When they arrived at the sector headquarters of BHA, Jack and Doug and a few others were already there. The open space of the floor was already set up for the meeting. The tables that were normally scattering around the floor were all moved to the west end and lined up in front of windows. The tables and chairs that were normally piled up on the east end were removed. Two large TV displays were put there facing west, and around 80 chairs were put in eight rows in front of the TVs, one lectern was between the TVs and the chairs.
Light music was rippling through the whole floor.
John was puzzled by what he saw from those two big displays, one was a multichannel split CCTV screen that was fixed on the small waiting space for elevators outside the central door, and another was a split CCTV screen fixed on the garage in the basement.
“Why do we show the CCTV screens on the TVs? Are we expecting some break in?” John asked Jack, who was setting up some electronic equipment.
“Not a break in, but a magic show,” Jack winked at him.
“John, come here please.” John heard Jessica called him and saw she waved at him from the room that she got for him on Sunday.
John walked to her, and asked, “What’s up?”
“I know that you are very good at doing presentation as a salesman and you don’t need to prepare for telling your own story,” Jessica whispered at John. “But it has been for two decades…I guess you must have a lot to talk, but we can only give you at most 30 minutes because George would leave soon after lunch and we have a lot to talk about at the meeting.”
“What do you want me to do?” John asked.
“I would suggest you write down some key points about some big events that you want to tell George and the team so that you won’t miss the big things while focusing on some small details.” Jessica pointed to the computer on the desk, “You can use this computer, and that is the printer.”
“When will George arrive here?” John asked.
“I just received his text that he would be here in about one and a half hour. You could use this time to do as much as you can,” Jessica responded. “What you saw in the Republic of New People should be the most important part that you want to tell them.”
“You bet,” John promised. “By the way, why are there so many chairs?”
“People who work in other offices of BHA in B City and some nearby towns would also come to this meeting. They all belong to this sector.” Jessica lowered down the blind for John, and closed the door for him when she left the room.
Around an hour later, John printed a list of the events that he would cover during his presentation. The noise outside his office room started to pick up. John opened the door and saw most of the chairs were already taken. He went out to find a chair and join the team.
Now the split CCTV screens were all merged onto one TV display, and the other TV was playing the news channel for the audience to kill time before George arrived.
Not long after John sat down and chatted with the lady sitting beside him, Doug walked behind the lectern, and the music was off.
“Attention please! Attention please!”
When the team quieted down, Doug continued, “Please turn off all your phones. No one will be allowed to take any picture during the meeting. If anyone might expect some important phone calls, please give your phone to Jack and he will pick up the phone for you and pass it to you.”
Some of them stood up and handed their phones to Jack, and others just simply turned off the phones. When that was going on, someone rose from the seat pointing to one of the CCTV channels and shrieking, “They are here!”
The TV that was playing the news was switched to one CCTV screen for the garage.
“Wow! Look, finally they are here.” The audience was stirred up.
John was confused because he only saw from the CCTV screen one person was walking away from a car, who must be George, while everyone was saying, “Look, they are there.”
“I only see one person. Where are the other ones?” He asked the lady sitting beside him.
“Look, George is talking to somebody,” The lady pointed to the CCTV screen.
Now John noticed that George seemed to keep talking to someone beside him, but he could not see that person at all. John was confused, when he was just about to ask the lady beside him again, John noticed that the Open button of the elevator lighted up while George was still a few steps away from the elevator.
He murmured to the lady, “Is there a sensor for the elevator to be notified the arrival of someone?”
“No,” the lady replied.
A few seconds later, the elevator door opened and George seemed to let someone get in the elevator first with his arm gesture.
Then the screen switched to the CCTV within the elevator.
“Please zoom in,” Someone from the audience suggested loudly.
The CCTV screen zoomed in, and John was shocked by what he noticed. There was a very blurred transparent body shape beside George, and that body pushed the button of 3 in the panel.
“A ghost?” he blurted, which caused others to guffaw loudly.
“Yeah, we are going to throw a welcome party for a ghost,” someone jested.
“They are on this floor,” someone else shouted.
The elevator stopped at the third floor and its door opened.
Then the TV screen was switched to one CCTV camera in the space outside the BHA office. John saw George walk out of the elevator, and the doorbell was ringing while George never lifted his arm.
“Hiiii…” People inside the room all got excited. Doug already waited before the door. He opened the door promptly right after he heard the sound of the doorbell. Many members left their seats to stand around the door. Doug and Jack had to push them back a bit so that there would be enough room near the door.
John stood onto his chair so that he could have a clear view of what was going on.
A magic happened in front of everyone. After entering the office, that blurred transparent body-shape spot lowered itself and contracted to a big fat short spot, and then a pair of shoes appeared under the spot, and then two legs, the body, and finally the head. A lively real man came out of the blurred transparent spot! Amid acclamation of the team, he turned back letting George who was behind him get into the office floor.
Jessica went to hug two of them, then Doug, Jack and many others went to shake hands or hug them. John stood on the chair until people started to walk back to their seats.
After all the members went back to their seats, George went behind the lectern. Doug passed him a lapel mic, and George clipped it on his jacket.
John noticed that right after the team all sat down, Jack went to a computer room with all the phones he collected and closed the door of the room.
“Good morning everyone,” George greeted the team.
“Good morning, George.”
“I am George Hardstone. Most of you know me except for a few. I am the founder and chairman of BHA.” He pointed to the “ghost” man who already sat in a seat in the front row, “Some of you also know Jimmy, the ghost man.”
The team burst out laughing.
“Jimmy, why don’t you stand up to show your human face to the team again?” George jested at Jimmy.
Jimmy stood up from his seat and raised his two hands waved to the team. The team acclaimed and applauded him with loud hand clapping.
“Say something,” Someone from the team shouted to him. But Jimmy just smiled at the team and then sat down without saying anything.
“Don’t worry, you will hear his talking in a moment,” George beckoned the team to quiet down.
After the team quieted down, he asked, “Is Mr. John Potter here?”
John did not expect that George would call his name and was surprised. He was not sure if George was calling him until those sitting around him all turned to look at him.
