“String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.” –Brian Greene
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Greenweld Technologies
Tennessee, Former United North American Continent, 2372
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Deep within the wreckage of Greenweld laboratories, there was a room nearly filled with shattered machines and rubble. In a corner partially shielded by a large chunk of reinforced concrete that fell down from two stories above a holo-screen dimly displayed the following message:
14:52 –System Restarting, checking host’s condition
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14:57 –Analysis Complete. Status is broken down into the following conditions.
• Host’s Physical Form: Destroyed
• Host’s Mental State: Inactive
• Host’s Spiritual Status: Operational
15:00 –Primary Directive, ensure host’s survival in any way possible: Complete
15:01 –Secondary Directive, ensure entire survival: Failed
15:03 –Scanning surroundings to determine location
• Error: GPS Signal not found
• Error: Star Map Invalid
• Error: Magnetic Field non-standard for compass reading
15:10 –Location Unable to determine, system resuming standby mode until host regains consciousness.
The screen flickered again, waiting for human acknowledgement of the message in vain. At that moment, the fusion reactor shut down due to damage it received in the nuclear strike, and the message vanished into the air.
??????? ??????????
Unknown, After the Blast
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It slowly phased back into existence. As its eyes flicked open, it took stock of its surroundings, or lack thereof. All around for as far as it could see, was inky blackness. This was punctured by violet or navy streaks of lightning at random intervals. The bolts arced through the space, splintering into smaller ones before disappearing like a brief flame. Slightly shocked by the strangeness of its surroundings, the entirety decided to look at its own form. A ghostly deep purple mist greeted it as it looked down. Eyes widening, the mist took shape of a torso with arms but no legs, instead trailing off into the purple vapor. As it watched the vapor billow around it, a sudden strong feeling overcame it. Purple, the color purple…. A rush of thick liquid? A game? Images flitted through its’ mind, but quickly vanished as the memory eluded it. The entity decided to explore its surroundings, searching for a clue to its past, while floating forward toward the oblivion in front of it.
It continued on into the darkness, for how long it could not tell. Time was meaningless here, not that the entity cared. It was consumed in the search for what it was and how it arrived here. A soft scuffling to the left caused it to pause, peering into the gloom. With a soft click, like a key fitting into a lock, its eyes suddenly were able to see at a farther distance with astonishing clarity. Wondering in surprise it muttered out loud “well that’s interesting,” the first words it had spoken in the void. Shaking its head at the reference to a movie about a crazy pirate and his black sailed ship, its father had shown him long ago it moved on. A few minutes later it stopped, realization dawning on its face from what happened. Its father. Concentrating on that thought, a voice firm with a hint of mischief about it floated through its mind, “Atta boy Jackson, show them what you got.” It smiled at the memory and then began to piece back together his life’s story, one memory at a time. After all, he had all the time he needed.
Jackson Wellington
Unknown, After the Blast
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Jack slowly stretched in what he had deemed his “ghost form” and sighed. It had taken a lot of hard effort but he finally managed to piece his memories back together. He started the cycle again, trying to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important. He might be dead, at least based on his current condition and surroundings he thought he was, but he will be dammed before turning into an empty shell for eternity. He still hadn’t figured out where he was, not that it really mattered in his current “form” so to speak. Mostly it was to sate his curiosity at the entire event. He settled back horizontally, ‘This does have some nice perks to it’ he thought supported by the purple vapor, and began delving into his memories again.
Jackson was the second son of Arthur and Sasha Wellington. Arthur, jokingly called “The Duke” by his coworkers, told Jackson the story of how he met his mother several times. It was his Dad's favorite story to tell while they were younger, before it happened.
His father was working on one of the new high rise apartments that were popping up everywhere. He was a welder, making sure the carbon steel composite frames used in the booming solar glass industry, were seated properly. The solar glass was part of the UNAC’s policy to have each building be as self-sufficient as possible, part of their national energy program. As they were installing them up on the 47th floor of the building, the frame slipped from the hoist and crushed most of his father’s left foot. “They had to knock me out to get me out of there, and then when I woke up in the hospital there she was,” his father would always say this line, “my brunette angel.” The brunette doctor in question noticed that Arthur had woken up at this point. While manipulating a screen only she could see, she said to him “You really did a number on this, I’m reconstructing several bones from powder.” Arthur laughed and replied “Yea, I’m sure I’ll be footing a nice big bill for this.” It took the doctor a few moments to realize what he said, she snorted and shook her head, accidentally fusing two of the newly formed bones in the process. “Don’t distract me,” she snapped, “or I’ll just fuse your entire foot together and be done with it.” His father made a lock and key motion with his hands and went silent. His mother had warily watched the burly construction worker out of the corner of her eye for any more antics while she finished up. After she was done, she said to him “Everything is back where it should be, I’ll come check on you tomorrow.” While walking out the door Arthur called “Don’t foot-get about me” after her retreating figure. Arthur then muttered to himself as he drifted off again, “I’ve totally got a leg up on her.”
