage I had as it ran side-by-side with the data streams, trying to see where the change first happened. Melinda was in her lab toying with a new plastic compound.  She was trying to integrate the ablative properties and sturdiness of metal, the lightness of plastic, and the transparency of glass.  Adam, meanwhile, was busy testing new variants of gun powder.  He had found a compound that packed three times the energy per gram as the most efficient contemporary gun powder.  Three times the power meant he could get the same punch from the same projectile in a smaller shell.  Smaller shells meant more could be taken into battle by each soldier.

While we were working we all got a call from NAR’s front desk informing us that someone was there to see us.  A Mr. Thao from Plymouth.  Each of us knew it was Meng.  To actually see him after all those years was a shock, to say the least.  After exchanging pleasantries he told us he had a proposition for us that he thought we could agree to.  James suggested going to NAR’s conference room where …

I interrupted Eric’s recounting.  “Wow!  Hold on.  Geez!  Just…I gotta catch up here,” I said as I frantically tried to get my thoughts on my notetab.  Luckily, it had caught everything, so I could go back later and listen to it again.  Some things, though, I needed clarified immediately.

“Take your time.  I’m not in a rush,” Eric said as he sipped his water.  “Refill?”

I had been sucking down water like mad.  Eric, ever the professor and used to long bouts of lecturing, hadn’t killed much of his glass.  He grabbed mine before I could respond and headed into his kitchen.

Good, I thought.  Now I can catch up.  First on the list for clarification: nanites.  Second: the goal of Project Plymouth.  The loose connections I had been able to make between Project Plymouth and the leaders of the TDF had solidified.  It had been the same group running both places.  Plymouth, though, had been under the auspices of a government.  The Terran Defense Force, on the other hand, had all governments on Earth under its auspices.  How had a group of eight people made such a huge jump in power?  Eric returned with my glass of water.  “Good to go?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.  It was a fair blessing that he had gone on so long as now I had questions to ask.  “First, nanites.  Can you explain them to me a bit more?”

“Sure.  Nanites.  Nano-metric sized machines that we bonded to humans.”

“Bonded how?”

“Symbiotically.  We wanted to integrate them into the host as a sustainable hived 3rd party internal system that would take from the host what it needed to function and also give back in return.”

“Ah.  Okay.  Follow-up question.  I assume this ‘give back’ you refer to was the goal of the Project from the beginning.  So…give back how exactly?”

“I can go into more detail on that in a bit.  But generally, ours was one of many ‘super soldier’ programs the US tried, starting as far back as WWII.  With the Arab Coalition was making huge gains into Europe and Asia prior to the loss of their leader, the United States sought a new weapon to counter their advance.  Namely, something powerful enough to be carried by one soldier.  Our project took the concept an extra step and made the soldier the weapon.  Would have worked out great, too,” Eric commented.

Did work well,” I pointed out, looking at him out of the tops of my eyes.

“Touché,” Eric said with a broad grin.

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