“Yes, I am him,” John raised his hand from his seat.
“Please come here,” George waved at him.
John rose from his seat and walked to the front.
“He has sworn in as a BHA member,” Jessica told George.
“Great.” George held John’s hand and shook for a couple seconds. “Welcome to this family.”
“Thanks, Thanks a lot.” John could feel the force of George’s hand and he enjoyed it because he felt the comforting encouragement instead of the pain as General K squeezed his hand a few weeks ago.
George turned to the audience, “In a moment, our Mr. Ghost Jimmy will tell us something he found about BMA… Yeah, that evil name which we have been so familiar with for the past months.” He put his right hand on the shoulder of John, “Before that we might hear some firsthand story about BMA, especially their products, the AHs, from our new member, Brother John.”
“John. Why don’t you tell us your story with BMA?” George turned to John and passed the lapel mic to him and left the lectern.
“Thank you George.” John put the mic on his shirt. “Thank you BHA family for letting me tell you something I experienced and witnessed for the past decades… some of them just happened a few weeks ago.”
John briefly recalled how he was recruited into BMA through K Corp after he was turned into part of the computer system by putting that red hat on his head, what he saw in the SEESALL, what he did in the prisons. Finally, when he came to the part of his visit to the Republic of New People, he felt convulsion in his chest and a lump came to his throat. His eyes became wet, and his voice a bit cracked. He paused in an effort to calm down so that he would not cry out in front of the team. Linda, Jessica’s secretary handed him a tissue box and a small water bottle.
“Thanks.” John did not use the tissues, but opened the water bottle. He gulped a mouthful of water and forced back his own tears before he continued with his painful story in that remote island, especially his witness of AHs. He subconsciously glanced at Jessica when he mentioned that he was drugged and put together with some naked female AHs. He had to mention that part because that was the reason for him to leave BMA and K Corp, as well as Alice. But he skipped some details, some of which he did not want to touch and some of which he did not even know, such as how he was actually drugged.
John quickly ended his talk when he noticed that Jessica started to check her watch.
“Thanks.” He took off the lapel mic and left it on the lectern, and then he bowed to the team before walking back to his seat.
George stood up and clapped for John. The whole team applauded John with big hand claps.
“Thanks John,” George walked behind the lectern and put on the lapel mic.
“John just told us a bloody real story about how BMA is systematically turning our society into a big machine, and replacing our species, the Homo sapiens with AHs. John had his personal contact with the AHs in an Indo-Pacific island that is far from here. Next, we will tell you something about what BMA is doing in our own society, about how real AHs are in the rest of the world, in our country, just among us. But before that, Jimmy would tell you how we have obtained the secrets of BMA”
He looked at Jimmy, “Jimmy, your turn.”
Jimmy walked up to the lectern with a folded transparent sheet. George handed the mic to Jimmy and walked back to his own seat.
“Thanks George, thanks Jess, and thanks to everyone here.” Jimmy laid the folded sheet on the lectern and started to address the audience.
“Put on the cloak,” Someone uttered.
“Yeah, please”… “put it on.” Several others echoed.
“You really want me to do that?” Jimmy grinned.
“Sure … please.” The audience was eager to see how Jimmy would disappear behind the cloak.
“Alright, let me put it on.” Jimmy picked up the transparent sheet, and unfolded it. It was not really a cloak, but a full bodysuit with a hood. Jimmy put it on himself while standing behind the lectern. When his head was finally covered, Jimmy disappeared in the air again.
“Wow… unbelievable…awesome…amazing…incredible…” The team was amazed and exclaiming.
“Hello everybody,” the “ghost” talked.
“Hi Jimmy,” the audience responded.
Then the whole room was filled with laughter and excitement.
“Okay … can I talk now?” Jimmy spoke in the air.
“Sure…please,” the members then all sat down and waited for Jimmy to talk.
“Again, I would like to give thanks to George, our leader, and to Jessica, who is not only the leader of this sector but also played a very important role in making this possible…I am not referring to organizing this meeting…of course, I should also thank her for organizing this meeting at this sector headquarters…but I would give special thanks to her for her previous leadership in developing this cloaking suit.”
“We might talk about this another time,” Jessica interrupted in a soft tone.
“Jimmy, please focus on how you beat BMA,” George seconded Jessica.
“Sure,” Jimmy responded.
“I guess that some of you might wonder how I could beat BMA with this cloaking suit. Let me give you a very brief background about myself. I was born in an acrobatics family so that I was trained in a very strict manner to master all kinds of acrobatic skills when I was even a kid…George was a friend of my family, and I joined BHA from the very beginning. One day, George came to me saying that he wanted me to meet with a professional thief.”
A few people in the audience started to laugh.
“That gentleman was a professional thief, but he had become a good citizen since many years ago,” George chipped in from his seat.
“That’s boring,” Someone responded.
The team burst into laughter again.
“I know that might sound crazy…but that was what happened…and I asked him why…he said that he wanted me to be trained as a spy for BHA…I was excited when I heard what he told me…so I said ‘yes’…and then I was trained by that professional thief on how to break in some most tightly protected facility…”
He paused and requested, “I need to have some water. May I take this off?”
“Sure you can,” Jessica replied.
Linda brought a bottle of water and put it on the lectern while Jimmy took off the suit.
“Now it feels much better,” Jimmy exhaled a long breath and grinned at the audience. He put the suit on the lectern and gulped some water.
“Alright…let’s continue…Although that professional thief was very good, but I was still wondering: Is this okay to sneak into somewhere that is highly protected by advanced technology? …
Guess what? I was preparing in my heart that if that was the best he could teach me and George wants me to break into BMA, I would first run away from these two crazy dudes as soon as I learned all he could teach me.”
The audience laughed out loudly.
“But fortunately, before I planned to run away, George came to me with this,” He picked up the transparent suit from the lectern. “That changed everything…my perspective about the whole thing got changed…and I could see the importance of the skills that I learned from that professional thief.”
“For example?” Someone asked in a teasing tone.
