Project nexus, p.1
Project Nexus, page 1
To my people, you know who you are.
To all the errors that made it through six separate edits; I salute you!
Project Nexus: Hybrid
Project Nexus, Volume 1
Valorie Riley
Published by SilverPixiGirl Press, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
PROJECT NEXUS: HYBRID
First edition. September 15, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Valorie Riley.
Written by Valorie Riley.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Project Nexus: Hybrid
Those who plan to circumvent the biocreaters find themselves outside the pod. | -Anson, The Senator from Bruland
Zero
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
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About the Author
To my people, you know who you are.
To all the errors that made it through
five separate edits; I salute you!
Those who plan to circumvent the biocreaters find themselves outside the pod.
-Anson, The Senator from Bruland
Zero
There was a slight snick as the lock released the server room door. It was dark and cool; the fans that ran perpetually helped drown out the sound of the soft-shoed footsteps of the man in the white lab coat. He did not act suspicious in the least; he acted like he had every reason to be there. He was that confident in his actions. The man in the lab coat walked to the mainframe terminal and clicked the screen on with one tap of his finger on the touchscreen. He pulled up the virtual keyboard and began to type in a passcode to allow himself access to the primary operating system.
As the system code loaded, he ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath; what he was about to do was incredibly risky and may well cause the death of six natae. The hacker in the white lab coat was there to hack into the hybrid system. He hoped it would help the natae, and in theory, on paper, it should. But one never knew, and even so, it was worth the risk to stop Dr. Freedlander from ever being successful with the Nexus Project, a system designed to integrate cybernetics into a viable seedling while inside the birthpod.
The Nexus Project was the product of Dr. Patrick Freedlander, a narcissistic scientific genius who didn’t care about rules, procedures, or human life; his philosophy was, “Whatever it takes to get the necessary results!” Dr. Freedlander wanted to show Solarna that he could create a better Solarae than biocreaters and nature itself. He knew he could create a better being, so he set out to incorporate cybernetics with biogenetics to engineer a super soldier.
These soldiers were bioengineered to be loyal, obedient, and without emotions. Dr. Freedlander used Solarae seedling genes to manipulate and change the musculature of the seedlings to be stronger and faster with increased stamina, higher pain tolerance, enhanced vision, hearing, and ability to analyze complex concepts.
In the early stages of the Nexus Project, Dr. Freedlander had open access to the Solarna Gestational Biolabs; these labs held the genetic materials called seedlings of the Solarae; this is where the Solarae were created and placed in their gestational pods.
The Solarna Senate had employed Dr. Freedlander to create these super soldiers. Still, they didn’t know his nefarious plans to replace the Senate and Solarnan army with his super soldiers. Once the Senate found out about his plans, they cut his access to the SGB. But not his funding or employment; they wanted their super soldiers. Dr. Freedlander had other plans to get his seedlings. He used stolen Solarae seedlings from the SGB to achieve his goal.
The hacker in the white lab coat knew Dr. Freedlander was wrong and was in the server room to prove that to Dr. Freedlander.
The system finished loading, and he pressed several more menu tabs until he came to the tab labeled Hybrid Emotional Functions; he selected that tab and then scrolled down to the tab reading [Insert Hybrid Functions] and selected that heading. The menu for HEF dropped, and he chose the tab for the code that would forever alter the six cyber-bio-hybrid natae.
Then he quickly slipped the microfile into the mainframe’s card slot, and the code was uploaded into the mainframe server. It took less than a mino to upload, and then the critical decision had to be made; the screen flashed the message:
Caution: this action will alter the parameters of the Hybrids. Do you want to continue? Yes, No.
He didn’t even hesitate; he double-tapped the yes button.
Then, the hacker in the white lab coat exited immediately from the mainframe and shut the screen down. He had approximately 25 minos to leave the server room and the lab before anyone saw him and questioned why he was there; it was his rest cycle, and he did not routinely come to the lab on his cycles off.
He peeked out of the slightly opened door; no one was in the hall, so he left the server room and walked quickly to the elevator; he was deep underground and had to make it up several floors to the exit. He hoped that he didn’t see anyone he knew. The elevator doors slid open. Dr. Freedlander stood there, right in the middle of the elevator car. Luckily, he was looking down at a stack of reports and didn’t see the hacker in the lab coat.
The hacker got on the elevator and stood behind the scientist. Dr. Freedlander didn’t even realize someone had gotten on the elevator. The doors slid closed as the hacker leaned over and pushed the button for the lobby. He stood behind the doctor the whole way up to the floor where Dr. Freedlander’s office was located. He thought about the natae; he would try to help them as much as possible while at the facility. He knew, though, that this was the right thing to do. The things Dr. Freedlander was willing to do to the natae and how he created them were horrific, and he had to be stopped; the natae had to be rescued.
