Awakened Control: The Data ARC Chronicles (The Data ARC Chronicles Book 1) Read online

“No, there’s no way I’m Hugh Jackman, if anything, I’m Deadpool,” I said, trying to figure out where the hell I was going to get a haircut.

  You can’t be Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds was a horrible actor, and the only thing he had going on was a sense of humor to match mine. If I’m stuck in your head, you gotta throw me a bone here… For the love of God…

  I busted up laughing and mentally nodded in agreement. It seemed to please the AI. Still, just because I wasn’t wearing my crazy on the outside… I walked to the door I had noted earlier and turned the handle. It went down, but when I pulled, it didn’t move. I jiggled it a bit, making sure the lock wasn’t engaged. It wasn’t. I jiggled it again and bumped it with my shoulder. It stuck, and when I bumped it a second time, harder, it gave. With a screech of metal on metal sound, I pushed it open.

  The door opened up into a hallway. I was expecting sheetrock, not the actual rock and metal formations. Lights hung in the hallway, but it was lit with emergency lighting every fourth unit.

  “Would you like to see the hallway as it really is, lighting and all?”

  “Sure Alice, let me see.”

  Maybe I’d really be in a strip club, and all my Navy buddies would be there with beers ready, or maybe I was just having a DT from another bender.

  Instead of answering that thought, the hallway seemed to dim some. I waited.

  I’ve been adjusting how your brain has been processing the light that’s available. I can do this automatically or as needed. Just let me know, big guy.

  I looked up and down the dark hallway, carved out of rock…

  “Can you go ahead and give me the normal vision I had?” I asked.

  You are at normal settings. It’s really this dark. Depending on maintenance, the batteries in this facility should have enough juice to run up to a week after waking up its CEPM unit in a catastrophic power loss.

  I looked left and right down the long corridor. The doors were numbered, and very few had glass panes in them. It was almost too dark to see.

  “Where am I?” I asked, not wanting an answer, just confused.

  Data ARC 341. Information Repository, in Arizona.

  “What is a Data ARC and why… Why did they do this to me? You said a bomb went off, why didn’t it kill me?”

  Data ARCs were designed to protect the knowledge and technology of the human race. CEPMs were the defenders of the ARCs. Across the globe, there are reportedly dozens of such sites. Five of them in North America that I am aware of, but my files may be inaccurate, depending on how much time has passed… and technically, for a time, you were dead. The damage was extensive, and a copy of your surgical file was available, though it doesn’t have personal information on you. Just a number, x341. Since you gave me the name Alice, what shall we call you?

  It was almost too much, too fast. I searched my memory, but I couldn’t come up with my name. I could remember some things from my past, and when I really tried hard, I could get impressions of what I thought I was like. I remembered my own image for example, but when I tried to remember my mother and father? I couldn’t. Something was wrong, something was missing, and I was starting to get scared.

  If I couldn’t be Wolverine or Deadpool… “Call me Tony,” I told her, not wanting a response.

  See, here I was, standing in an open doorway to a hallway in what looked like some medieval castle’s dungeon, retrofitted with modern lighting and steel doors. It was like some sort of super-secret government redoubt or vault, like in the video games and books I’d been so addicted to. Plus, I was naked. I’d need to fix that before I embarrassed myself somehow. That I always managed to do.

  A search of your memory banks shows this to be true. You like sticking your head up your—

  “Is there somewhere to get clothing nearby?” I interrupted without speaking. Win one for me.

  Yes, supply is next to the mess hall on this level.

  “How many levels are there, Alice?”

  Thirty. You’re approximately one mile down. There’s two more levels lower than this, but they’re dedicated to the reactor, and the lowest level is the pump room.

  “Why a pump room?” I asked, stepping out into the hallway in my birthday suit, a little shaky on my feet still.

  Not to get too scientific, but the ground water has to go somewhere when you’re this deep. The ARC was built so the water pressure couldn’t crush the interior walls. It’s pumped into the facility for its use after filtering… and then the excess is pumped out to keep these levels dry.

  “It feels cold in here,” I said, feeling part of my anatomy wanting to turtle.

  Like your eyesight, I can adjust your feeling of heat or cold if you’d like. It would just require me to alert you when a situation developed - that you were in danger of hypothermia, for example. Would you like me to activate that?

  “No, but I’ll keep that in mind in case it becomes distracting, go ahead and make things easier to see, though,” padding along, still barefoot.

  I felt like I should be holding a video game controller with the way the HUD map overlay was in my sight. Still, it made things easy to know where to go. Walking with that HUD overlay took a little practice, but I managed not to fall down, go boom.

  I expected to hear somebody, a whoosh of a door as the air pressure equalized or the babble of humans or machinery. Instead, I got nothing. It was as quiet as death. I walked towards the blinking light on the map in my head, my fingers trailing over the rock walls of the hallway. After a moment, the hallway ended, and there was a right-hand turn, and when I took it, things were slightly brighter. Instead of all rock, the hallway opened up into a larger room that had plain steel panels covering the walls, and white tile covered the floors.