“Yeah, could you show us something?” A few others echoed.
“Are you serious?” Jimmy responded.
“Please,” Many requested.
“Okay,” Jimmy stepped out from behind the lectern, and paced to the southeast corner of the room. When he was still several meters from the corner, with a few movements, in the twinkling of an eye, Jimmy moved up the corner with his head touched the ceiling and his back and limbs as well as two palms pressed on the wall. The most impressive part was not the swiftness of his move, but the fact that he was not holding any recessing or projecting part of the wall after he touched to the ceiling, but managed to stay there only with the support of the friction between his body and the side wall surfaces while facing the audience.
“Wow…”, all of a sudden the room became silent, and many mouths and eyes were opened wide. Everyone was astonished that no one remembered to give applause to Jimmy for his outstanding performance.
A few seconds later, Jimmy let himself fall back to the floor without making any audible sound even when the audience was so quiet.
Then the floor was vibrated by the loud acclamation and applauses.
Jimmy walked back to the lectern with a smile, and the color of his face looked normal just like nothing special happened.
“Now that was the prelude to tell you how I was prepared for the historical mission that George assigned me to do,” Jimmy continued. “The next would be how I sneaked into the office of BMA, but I would skip that part and let you guys to picture it out with your own imagination…that shouldn’t be too hard after you guys saw what I did, right?”
“Sure,” Doug responded. “We can figure it out, and you might skip that part.”
“After a few months effort of tracking the activity of some key members of BMA, and many many times of sneaking in and out of their headquarters in that suit, I helped our intelligence team... by the way, you guys might already know that we have a very good world class intelligence team.”
“We know that,” Doug responded with a proud laugh.
“Good,” Jimmy gave Doug a thumb up. “Anyway, I helped our intelligence team sneak into their heavily protected computer system and got some critical information about BMA, some very shocking things that they are doing. George, I guess now it should be your turn to tell the team what we found.”
George stood up from his seat and walked to the lectern. Jimmy hit a five with George and went back to his seat.
“Good job Jim,” George complimented Jimmy, and then addressed to the team.
“As Jimmy just mentioned that our intelligence team found some secrets of BMA, with the help of our legendary Jimmy, and we were all shocked by what we saw from the documents in their system.”
Linda brought a bottle to George. She had learned from the previous cases, and this time she did not wait for George expressed the need.
“Thanks Linda.” George had a drink of water and then continued.
“A moment ago, John told us that he was told by someone of BMA that their AHs would not be deployed in this country. That was another big lie made by BMA. Among many documents from BMA, we downloaded one complete database from one of their systems, which contains a list table of the AHs that they have ever produced with detailed personal information. For each AH, they assign it with a unique serial number which was also used as the key of the list table in that database. Pertaining to that serial number, there are items like name, sex, physical parameters including color of skin and eyes, as well as where it has been deployed to, and so on.”
“We found about thousands of AHs that have been deployed in our country. And you know what?” He looked around the audience and raised his voice. “There were about 100 of our BHA members in this country alone were AHs.”
“What? ...” The audience was shocked. Everyone started to look at the neighbors. It seemed that everyone started to wonder whether some AH was sitting in the next seat.
“Don’t worry and please stop looking at your neighbors,” George laughed. “Luckily, you don’t have any AH in this location.”
“Oh…” The audience all exhaled a big relaxed breath.
“Besides,” George continued, “We have discharged all those AHs and those who referred them into our organization. We have done this quietly without making too much noise in the society and in our own organization because we are waiting for a big moment to launch our all-out attack. Before that, we want to keep things on a low profile so that we won’t give them the excuse to crack us down with the political and legal power they have gained over the past decades. And that big moment is coming.”
The team all clapped for the coming big moment.
“But meanwhile we did report to relevant government agencies about all those AHs and their references that sneaked into our organization, because we have proofs that they were cheating by breaching our bylaws. Most importantly, we are sure that all legal documents of those AHs were fabricated.”
“Can we trust those government agencies?” Someone questioned from the audience.
“Good question,” George looked at the person who was asking the question. “The answer is yes and no.”
“I say ‘Yes’ because fortunately we do have a reliable national security team with hundreds of thousands employees, and most of them are good loyal humans. But on the other hand, I say No because unfortunately there are some officials, some very powerful persons who worked in some of the agencies, as well as some of their minions, are members of BMA.
This is a war. We are fighting a war and its frontier spans over all social ranks, across all social sectors and all national boundaries. This is a war for the survival of our human species because one big conspiracy of BMA is to replace humans with AHs.”
He paused and had a sip of water.
“You might ask ‘How could they replace humans with AHs?’ The answer is Sex. In John’s story, the female AHs were used as sex weapons to frame him. They first drugged him and then put him with female AHs so that they could defame him. But in the open society, AHs are working as sex weapons in a much more profound and trickier way: they marry ordinary humans and form families with them.”
“So they could murder them at night?” Someone asked from the audience.
“No,” George replied. “That would be too simple for them, and it would be noticed by homicide squad of police departments across the nation.”
“Then why they want to do it?” Someone else asked.
“They marry ordinary people and give them an apparently happy life.” George pointed to John, “If you ask John, I bet he could tell you that all AHs, male or female are very good looking. They are much more sexually attractive than the majority of ordinary people.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Someone remarked.
The team all burst into laughter.
“What you said is exactly the key factor that they are exploiting to replace humans with AHs,” George said to that member.
The whole team became hush after George’s response because they all did sense the tricky part behind the comment that George just made.
“Because they look sexy and beautiful, and they are smart and capable, as well as good tempered, just think of it, … how could ordinary humans, if they are not very rich like most BMA members… how could they compete against this kind of animals in winning sexual partners?”
The team all noticed the use of the term “sexual partners” by George and felt humiliated, not by George, but by AHs.
“But there is still an important fatal factor behind all this. Can anyone tell me what that fatal factor is?”
No one replied, even though many of them knew the answer to the question of George. The air in the audience became very heavy.