The lives of the hybrid natae would be better this way, at least, he hoped so; he never wanted to hurt the natae. The hacker came out of his reflection as the elevator stopped. The doors slid open. Dr. Freedlander absentmindedly got off, confident people would move out of his way, and they did.
The doors slid shut, and the hacker released his breath and began to laugh; he had done it. He had wrecked the very thing Dr. Patrick Freedlander loved more than life itself! The hacker got himself under control just as the elevator came to a stop at the lobby level. He walked out of the elevator, into the main lobby, out the doors, and disappeared into the sunny mid-cycle.
The mainframe continued to work on editing the cybernetic code of the hybrid natae that lived in the lab, which was only two floors from where the mainframe was housed. The code would be ready to update the hybrids the next time they connected to the servers on the seventh floor. This connection was scheduled for fourth hora, just ten minos from when the hacker had disappeared into the mid-cycle.
All the hybrid natae filed into the data room and sat in their assigned terminals. The terminal system comprised of a squashy circular chair and a datalink port attached to the side of the chair. Each nati would sit in the chair and link themselves to the data port by touching their first finger to the port touchpad.
Each nati sat and linked, not knowing what awaited them in the massive update the hacker had created and uploaded to their mainframe server. Jeb and Levi, the oldest of the hybrid natae, sat in their respective chairs and immediately connected with the mainframe; the others did the same. Jeb immediately felt the data surge through his neural network, and his brain vibrated and hummed. He felt strange yet compelled to stay connected. He looked to Levi.
Levi looked back at Jeb; he felt as equally strange as Jeb. Levi tried to speak but could not. His eyes grew wide. Levi began to stiffen, and his muscles jerked erratically. His finger, however, never left the data portal touchpad. Levi and Jeb’s eye contact never faltered; it was as if their eye contact was a part of the data transfer.
One of the twins cried out in a soft, podling voice, “It’s too much!” Then the other answered in an equally soft reply, “It hurts, my brain hurts!”
Kee and Lin just sat frozen, staring straight ahead, their eyes glazed over as if they weren’t even there. Though Kee could hear everything around her, she could feel everything around her. A tear began to slip from her left eye, and her body began to tremble. She wanted to reach out to Lin, but she couldn’t move. She tried to access the database to find out what was happening to her and all of them, but the database was not there. She was not connected to the database! She finally managed to squeak out a faint, “Jeb?”
One by one, the hybrid natae’s finger finally released from the touchpad, and as it did, they passed out, slumping back into their chair. An alarm sounded in the data room, and med-techs rushed in to assess the hybrids' needs. The techs ran a diagnostic on the natae. They
The med-techs put them on medi-ports and rushed the six hybrids to the Medbay. As soon as they cleared the Medbay doors, the natae were connected to monitors. Dr. Freedlander met them in the Medbay, “Talk to me, what is happening?” He barked, concerned about the fidelity of his project.
“They seem stable; breathing rates, blood pressure, and heart rhythms are normal!” One of the med-techs responded. The natae were hooked up to brain scan monitors, and the techs examined their fingers that had been connected to the data touchpads in the data room. Every nati’s finger where they had connected was scorched smooth. The almost invisible connection points were gone. There was no connecting them to the database mainframe ever again.
Dr. Freedlander recognized the significance of this and swore. “Kark! Ruined! They’re ruined! What has happened, Michaels?”
“I don’t know as of yet, Sir.” Michaels clicked his earcom. “Report.” He said sharply. There was a soft buzz, “Sir, the mainframe has been breached. A hacker uploaded and altered the HES and turned the hybrid’s socioemotional control switch off.”
“What!” Dr. Freedlander exploded.
“The Hybrids are essentially human, with human emotions and cyber accentuations. They are uncontrollable now.”
However, Dr. Freedlander had left the Medbay before Michaels finished his sentence. Michaels turned to survey the hybrid natae; he noticed they had entered a dream state and were dreaming as their eyes moved behind their eyelids.
“Look, Marvin, their eyes!” He pointed out to the lead med-tech. The techs moved to check their eyes.
“Yeah,” one of the techs said as he flashed a penlight into Jeb’s eyes.
“Same,” another tech replied as he, too, flashed a light into Kee’s eyes.
They checked the brain scan monitors, and the hybrid’s brainwaves seemed to be very active but stable.
“Well,” Breathed Michaels, “That is a good sign. Let’s hope they all wake up in good condition. This is going to be interesting. I just wonder what Freedlander is going to do now?”
Marvin, the lead med-tech, sighed. “He’s going to flame them like he did at his last facility.” Then he walked away; he had other patients to see.
Michaels stood at the foot of Jeb’s medi-port. He couldn’t let that happen; these natae deserved better. They didn’t ask for this. Not any of this idiocy. Michaels left the Medbay and walked back to his office. He sat at his terminal and thought about the cycle's events. Michaels knew what to do but didn’t know if he could pull it off. He wasn’t sure if he had the focus to do what needed to be done.