  The ceiling was made up of what looked like cheap drop ceiling with light fixtures, every fifth or sixth lit… but the white on the floors and ceiling made this a little more bearable. On the far side of the room I saw two double doors also done in stainless, but with a control panel with two buttons. Elevators. Other doorways dotted the circular room, boring their way into the earth somewhere.

  “How long was I in stasis?” I asked Alice, walking towards the room where the red dot was.

  As I neared, words printed themselves over the rooms in the overlay in my mind and I started walking more towards the door to the left where ‘Supply’ glowed faintly in my mind.

  Unknown. I was shut down to conserve your resources while you were in stasis. The awakening brought us both forth. I’ve been trying to get into communication with the ARC’s main computers and Wi-Fi, but am not having any luck still. There’s a control room on the 22nd level that has a mainframe. We can access that if it’s still being powered. Otherwise, I’m in the dark as much as you.

  “So what’s your best guess?” I asked, hating her non-answer.

  Shit’s gotten real.

  Dammit.

  I didn’t even remember what my last memory was, I couldn’t remember what I didn’t remember. One thing I did know, though, was that I had a sinking feeling that whatever I woke up to, it wasn’t going to script. Whatever that meant in this context. Still, as I approached the door and got closer to the opposite wall, I could see that the floor and ceiling tiles, though white, were covered in dust. Cobwebs were in the corners where the wall met the ceiling, but they too held layer upon layer of dust. There hadn’t been anything down here, not in a long time.

  The door looked a lot like the one where I’d woken up. I hesitated half a moment and then pushed down on the handle and pulled. This door was a lot easier to open, but it still made a screeching noise as I pulled it.

  “Why is it doing that?” I asked Alice mentally.

  My best estimation is that, however long stasis has lasted, parts of the facilities have settled. Even half an inch of settling would make the doors rub like this. It’s possible this caused part of the loss of power in the ARC, as the nuclear reactor shut itself down.

  “This joint has its own nuclear power plant?”

  Yes, and that portion is automated. There're enough fuel rods to maintain this place for thousands of years.

  “I’m starting to get a feeling that you’re holding back on me,” I said, walking into a room close to forty by twenty with shelving lining both walls.

  What they held was… Disappointing. I approached what looked like piles of rags, most of them literally falling apart in strips, as if rodents had been using them for nesting. I didn’t notice the ammonia reek that came with a rat and mouse infestation, but wondered what had happened, as I approached one shelf and tried to pick up some multi-cam colored pants. They fell apart in my hands, and a small cloud of what looked like dust puffed up. I backed off in disgust and looked around.

  “These things are basically dry rotted,” I said after a few moments.

  Your clothing as a CEPM should be held in the storage locker at the end of the room… Although I knew Alice claimed to be an AI, a computer… she sounded concerned.

  Could computers have emotions? Or was this me projecting inflection on something with no context? Was I crazy? Like a zombie, I padded towards a storage locker at the end that the HUD in my vision flashed green. Loot here! it all but screamed. I hesitated when I saw the code pad.

  The code is a five-digit code. It’s your designation—

  “341,” I interrupted.

  And two numbers supplied by the CEPM.

  I punched in 34169, each button making a mechanical clicking sound, and then I pulled the handle. It opened immediately.

  You remembered the numbers?

  “Well, if I was you and you were me, what number am I thinking of right now?” I asked, all but giggling.

  I have no idea. Alice’s voice was dry and humorless.

  “69 dudes,” I said to a thunderous silence.

  Hey, it was funny, I kill myself.

  It would be extremely hard to kill yourself. I don’t suggest you trying.

  “See, I really am Deadpool…”

  My words trailed off as the locker opened, and showed a pile of packages, vacuum sealed in Mylar bags, that were bulky enough to almost fill the entire 18” wide and 72” tall locker. I grabbed the first bag and tore it open with my teeth.

  There was a full-length mirror in the back of the locker, though it was narrow. I was fully clothed in something that felt normal and familiar: Desert Camos, black combat boots and a tactical vest. The vest was weird, though. It almost looked like it was black leather, but a closer look showed it was a woven mesh layered and sewn together. It was unlike any fabric I’d ever seen before, and was given a brief rundown on what Alice knew.

  It appears to be a material similar to Kevlar, but it has wire woven into it. Scientists were researching how to make personal shield generators, and one proposal had them using something like the material in this vest to make the field needed.

  “So this is a personal shield thing?” I asked, thinking of Borderlands.

  No, this is just material. It’s useless right now, without knowing exactly its purpose. Well, not completely useless, it’s slash proof and appears that it’d stop bullet penetration, though I don’t know if it’d mitigate the trauma from bullet impact.

  “Yeah, but I have a healing factor; I mean, if this is like a game I can’t die, right?”

  You can die. Get a bullet through that melon of yours - damaging me or your brain is one for-sure way.

  “What’s another way?” I asked, checking the fit of everything.

  You could be dissolved in a vat of acid, dumped into molten metal, a nuclear explosion could—

  “You’re talking about movies and video games again,” I told her.

  Yes, but my calculations show there’s probably 4,973 ways you can die easily.

  “So, I’m not really Deadpool.”