George pounded the lectern with a fist, “The fatal factor is that those AHs cannot breed because they were not given that capacity when they were manufactured from the production line. That means they would form apparently happy families with ordinary humans after defeating their human rivals in winning the sexual partners, but all those families would not have offspring. That would effectively cause humans to depopulate in an apparently natural way, and also an apparent happy way for many men and women who marry AHs, after a few decades.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The eyes and mouths of many members were wide open as they listened to George.
“But the negative impact of AHs would be manifested in our society even long before that.” George lowered his voice a bit and spoke slowly, “Since those AHs came to our world with a clear mandate, they would do what they do best to destroy humanity. They would seduce our men and women with their apparent sexual advantages to ruin our existing families, and to deteriorate the moral quality of our society, to make men and women obsessed to sexual plays so that their spirit and health would be damaged. They might even intentionally cause a few men kill each other for a single female AH or a few women kill each for a single male AH.”
“That’s too scary,” A lady blurted.
“Yeah, it is scary,” George nodded at her. “When BMA creates those AHs in its workshops, they intentionally removed many human traits that were considered by them as inferior through genetic engineering, which include love, sense of responsibility, will to be honest, and so on. So we are now fighting against an inhuman army of monsters created by BMA, and we don’t have the option of losing it.”
“Why do those of BMA want to do this to destroy their own species?” Someone asked.
“A very good and serious question,” George responded. “That was also a difficult question that puzzled us before we acquired in-depth knowledge about BMA. As you all know that I was from a BMA family. But even with that background, I was never given to know their true reason of doing that.”
“We found the answer to that question after our intelligence team obtained some of their top classified documents with the help of Jimmy. From those documents, we found that they have a theory that in order to have the Earth civilization smoothly transit into the automation and AI era, they need to naturally depopulate what they call as useless humans that could not be absorbed by the market economy.”
“Then who do they consider as not useless?” Someone asked.
“They have their own research team, and based on their research, more than 99% of current world population will soon become useless in the coming decades as the automation and AI are gradually phasing out human productivity in all fields. So in their perspective, they would systematically reduce the current population to less than 1% of the current number, so that people like them could comfortably live with robots and AHs created by them without the need to worry about being threatened by useless people.”
“How would they do that?” Someone questioned.
“AHs,” someone else answered.
“Yes, AHs are their best weapons to achieve that goal, because with AHs they don’t need to fire a single bullet to kill anyone and they still could make everyone that they don’t like to die in their artificial sweethearts’ laps. It is just like to give addicts heavy doses so that they would die quickly in their hallucinations.” George paused and continued, “Of course, they would also fire bullets to kill without hesitation when they feel necessary.”
George picked up the suit Jimmy left on the lectern. “This suit has played a very important role in our war against BMA. We should have always kept it as a top secret. But unfortunately, as some of you already heard that about two weeks ago, we found that our system was breached and the information about our technology of making the suit was stolen.”
“Who did that?” Someone asked.
“We don’t know yet,” George replied. “But it must be the intelligence team of BMA. Because very soon after that happened, when Jimmy went to their headquarters in the suit, he found they installed many special infrared scanners.”
He put down the suit and continued, “We were aware that infrared scanners are the most dreadful predator of anyone who wears our cloaking suit and we told Jimmy to always pay attention to that kind of equipment. That’s why he found those scanners before they caught him.”
Some members exhaled a long breath.
“But it’s actually good for you guys,” George said. “Because if it is no longer a secret to BMA, it should not be a secret to you, and we decide to let you guys, our own brothers and sisters to see how the ‘cloak’ could hide our Jimmy.” He paused and smiled.
The team shouted cheerfully, “Right...”
“George,” Frank, a former scientist before joining BHA, raised his hand.
“Please go ahead,” George encouraged.
“Is this cloak created by the so-called quantum stealth technology of bending light?” Frank asked.
“No,” Jessica responded from her seat. “We are using something very different.”
George turned to Jessica. “Jess, I guess it might be the time for me to give this place to you. So you might answer all the technical questions that are related to the cloaking suit.”
“Sure.” Jessica rose from her seat and walked up to the lectern. George passed the mic to Jessica and walked back to his seat. Meanwhile, John noticed that Linda and another two members left the room.
In response to Frank’s question, Jessica said, “We heard of those quantum stealth technologies, but we have never been able to access any detailed technical documents of that kind of technologies. Besides, we never saw any real practical products created by any of the so-called quantum stealth technologies yet.”
“Then may I ask what technology we are using here?” Frank asked.
“Sure,” Jessica replied. “Our technology let people see through the cloaked objects, instead of bending the light as those quantum stealth technologies normally claim to do.”
“How could you let people see through an object?” Someone else asked.
Jessica put on the mic and picked up the suit. “You see this suit is made of very thin sheet. When you look at it from far, it seems transparent, but if you come look at it closer, its color is some kind silver blue”
Then Jessica turned the cloak inside out.
Many members exclaimed because the inside of the cloak was pure black.
“Now you see, this ‘invisible’ cloaking sheet is actually not transparent at all, right?” Jessica then turned the suit back and covered the upper part of the lectern with the suit, and it looked transparent.
“Don’t damage the cloak,” Someone shrieked.
Jessica laughed. “Don’t worry. It is very tough. Besides, we have quite a few of them.”
She stepped out from behind the lectern. “The reason that you could see through whatever covered by this cloaking suit is because it could accurately determine the spatial directions according to its own 3-D coordinate system, and each part of the surface would show the vision of its opposite side in a 3-D coordinate system, no matter from which perspective, or in other words, no matter from which angle you look at it in the 3-D coordinate system.”
“So this stuff should also cover the bottom of the shoes?” Someone asked.
“Yes. In order for others to see through head to the bottom of foot, you need to cover your shoes,” Jessica replied. “Jimmy was behind the lectern when he put on the suit a moment ago so that you didn’t see how he actually covered his shoes.”
“How could you make the cloaking sheet work like that?” Frank asked.
“Okay, now let’s talk more about the technology behind it.” Jessica rubbed the suit with her left thumb and index finger. “You see, the material is very thin, very delicate. However, you might not know that there are actually three layers of this material.”