He flipped on the terminal screen and activated the virtual keyboard. He called up his external ecom in stealth mode. He ran a quick search for the ecom from the group. The tagline said URGENT. Michaels opened the ecom.
Dr. Freedlander is a murderer and needs to be stopped immediately. You are in DANGER, and so are those hybrid natae. If you don’t help us rid the planet of this menace, then you are no better than he is. Stop his madness now before it’s too late! If you want to help, come to Eastland Park on 34.56.12 at 19:35. Carry a datatab, and sit like you are just out for a nice evening. We will contact you there; if you don’t show up, we will assume you are with Freedlander.
He deleted the ecom, closed his external ecom, uploaded his work to the cloud, and then wiped his terminal clean, erasing all external connections. He then downloaded his work back onto his terminal. Michaels left his office and headed to the elevator. He pushed the button for the lobby and leaned against the back of the elevator car. He felt way too old for this gos’n.
As the doors slid open and he stepped into the lobby corridor, his earcom blipped. He tapped the earpiece, and Dr. Freedlander screamed, “Where the kark are you? And what’s going on with my products?” Michaels pulled the earcom out of his ear and let the esteemed doctor get it out of his system.
“Are you done?” he said flatly, replacing the earcom. He was the only one who could call Dr. Freedlander on his nonsense and get away with it to a degree. But, tonight, Michaels was over it; he was just done with it all.
“The natae,” He used natae purposefully, hoping to remind Dr. Freedlander that the “product” Dr. Freedlander referred to was indeed natae, “Are seemingly unaltered, as far as we can tell, they are in a deep state of dream-sleep. All their vitals register as normal. And, until they wake, we will have no idea just what this hacker did. You are just going to have to accept what’s happened.”
Dr. Freedlander sputtered with outrage, “What the tor are you playing at Michaels? Where are you right now?”
“I am headed domae right now.” He stated as he walked through the lobby doors and into the transport bay.
“DOMAE?” Freedlander shouted once again, “You can’t go domae at this critical time!”
“Critical time?” Michaels whispered as he tapped the earcom off, activated his transport, got in, and left the transport structure. Micheals tapped the button for the window; the hum of the motor, as the window went down was barely audible; he pulled out the lab-issued earcom and tossed it out the half-opened window as he left the facility for the last time.
He tapped in the coordinates the ecom had given into the transport computer. The onboard screen flashed and then displayed a map of Eastland Park. He had just enough time to get there by 19:30 horas. Micheals sat back, and while his transport glided down the road, he thought about the strange ecom and how he would handle the situation.
Marvin sat at the attending desk, monitoring the natae. All vitals seemed normal. The waves all showed the natae to be in a deep dream-state. There was nothing more to do but wait and see if the hybrid natae woke on their own. Marvin sipped the strong black kaff in his thermo cup and waited. It was already a long night, and he knew he’d be there even longer than usual.
One
Jeb opened his eyes; he felt strange as if his whole body vibrated. He sat up and looked around; he was back in his room; what had happened? The last thing he knew, he was in the chair getting his update from the mainframe. His fingertips tingled, and he looked at his hands; they looked the same as always.
Jeb ran his hands over his face and into his hair. What was... what? He looked around; who was talking to him? “Jeb? Jeb? Is that you? Where are you?” He could hear voices. But he was alone in his room. “Jeb?” Wait, was that Kee? “Kee?” he whispered, but no one answered. Then he shook his head and took a deep breath. I don’t understand. He tried to stand but couldn’t make his legs work. He thought about Kee again, “Jeb?” he heard the voice again and felt something click in his head. He thought about Kee and said in his mind, “Kee? Is that you?”
“Yeah! I can hear you in my mind!”
“What has happened? Where are you?’
“I don’t know. I was in the data room in my chair, and then I was here in my room! I am... well, I don’t know what it’s called, Jeb.”
“Yeah, I know. I feel so different. What about the others? Have you talked to them?”
“No, just you, and I don’t even know how we’re doing that.”
“I... I’m not sure, either. Let me try something.”
“Ok.”
Jeb closed his eyes and thought of Levi. “Levi? Can you hear me? Levi?”
There was no connection, and Levi wasn’t there. Jeb thought of Lin, “Hello, Lin? It’s me, Jeb, don’t be afraid!”
Jeb heard a little whimper. Then the faintest whisper, “Jeb?”
“Yeah, we can talk to each other in our minds now! So, cool, huh?” Jeb tried to sound like this was not a scary thing. He hoped it would sound fun to Lin. She was timid. Jeb could not understand how she could be so timid. “Lin, try to link to the twins, okay? Just think of me in your mind if you need to talk to me.”
“Ok.”
And then Jeb was alone in his mind. He lay back on his pillow, exhausted, and fell asleep quickly.
Two
Marvin looked up from his charts; the monitors were going haywire! The natae were having vivid dreams, and their brainwave activity spiked all over the screen. Levi’s wave activity was different; it was more chaotic.