That was the first meeting between his parents. Every time Jackson was told the story by his father his mother would knock his Dad on the head and chastise with “Don’t tell him that! He will learn to pick up girls with terrible puns as well!” Sasha Paterinko and Arthur Wellington were married a year after meeting in the hospital. The construction worker wouldn't take no for an answer, heading over after every job. The guys working with him joked that they'd get themselves hurt just to help him out. Over their year of dating, Arthur learned that her parents were among the first immigrants from Russia, fleeing the fighting between them and the Chinese. Their daughter managed to get a scholarship to John’s Hopkins University where she became a podiatric surgeon. Just over a year from their marriage, their first son and Jack’s older brother Demetri was born, named after his maternal grandfather. Five years after their wedding, their second son, Jackson Alex Wellington was born in Miami, Florida, where he grew up. His mother worked in the hospital there and the solar glass industry was in high demand as well. “Gotta love hotels” his father would say when he saw a new one going up, catering to the demands for more beachfront property.
Jack spent his time out in the Florida sun. Jackson’s fascination with how things were built and worked was nurtured from early on. He would watch his father work in his tool shop behind the house and ask what everything did and how it worked. One day his father “acquired” some materials from the construction site he was working on and set to work with Jack on his new project. The first experiment they performed was to make “a better bottle rocket” as his father termed it. They went to test the Mk. 1 Flamedragon, Jack got to pick the name, out on the lake behind their house. They lined it up on its stand and lit it up. The Flamedragon skimmed right over the top of the water, held aloft by the airfoil wings they had attached to the side. It proved to be a super effective flyer, as it went over the entire of the football length lake to the other side. It then promptly slammed into a motorboat parked on the other side and detonated. Still in shock over the relative “success” of their experiment, and making a pact to NEVER tell Sasha about their homemade cruise missile, they packed it in before they could be caught. A hurricane came in a few days later and masked the scene of their crime. Mother Nature was quite convenient that way as it tossed most of the boats from the lake onto land. That section of the lake was a community owned by people fleeing from Northern winters would seek refuge in. During the early fall was the break season when they were back to school from the summer. Undeterred, while Hurricane Alex was raging, they were excitedly working on a Flamedragon Mk.2, this time one that would fly up.
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At age 12 Jackson, Demetri, and his father had completed construction of their Fort, also known as the treehouse to end all treehouses. Arthur had a few of his coworkers come over to help build and design the multi-level structure. It had solar panels up on the roof that supplied power to the supply hoist, or where Sasha would put their lunch, observation deck, gun deck, and living quarters. Jackson had a special input on the gun deck. Over the course of his experiments with his father, he had gained quite the technological knowledge. He had created the base design for an automated water balloon cannon, with a lot of help from his Dad. Using the power supplied from the solar panels it could reach 2 blocks over with surprising accuracy, and could be moved around the gun deck as needed. With Demetri manning the observation deck spotting targets for Jack, the Wellington kids became quite the terror of the neighborhood.
In addition to messing around with his father’s experiments, Jackson busied himself with other activities. He eagerly devoured books when it was raining outside. History was a favorite subject of his, he read The Art of War several times. He tried to apply the tactics he learned in books to the games he would play online, the virtual world had come quite far in 2300. RTS games had an interesting component, where you could hover over the battlefield or work form a command center in real time. His parents encouraged him to take up a martial art to learn discipline and to counteract his rambunctious behavior and inventions. Spurred on by them he joined a local Krav Maga center in downtown Miami, and succeeded fairly well at it. However, Jackson really discovered another interest in biology during his middle and high school years.
His parents took them on a trip to the Everglades National Park during the summer before the sixth grade. Jackson was enamored by the tropical wetlands that existed a short drive from his suburban home. They had set up camp for the night and decided to go on a short hike before cooking dinner and turning in. Walking down the trail Jack asked his father if they would see any alligators. His father replied “I’m sure there are alligators afoot.” His father had a bad habit of creating foot puns whenever he was given the opportunity since his accident, at least according to his mother. Right as he said that line he stepped on the tail of a massive fifteen foot alligator. Running with the irate reptile chasing behind the family, Jackson quipped “Dad what a feet that was!” causing his Dad to nearly trip over from laughing. They finally made it back to the campsite where Sasha knocked Arthur on the head several times for the pun and alligator.