She said to Doug, “I need to draw some pictures and show them on the TV screen. Could you please give me a pad?”
“Sure. Let me set it up for you first.” Doug worked on an electronic notepad and one of the TV screen became a blank whiteboard. He passed the notepad to Jessica.
Jessica took the notepad and drew three lines on the screen. “You might imagine these three lines as the three layers of cloaking sheet.”
“How could such a thin cloth have three big layers?” Someone asked.
“Don’t be fooled by these lines here… they are just for the purpose of illustration,” Jessica smiled at that person. She snatched the edge of the suit. “The thickness of this sheet is close to one millimeter, but the thickness of the main part of each layer is in the order of 10 to 100 nanometers, and one millimeter equals one million nanometers, which means there is actually something like ‘glue’ filled between the main parts of those layers.”
“Wow…” Some members exclaimed.
Jessica put a cross on the left line. “Suppose this is the outside surface layer that you see now. The whole surface could be considered as a large flexible TV screen with thousands or millions of holes spread over the whole screen. The size of each hole is in the order of the smallest pixel, and in each hole is a minute light receiver which you might imagine as the lens of a camera.”
“But why don’t we see those holes or dots on the surface of the cloaking suit?” Someone asked.
“As a matter of fact, none of the TV screens used anywhere in the world is showing a continuous picture, what you see is just a grand composite of many small pixels,” Jessica explained. “This is because there is a maximum resolution that a human eye could perceive. Above that you will see a continuous picture.”
“That makes sense,” Someone remarked.
“But that’s not the whole story yet,” Jessica said. She took out her mobile phone that came with a flashlight and shone the flashlight on one of the TV screens. “Did you see the light reflected in the screen?”
“Yes,” the audience replied.
“So you see the problem,” Jessica said. “If the cloaking sheet would also reflect the light, then it would be very weird since it would look like the air is reflecting something.”
“That would be a problem,” the audience all agreed.
Then Jessica shone the flashlight on the cloaking suit, and there was no reflection at all.
“Wow” … “Sick” … “Sweet”, the team was amazed by the scene.
“The main reason for this to happen is that this surface is made of light absorbing materials created by nanotechnology for both the lens dots and displaying area. Besides, we also applied an advanced nanotechnology based on the conventional Lenticular technology to the displaying units so that when you walk around a body in the 3-D space, from a high position to a low position, or from left to right, you will see different views on the same spot of that body, because the ‘see-through’ background should change when your angle of view changes.”
“Cool”… “amazing” “…” many members exclaimed.
“The distribution of the lens dots and the application of the Lenticular technology also bring a positive side effect, which is the roughness of the surface,” Jessica continued. “This roughness of the surface could further help to reduce the reflection of light from the surface of the cloaking sheet. Anyway, it took our engineers months of efforts without much sleep to make the pictures displayed on the sheet look real instead of like what we see on the ordinary TV screens.”
“Good job,” the audience applauded.
“What about the internal layer?” someone asked.
“Let’s talk about the middle layer first.” Jessica put a cross on the central line. “This layer is the most complicated layer. It is composed of many CPU chips of the sizes in the order of smaller than 100 nanometers. All the images collected by those ‘lenses’ are processed here, and then not only different parts of a whole background picture would be displayed in different parts of the surface in a coordinated and synchronized way so that the viewers would see an apparently continuous picture on the surface of the suit, but also any part of the surface of the suit would display different views when looking at it from different angles.”
“Is that so complicated?” Someone exclaimed.
“That’s how it could be possible for someone to see a natural view of the blocked background when walking around the cloaking suit,” Jessica explained.
“How could you make those chips to work together and create a complete whole view?” Frank asked.
“That is done through a very advanced version of so-called artificial neural network technology, behind which is basically very complicated and advanced mathematical algorithms. One big challenge is how to make the displayed picture not skew on a randomly curved surface when seeing it from different angles,” Jessica explained.
“How many chips do we need for a cloaking suit? Are they also distributed all over the sheet like the lenses and pixel elements?” Frank said.
“Good question,” Jessica responded. “The version of the artificial neural network that we have used is so advanced that it could actually handle a network of millions of chips. Therefore, theoretically, we could paint the whole central layer with millions of chips spread over the whole sheet. However, practically we don’t need that many chips; we only need to have enough for the designed functionality of a given sheet.”
“It sounds like every sheet would be tailor-made,” Frank commented.
“So far it is, and it works in that way for our products,” Jessica responded. “At least, you should not randomly cut a cloaking sheet of ours using a scissor.”
The audience all laughed.
“Now let’s look at this layer.” Jessica put a cross on the right line. “This is the inside layer, which is black as you have seen. That layer is just a simple insulation layer. Its main functionality is to provide the insulation between those two heat sources, the human body and the chips layer. Besides, it can also help to prevent the smell of human body from leaking out of the cloaking suit. That’s why when Jimmy was in the cloaking suit he might feel hot and thirsty … It is a tough job. Thanks Jimmy for doing that for BHA.”
The team gave Jimmy a round of claps again.
“So in order to have the cloaking material work, you need to wrap the whole object with the cloaking sheet without leaving any part of the object uncovered?” Frank asked.
Jessica pointed to the transparent lectern, “That is not completely wrapped, but it’s already transparent.”
Frank was about to say something, but Jessica added, “I know what you’re concerned with. You want to know if this sheet would work without somehow wrapping the object inside it.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Frank said.
Jessica grabbed a part of the cloaking suit and said, “With this material, the answer to your question is ‘no’. We cannot use this type of sheet to cloak any object without somehow wrapping it, because this is designed particularly for making a suit for a person to wear, as I just mentioned that, one side of it is covered by insulate layer.”
“From what you just said, it seems that if we have one single sheet of that material and spread it out, we cannot see through it, right?” Frank asked.
“You are absolutely right,” Jessica nodded at him. “But as I know that our cloaking team is also working on a project to make another type of invisible sheet with both sides the same. There will still be three layers, but no insulation layer. That kind of sheet could be used to cloak an object without wrapping it. But the chips of that type of sheet are much more advanced because it would know which object it is supposed to cloak.”
