A sleek military aeropod landed on the pad behind the administrative building of the Institute, the door opening moments afterwards. Several figures exited onto the cement and made their way towards where the commandant was waiting for them at a door. She snapped off a salute as they drew closer, “Welcome to the Institute sir, if you’ll follow me we’ll proceed directly to the conference room.” The man in the middle of the formation returned her salute, “Lets go, I’ve got 5 hours before I need to be back in the air and I want to see how this little project is progressing.”
She led them down several hallways until they reached a door that led into a large conference room with a massive polished wood table in the center. Two of the men in the formation broke off as they entered and took up positions in the hall. Another man took a small device out the briefcase he’d laid on the table and began circling the room while monitoring the screen on the device. After making two circles of the room he nodded to the man who’d sat at the far end of the table, “Clear sir.” The sound of magnetic locks clicking into place could be heard when the door closed.
“Proceed” said the man.
The commandant stood near the head of the table and pushed a button on the wall causing a cleverly designed piece of the wall to slide upwards, revealing a large screen. “As you know sir, ever since the virus was released, much of the world has collapsed into anarchy. We estimate that the planet has lost over 70% of the human population and what remains have holed up in various large cities across the globe.” As she spoke the screen displayed a map detailing the fall of humanity as the virus had spread rapidly.
“Yes, yes, we all know the history books commandant, we know the virus slipped out of one of OUR labs although we were able to pin it on the Chinese. I don’t have all day for remedial discussions, lets cut the last hundred years and start with where we are now.”
The commandant flushed briefly at the reprimand before regaining her composure and quickly advanced the report to the events of the previous week. “Sir, we’ve promoted this last class of cadets to the FIVR modules per the plan. The last 8 years have been harsh with a 20% drop out rate due to the rigorous training methods to prepare them for this. They were graduated last Saturday and as of Monday we have been inserting them into their pods in groups of 500 cadets daily, starting with the most promising group first. As of today there are now over 2400 cadets in FIVR modules and as we monitor the simulation we have already begun to see progress from the first group.”
“You said 500 a day, that should be 2500 cadets, but you said over 2400, why the discrepancy?”
“We’ve had … some rejections sir, some of the cadets were unsuitable for the FIVR pods either due to some unknown genetic issue or due to mental constraints. The cadets who survived are being held in the medical wing pending results of further testing.”
“It sounds as thought there were some who did not survive the rejection?”
“Unfortunately, yes sir, there were 3 rather violent deaths, it’s unclear what happened but when the lids were opened on the pods their bodies were, well it was all rather gruesome sir.”
“Get the list of names to my adjutant, we’ll figure out how to deal with it.”
“Yes sir”
“What about the Li boy? Has he been disposed of?”
“He was expelled at graduation and escorted off the campus by one of my NCOs sir. He was to take him back out to where he’d been found when his parents committed their heinous treachery before getting rid of the body. Once that was complete he was to take several days to ‘escort’ the Li boy to the nearest city and return, he should be back today.”
“Very good, now, lets go have a look at these pods, then I’d like to have a look at the data you’ve collected thus far on how the cadets are performing in the simulation.”
“Very good sir, Lieutenant Sonja please shut down the conference room.”
“Yes maam” said the Lieutenant.
The hiss of magnetic locks being retracted was heard before the doors opened once again and the group filed out into the hallway before proceeding to a nearby elevator. A brief trip later they found themselves 400 feet below the surface in front of a sturdy metal door. The commandant leaned up against a scanner and placed her eye in the ocular cup while placing her hand on another scanner. Both lit up briefly before an electronic voice spoke, “Access Code?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Authorization Code Zulu Niner Delta Romeo Tango Five Zulu”
The door silently slid into hidden pockets of the wall, admitting the group into the underground facility. The walkway they stood on circled a massive multi-story structure that housed 500 pods per story. Vast amounts of supporting infrastructure were situated behind the pods. The group walked to the nearest corner before climbing down multiple sets of stairs before reaching the bottom of the area and filed into a large room built into the wall.
“This is our operational center sir, from here our engineers and analysts can monitor everything, such as the vitals of every cadet in a pod, nutrient levels, physical and brain activity, as well as the rest of the supporting hardware and software. I’ll let our lead on the project, Dr. Jones give you any further detail you require.”
With this a chubby man with unkempt hair dressed in a stereotypical white lab coat stretched out his hand, “Welcome sir, welcome, I’m Dr. Jones and I’m here to answer any questions.”
The man he spoke to looked down briefly at the hand before looking back at the doctor, “Show me the world overview.”
The doctor blanched and retracted his hand, “Right this way sir, ERIC! Bring up the big screen!”
Another man in a lab coat quickly typed out several commands on his command interface that brought up a low detail map of the world in the simulation. More detail began to fill in as he typed with cities being displayed across the entire content as circles. Little blue points popped up in many of the cities, indicating the location of various cadets as evidenced by the text linked to them. To the South and North of the continent were mountain ranges that spanned the entire width of the of the land before ending relatively small strips of land.
“As you can see sir, this is a high level view of the current activity, each blue dot is one of the cadets, which is linked to their name and their current experience level. Their area of influence is currently quite mall as they’ve only just entered the world, but as they take control of resources their circle will grow in size. Unsurprisingly, the first batch of cadets that entered the simulation have already begun to grow their influence” said the doctor.
The man scanned the display until he found what he was looking for, one of the largest of the blue dots with a name displayed as Thadeus. He smiled for the first time since he’d arrived at seeing his son at the top of the leader board as it should be. He continued scanning the display, taking in all the available data before something caused him to narrow his eyes.
“What are these little red dots here in the Southern and Northern strips of land?”
“Ummmm, we don’t know sir, they’re anomalies that we’re still investigating, but as they’re in undeveloped portions of the world they’re considered low priority until we finish loading all the cadets and verify the overall stability of the system.”
“I don’t like anomalies doctor, I want a follow up report within 1 week explaining what those are and how they happened, am I clear?”
“Yes sir, we’ll get right on it sir.”
Just then a figure wearing the Institute’s uniform burst into the room, “Commandant!” they yelled before stumbling to a halt and going white in the face as they recognized who was in the room.
“REPORT!” snapped the man, not waiting for the commandant to recover from the surprise of having their tour interrupted.
“Sir! Umm . sir, the local enforcement team found a wrecked autopod on the outskirts of the city, it belonged to Seargent Biwala, no body was found.”
The man closed his eyes and rubbed his temples before turning to face the commandant, “Find the source of those anomalies and deal with them doctor. Commandant, you have three days to find your missing soldier and provide definitive proof that this issue has been dealt with, am I understood?”
The commandant paled visibly before snapping a salute, “Crystal clear sir, I’ll see to it personally.”
With a nod, the man and his entourage turned and left, climbing back up the stairs and eventually making their way to their transport before lifting into the air and disappearing.