After they returned home, Jack pestered his parents to go back. Finally for his fifteenth birthday they gave him an ATV that he could fix up and use, purchased from one of Arthur’s co-workers. Jackson threw himself into the project, gutting the original gasoline powered engine for solar powered miniature repulsor-lifts that used the magnetic field of the earth to stay aloft. Soon Jackson was conducting weekend excursions by himself into the everglades, blazing new trails and camping out under the stars. He managed to learn survival skills and how to deal with the unexpected, like when a repulsor-lift failed, sending him crashing into a tree. After putting a splint on his right wrist, he never did tell his mother he broke it, Jackson had to repair the lift with his lantern, miniature stove, some spare parts he always kept on hand, and a whole lot of duct tape. He arrive back home just as his parents were calling in a search party to go find him. He was only allowed to go back out exploring the wilderness after buying him a satellite phone with the promise to call and check in every 6 hours. Jackson also explored the underwater biomes that littered the Florida coast. He learned to SCUBA and snorkel, and then went hunting for shipwrecks and coral reefs.
Jack graduated high school with honors, enough to earn him a scholarship to the University of Florida. He decided to major in mechanical and bioengineering, combining of what he enjoyed the most into a career path. That was what his father always said “Find what you love and do it.” His father actually had an engineering degree, in electrical engineering, as well. He just enjoyed the freedom of working above the city instead of at a desk. Jackson enjoyed his time at college and quickly adjusted his life there. His rugged looks combined with his easygoing personality endeared him to many of his classmates. He and his friends would head to the beach every weekend to relax and unwind. He quickly went through two years of school doing well in most of his classes.
The summer of his sophomore year, his mother went on a WHO trip to North Africa. She was part of a group that was treating wounds from the leftover land mines in the area. Being a podiatric surgeon, her skills were in high demand from the injured. The convoy she was traveling in was attacked by armed insurgents wanting to pilfer supplies. Her vehicle was hit dead on by an RPG-27 round and exploded. The largest piece that they recovered for shipment back to the states was her left hand, minus the wedding ring his father designed for her. Sasha’s death hit the Wellington family hard. His father lost the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and became withdrawn. Demetri threw himself into his law studies, at George Washington University and distanced himself from his family. As for Jack, he saw the pain in his family’s eyes and he himself experienced the loss, he made a vow to not let that happen to anyone else if he could help it. The next semester he added ROTC training to his grueling schedule, leading him to have nearly twelve-hour days between classes and training. He became robotic in nature, pausing his studying or training only to briefly eat or sleep. His weekends were not filled with beach trips, but field exercises in the Florida Everglades where he spent so much of his youth. His ROTC Company was amazed at the ease he handled himself out in the wilderness, slipping into nature as if it was natural.
Two hard years later Jackson graduated. He received both of his degrees and placed third in his ROTC class, no mean feat when most of the others had joined back in freshmen year. As we walked down the aisle, diplomas in hand, he ignored the multiple recruiters for companies who wanted to talk with such a talented individual and stopped in front of the Army recruiter’s desk. He handed his application over to the sergeant sitting there who asked which branch he would like to be commissioned into. Jackson replied “I want to go to the Army Corps of Engineers, then the Airborne.” Looking at the two degrees and his ROTC records the sergeant said “report to Ft. Lenard Wood the second week in August.” Jackson thanked the man and walked out, meeting his father along the way. Walking toward the pickup truck his father owned, the man said to Jack, “Son, I’m proud of what you've accomplished. If your mother was here she would be as well.”
Jack graduated the Engineering Combat School first in his class. A perk was to choose the division that he would be assigned to as a newly minted second lieutenant. As he mentioned to the recruiting sergeant, he chose the 82nd Airborne and was attached to the 127th Brigade Engineering Battalion. He served in the army for six years, deploying several times to counter Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia and the insurgent groups that kept popping up in the Middle East. He distinguished himself several times in the field, though he himself thought he was simply doing his job. A bridge had to be blown over the Mekong River to delay a Chinese armor column. When the wires leading to the explosives were cut by shellfire, Jackson crawled over and detonated them by hand allowing airstrikes on the trapped armor and earning his promotion to Captain. He also gained fame by creating a slingshot launcher for charges used to destroy the caves insurgents would hide out in. This oversized launcher was dubbed the “Jack-in-the-box” by the troops for how fast insurgents would run out of the cave when they heard it firing.
When he got back home after his 3rd tour of duty he went to work for Greeenweld as an "assignment". It was recruiting engineers at the time, especially ones that had field experience to test their products with greater effectiveness. Jackson was considered to be on active duty, working with a civilian contractor on several projects. He had been working at Greenweld for just under a year when the attack came, and luck would have it Greenweld was on the list.
'And that brings us to the present, looks like everything is all accounted for.' Jack thought with a smile, having regained his memories and life's story.
“Now, just where the hell am I?”
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01:23 System Resume:
• Current sync status: 45%
• Host’s Mental State: Active and Cognizant
o Establishing Neural Link, Authenticating User Identification
User ID Established: Captain Jackson Alexander Wellington, 82nd Airborne, UNAC Armed Forces.
01:38 Observation of surroundings commencing, scanning for weak points
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01:47 Weakness discovered attempting infiltration of system
• Breaching Firewall
• Rerouting Virus Detecting Software
• Blocking Alarm Signals
02:00 Initial Breach Successful, awaiting host for permission to attempt a full breach...
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