Members gave a round of loud claps to Jessica for her expertise on the cloaking suit.
“May I ask a question?” The lady sitting beside John raised her hand from the seat.
“Of course,” Jessica responded. “Please go ahead Mary.”
“How could Jimmy breathe inside that cloaking suit?” Mary asked.
“Very good question,” Jessica complimented. “Since this is not just a sheet to cover something or a simple cloak as you see from the science fiction movies, but a suit for a human to wear, we need some human engineering features to meet some special human needs, and breathing is a very fundamental need for anyone who would wear the suit.”
She picked up the suit and asked, “Could someone give me a sheet that looks dark?”
“My shirt is dark. You can use my body if you want,” Doug said.
The audience started to laugh.
“Okay,” Jessica said to Doug. “Come up here.”
Doug rose from his seat and walked to the lectern. Jessica let him turn around so that the audience could see his back.
“I need someone else give me a hand,” Jessica.
“I will do it,” Mary rose from her seat and walked to the front.
Jessica let Mary hold one side of the suit so that they could stretch the part of the suit for covering the wearer’s face between Doug and her right hand. Then she used the flashlight of her mobile phone to illuminate that part from her side.
The audience burst into gasp when they saw some blurred light spots shown on Doug’s back.
Jessica got back the whole suit from Mary. “Thanks Mary for help.”
“My pleasure,” Mary responded in a joyful tone and went back to her seat.
Jessica then patted Doug, who was still standing there, and jested, “Thanks for lending your dark back. You might go now.”
“You are welcome.” Doug made a funny face to the audience and then went back to his seat.
Jessica turned to the audience, “So you see that the part covering mouth and nose on the suit is not completely sealed as the rest of the suit. We have a cluster of tiny holes in that part, which are for the person inside it to breathe. Because the holes are very tiny, so that even though it could degrade a bit the quality of cloaking, it won’t be severely.”
“That’s great,” Someone complimented.
“Who can tell me another special need that we should take care of with this cloaking suit?” Jessica asked.
“Eyes,” someone answered.
“Yes,” Jessica gave that person a thumb up, and then turned the part of the suit for eyes inside out. “As a matter of fact, this is a simple pair of VR glasses which allows Jimmy to see the surrounding area. Since there are millions of cameras all over the cloaking suit to watch around, the only challenge is to add some logic into that artificial neural network so that they could feed some circuits behind this pair of glasses with the images.”
“Actually it feels pretty cool when you realize that you could even see what is behind you,” Jimmy added from his seat. “But you do need some special training to get used to it.”
“Exactly! Thanks Jimmy.” Jessica then asked, “Now who can tell me another special need that we should take care of?”
No one answered.
“That should be the need to stand, right?” Jessica smiled. “I mentioned a moment ago that the cloaking suit needs to cover the shoes as well.”
She turned the inside of one of the foot parts out, “See this looks like an overshoe. Jimmy could put his foot in this without taking off his shoes.” Then she showed the outside of that part to the team, “See, this part is specially treated so that it is thicker.”
“So it won’t wear out easily,” Mary commented.
“That’s one of the important reasons,” Jessica responded. “Another reason for doing so is that the bottoms of the feet have the direct contact with the ground. So we need to give the ‘lenses’ some space as well as some light to see the ground. The trade off is that if Jimmy lift his foot and show someone the bottom of his feet, it would not look as transparent as the other part of the cloaking suit.”
“He won’t do that often. Do you, Jimmy?” Mary asked Jimmy, and laughed.
“Unless I want to kick someone’s ass,” Jimmy jested.
“Excuse me,” John raised his hand.
“Please, John,” Jessica cast a smile at him.
“If you need to treat the part for the bottom of the feet specially, then what if the person wearing the suit stands touching a wall?” John asked.
“Excellent catch!” Jessica complimented. She drew on the screen a wall and a standing person in contact with the wall. “In the scenario John just mentioned, if the person actually pushed the wall with his back, then he will completely block that part of the wall from the light. So someone from far would see a weird spot on the wall.”
“That’s a problem,” Someone exclaimed.
“The solution to this problem comes in three levels. First, the artificial neural network of the chips is smart enough so that it will make the side that is almost in contact with an object brighter, so that it could shed some light on the object, which could solve the problem to a good extent in most cases.”
“Very cool,” Mary acclaimed.
“However,” Jessica continues. “If the person presses the object too hard with his body, or in a similar situation, if the person lies on the ground, then he would completely block the ground under him from the light, so even the first solution will not work. In that case, the cloaking sheet is smart enough to mimic the appearance pattern in the surrounding region and display it on the surface of the sheet.”
“Just like an octopus,” Mary commented.
“Yes, just like an octopus,” Jessica echoed. “That’s the second solution.”
“What is the third one?” Frank asked.
“Jimmy might tell you what the third solution is.” Jessica turned and smiled at Jimmy.
“Never press your body against any object too hard unless it is necessary,” Jimmy answered from his seat.
“Correct.” Jessica added, “As a matter of fact, the cloaking suit is just a good camouflage that could help a professionally trained person like Jimmy to gain the advantage that he could hide himself from the eyes of unprepared people, no matter sitting behind a CCTV camera or in the same room with him, while seeing others clearly. So he has to first learn how stay away from other people and objects whenever it is possible. Otherwise, if he stays too close to others, they might actually see the cloaking suit, or even touch him.”
“That’s why we let Jimmy to be trained by that former professional thief first,” George chipped in.
“Good job Jimmy,” Someone shouted and many others echoed.
“One more question.” Frank raised his hand again.
“Sure,” Jessica smile at him.
“This question is concerning that insulation layer,” Franks said. “Even though Jimmy is tough, you still cannot keep all the heat inside the suit. You need to have some mechanism to let the internal heat out, don’t you?” Frank asked.
“Good point,” Jessica responded. “The solution is that we are using a special material of extremely high heat capacity and low thermal conductivity for the insulation layer. In addition to that, as you might have already found from my answer to Mary’s question, the suit is not completely insulated but with some holes to connect inside out.”
“But the holes for breathing might not be enough for letting the heat out, right?” Frank interrupted.
“You are right,” Jessica smiled. “There are another two places where we make some holes. Some of you might have already guessed where those places are. They are the bottoms of the feet again. But still, the main mechanism that we count on to reduce the temperature within the suit as well the temperature of the chip layer is the extraordinary high heat capacity of that insulation layer.”
“But would those holes leak the human smell out?” Frank asked.
“It will, but very limited.” Jessica responded. “Although it’s not a perfect 100% insulation, it will greatly reduce the radiation of heat and the leak of smell from the human body. Obviously, even with that insulation layer, we could not escape from those infrared scanners; but if we don’t have that layer, it could even easily become the target of some curious cat or dog.”
“That’s right, my dog would definite bark if he could smell an invisible human being,” Someone remarked, which caused many to laugh loudly.
“I guess you need to wash that suit every time after using it to avoid being too smelly, right?” Mary asked.
“Yes, you are right,” Jessica responded. “We have very special equipment for doing that.”
“Last question,” Frank asked for permission.
“Go ahead please,” Jessica responded.
“Where do you get the energy for the cloaking suit? Do you need a battery in it?”
“Good question,” Jessica replied. “We don’t need a separate battery for the cloaking suit. The energy source or you might call it as the battery is in fact built into the cloaking sheet as some part of the ‘gluing’ material that fills those layers. We used some very special rare earth metals for that built-in energy source so that it could last for many decades.”
“Very impressive! Thanks,” Franks said.
“Can Jimmy turn the power off?” Mary asked.
“He can’t,” Jessica replied. “It’s technically doable in principle, but we did not put a switch on the suit because we don’t want him to turn off the power accidentally when he was walking in the street.”
“That will be horrible,” Mary exclaimed.
“Yes, it will be horrible.” Jessica then looked at the team, “I guess that’s how much I can tell about the cloaking suit.”
“Very well done! Jess.” George stood up clapping for Jessica and whole team followed with a big round of loud claps.
Just when George was about to walk to the lectern, the door to the elevators was opened and Linda came in with another two members. They brought boxes of food that they just bought for the team’s lunch.
“Lunchtime now. I am hungry,” Jessica said to George. “I guess we might reconvene after lunch.”
“Maybe we can get all the group leaders at one table outside your office and we can talk about our plans for the coming Wednesday while we eat,” George suggested.
“That could be done,” Jessica responded. “I will let Doug and someone else to set up a table there, and we get all the group leaders together. They could brief the progress of their own groups to you first and then you might let us know your plan.”
“That sounds good.”
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The lunch lasted for almost three hours because all group leaders were gathering outside Jessica’s office with George, Jimmy, and Jessica. John and other members were sitting at a distance from the group leaders. On John’s table, there were Frank, Mary, and some others. For most of the time during the lunch, others were asking John about the Red Hat and the AHs, since he was the only one who had the first hand experiences with both.
After lunch, when John was helping to clean up the tables, Linda came to him. “John, Jessica wants you to come to her office to meet with George.”
“Sure.” John walked to Jessica’s office. The door was closed. He knocked the door.
“Come in,” Jessica answered.
John walked in, and George showed him a chair.
“You guys talk and I need to discuss with Doug and Jack about the security for the protest.” Jessica walked out of the office and left the door closed.
“I am so glad that you came to join us,” George said.
“It’s my honor to be invited to join this great cause for humanity on this globe,” John responded.
“Very well said,” George remarked. “Actually, before you came, we already knew something about you. Not through Jessica or any of your friends, but through BMA.”
“Someone from BMA talked to you about me?” John asked.
“No,” George replied. “We found something about you from one of their files that we stole from their system.”
“What’s written in that file?” John asked.
“It was about your trip to the Republic of New People,” George replied.
“Really?” John was surprised and also very curious about what was written in that file.
“Have you ever heard the BMA Test Center or Brilliant Machines Association Test Center in its full name?” George asked.
“No.”
“Apparently, that is an organization within the BMA in charge of testing its members before making a potentially very high rank promotion,” George said.
“Promotion?” John was confused.
“Yes. Apparently, they sent you to the Republic of New People to test if you would be qualified for the promotion to a very high rank position. But you failed, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it,” George said.
“Oh, I am so glad that I left that dark society,” John replied in a very serious tone.
“Very good,” George said. “It seemed from their file, a man named Sam and the President of the Republic of New Public, as well as another two referees, were strongly questioning your loyalty toward BMA. Based on their document, when Sam and that President gave you face to face tests, the other two referees were watching the tests all the time.
“That’s what I guessed,” John said.
“You knew the other two referees?” George asked.
“No. But I was guessing that someone from BMA might be watching what I was doing all the time. I had that suspicion based on my personal witness of what they were doing in that SEESALL compound,” John replied. “But unfortunately, I thought about that only after I was framed by them.”
“What’s your plan for the future?” George asked.
“I have joined BHA. I would be very honored if I could be given a full-time position within BHA to fight against BMA,” John responded.
“Very good, and you will have one. Jessica will make an arrangement for that,” George said. “Do you have any suggestion for the coming protest on Wednesday?”
“Actually I just got an idea during the lunchtime when I was chatting with others,” John said.
“What’s your idea?”
“I was thinking, if we can make a red color hat so that I could wear it during the protest and hold a flag written ‘The Secret of Turning Humans into Machines with Red Hats’, and if someone comes to ask me about it, I will tell them the story behind the Red Hat.”
“Excellent idea,” George hammered the desk with his fist. He was very excited to hear that idea. “You don’t need to hold the flag. We will have two other persons hold a banner with what you just said printed on it. All three of you, or even more, should wear red hats, and you need to get a loud handheld speaker to tell people what BMA has been doing with those red hats.”
“That will be great,” John responded.
“Actually, what you should do is to prepare two types of speeches. One is slogans that you would chant in the procession, which needs to be simple and rhyme so that people would catch some basic idea about what BMA has been doing with red hats; and the second type is a long story about the red hat, which you would use when you speak on a platform to the surrounding audience,” George suggested.
“That’s an excellent idea!” John responded.
“Why don’t you go to prepare your speeches and let me talk to Jessica about this now? We need to get this done ASAP.” George stood up from the chair.
“Sure. I’m on it right away.” John also stood up. Both of them walked out of the office. John went to the room that Jessica found for him and George went to talk to Jessica.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George and Jimmy left the BHA headquarters of B City sector late in the afternoon after eating supper in the headquarters. People from other offices all departed after they left. Jessica let the members who work in the headquarters also left after they helped to clean up the floor.
On their way home, John asked Jessica, “How did you know so much about the cloaking suit? I was really amazed by your knowledge of it.”
Jessica looked at him and smiled proudly. “It was invented by an engineer of my previous company when I was the boss of that company.”
“Why did you sell the company off if it is so great?” John asked.
“It was because I started working as the director of the B City sector of BHA, and I did not want that company connected to me, and thus I sold it to Tony,” Jessica explained.
“Who is Tony?”
“The engineer who invented the cloaking sheet,” Jessica replied. “A tech guru with double PhDs in both Math and Physics … a smart guy, a genius.”
“He could afford to buy your company?” John asked.
“Well, on the books I sold the company to him, off the books we all know that BHA took over the company. Therefore, money was not an issue. Actually, he did get a large amount of investment to purchase my company. We were just trying to make it more natural in other’s eyes since our main purpose of making the transaction at that time was trying to legally disconnect that company with BHA.”
“So you donated your company to BHA for free?” John asked.
“Not really, I was allowed to keep the money from selling the company. The only thing was that I sold it to BHA instead of Tony, and BHA put Tony in charge of that company,” Jessica replied.
“I was somehow impressed that only very big companies could produce those kinds of chips. Your company was not that big, how did you do it?” John asked.
“We were okay since we were not aiming at mass producing the suits. Besides, we had some rich members of BHA invested in the company so that I could put in quite a lot money to build a special workshop plus lab with some second-hand machines for it. We could manage to produce quite a few cloaking suits for our own use.”
“Today you guys made the secret open, what if someone leaks it to BMA?”
“When I sold the company off, we all knew that someday BMA would know this. We were just trying to buy some time to build our own secret production base. Now we already have it, and meanwhile BMA also have broken into the system of my previous company and learned some of our technology. That’s why we decided to make it open within our team. Whatever you saw and heard today has already been learned by BMA, but we are still way ahead of them in our secret base.”
“That sounds encouraging,” John said.
“How do you feel about what George told you concerning why BMA kicked you out?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t feel much. I just feel very lucky that they did not like me,” John replied.
Jessica cast a very sweet smile at him.
“By the way,” John looked at Jessica, “I heard of that light-bending technology Franks mentioned as well. It seems that quite a lot gurus support that idea. Why don’t you think it feasible?”
“I cannot say it’s not feasible,” Jessica said. “But Tony evaluated that technology and concluded that even if it works it could only cloak a small angle of view.”
“What do you mean by the angle of view?” John asked.
“As the buzz words ‘bending light’ means, the said technology works by pushing the incoming light away from its natural path, so that it could pass around the object without being reflected. As a result, some light which we are supposed to see in our view in the open space would be missing,” Jessica explained.
“So we will see a black hole?” Frank asked.
“Not exactly,” Jessica responded. “We will still see some light in the position of that blocked area due to light scattering from the neighboring region, but not from behind the blocked object as it was supposed to be according to the meaning of cloaking.”
“You mean we cannot see through the object as you just demonstrated with yours?” John asked.
“Exactly,” Jessica smiled at John.
“What does it to do with a small angle of view?” John asked.
“That is simple. If the cloak would create a large obviously abnormal spot in the view, it is very easy for people to find something wrong. But if the angle of view is very small, then people would ignore that problem. For example, a stone of ten centimeters at twenty meters away might appear to you as a small spot; but if a small car is at twenty meters away, it will appear to you as a big object. However, if the car is now at five hundred meters away, then it will appear to you almost the same as that ten centimeter stone. Did I answer your question?”
“Yes, I got it,” John replied.
“Actually, besides bending light off the surface, some scientists also claimed that by applying the light-bending nanotechnology they could create some surface with nanometer scale holes and tunnels for a cloaking material. But based on his mathematical analysis, Tony said that it was mathematically impossible for that kind of material to practically cloak any 3D object since the conditions for the perpendicular directions are conflicting with each other. Even if it works, which means Tony got something wrong with his math, since the paths of the light beams were altered when passing through those tunnels of the surface, it is impossible for them to be reorganized back to the original patterns.”
“Sounds very cool although I am completely lost,” John said.
“Good boy,” Jessica responded.
They all laughed.
“May I ask you another more serious question about your cloaking suit?” John asked as if thinking of something.
“What else are you still curious about?” Jessica teased.
“You mentioned that the surface of that cloaking sheet is full of pixels and lenses. What would happen when one surface of the sheet facing another surface of the same material? That would be the case with the sleeves and legs of that suit, especially in the armpits and the private part between two thighs,” John said.
“Another good catch that you have for today,” Jessica looked at John and cast an encouraging smile at him. “Ideally, if the images taken with the lenses and displayed on the screen are all perfectly original, we will not be concerned with what you just asked. But, it is obviously not the case. Just like when recording a movie from your TV screen, the quality would not be as good as the original.”
“Exactly,” John said. “How did you handle that issue?”
“It is not as difficult as you might have thought of. We call the technology for handling this as ‘pass through’. Basically, the chips in the middle layer of the cloaking sheet is smart enough to know whether the image collected by a lens is original or from the other part of the sheet. For the latter case, it would ignore the image, but pull the original image that the other part of the screen was showing,” Jessica explained.
“Wow,” John exclaimed. “Too deep for me! But I believe you.”
Both burst out laughing cheerfully.
They stopped at the parking lot of W Mart, the biggest department store at that time. They had a very important shopping errand to do again. This time, it was not for their food, but for hats in red color.
……