  You’ll never be Deadpool. Now, I hate to nag, but rebooting your central nervous system and pulling all the nanites back online has left you with a severe nutritional deficiency we need to remedy, or you’re going to start having debilitating effects. As it is, you should be feeling the hunger pains already.

  I was, but I had been ignoring them. My stomach answered by rumbling audibly, and I tore myself away from the mirror. Literally, one doorway away was the mess hall, and attached to that was a kitchen and supply area. Still, I had one more task to do. I picked up a shaving kit and headed towards the bathroom set in the back of the supply area.

  “I hope they still have hot water,” I mumbled remembering the look of myself in the mirror.

  I looked like I was fresh out of surgery, with half my head shaved and a wicked scar. With scissors, and finally with tepid water, I shaved my head bald so I wouldn’t look like an idiot. Well, I still did, but I promised Alice when I was done, we’d find food. I just hoped it hadn’t gone in the way the clothing had. The hunger cramps finally got the best of me as I rinsed the last of the shaving cream off my head and gave in. I headed out of the supply room, my boots loud on the white tile.

  2

  “Alice, what is this stuff?” I asked, going through what passed as a larder.

  It was hard to see, as there were no working lights in the room, so Alice and turned up my vision to the highest setting. What I’d found was a few boxes of foil packs, about the size of a box of candy bars. The packs themselves were what I remembered things like tuna fish coming in, instead of cans. Whatever the labels had said had somehow faded over the long years, or whatever Alice was doing with my eyes was preventing me from reading it on my own.

  The consistency of the packs suggests a nutritional paste. It was in experimentation and trials when we were put in stasis. Grab everything you can and let’s head up and find some answers.

  “But this stuff, is it edible?” I asked her.

  Sure…

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked her, walking back into the main portion of the mess hall and dropping the four partial boxes of paste on the top.

  They weren’t designed with flavor in mind. Try one, I’ll analyze it.

  “What if it’s got botulism in it? We have no clue how long we’ve been down.”

  That was when I realized I didn’t consider myself in a dream or losing my sanity. It was also weird to be having a conversation with myself in my head. Bad enough when I was talking to it aloud.

  I can neutralize the toxins. It’s one of the perks of having the medical suite enhancements. They’re designed to be able to operate in all environments to make the survivability of the host, which is you, optimal.

  “What about things like radiation, heavy metals?”

  Those are some of the things the suite can help with, but not effectively. That tends to degrade the nanites faster than they are replicated if exposed to large doses.

  “How big of a dose would it take?” I asked.

  Quite large, but it builds up over time. Like you used to eat lead chips…

  “Hey— “

  In all seriousness, though, just avoid the things you would in your normal life.

  I’d torn open the top of the foil pack. It was the size of my hand, with an opening about an inch in diameter where the tear ran across. A clear gel could be seen, and the scent of roast beef hit my senses. I almost doubled over as my stomach growled and clenched in anticipation. I didn’t wait for Alice, but put the packet to my mouth and squeezed. It tasted just like it smelled, and my body seemed to cry out for more as I compressed the foil pack into my mouth like a Gogurt. Finishing that one, I dropped the packet and the torn top off onto the table next to the boxes, and grabbed a different one. This one turned out to be a mixed fruit flavor, and it was as I downed the third one, that tasted of a roasted potato, that Alice finally cautioned me.

  You’ve just ingested close to six thousand calories. That should be sufficient. The food paste is surprisingly nutrient dense.

  My stomach rumbled some and I looked longingly at the packets, then I stuffed the rest of them into an empty dump pouch I’d clipped to my belt from the storage locker.

  “I didn’t see anything else back there,” I said aloud.

  Yes, it should have been fully stocked. Something is going on. Do you want to check the upper levels where the data storage is, and where the ARC maintenance residents are quartered? Or down to the power generation?

  “Power first,” I said as my stomach rumbled again, “but yeah, if I see a bag of Cheetos and miss it, let me know. I’m still feeling hungry.”

  Understood.

  Without asking, the HUD came back up. I grinned when the bottom of the HUD showed three bars. Health, hunger, thirst? All were full for the moment, though I’d kill for a beer. Still, it showed a flashing light and arrow again. I followed the directions till it stopped at the elevator.

  “You think I’m getting in there?” I said aloud.

  I hit the button and, when nothing happened, I looked around. Without asking Alice, I thought about the overlay map and where the staircase would be. The flashing light moved, and I looked, finding the doorway nearby.

  “Quantum millennial computer. Has the voice of an ex I barely remember and wants me to get in an elevator when there’s a power failure in a government redoubt. Brilliant.”

  It was worth checking, Alice said apologetically.

  “Yeah yeah,” I said, yanking on the door repeatedly till it finally opened with a screech. “Why couldn’t they do strength upgrades…?” I griped.

  “Those are available, just not in place. Without power…”

  Alice’s words trailed off. The stairwell had a couple of flickering emergency lights both above and somewhere below me. It cast the concrete stairwell in an ominous light. It was creepy in a way, and I wished I had something with me. Still, even with the large gaping holes in my memory I somehow knew I could take care of myself in most situations. Alice had all but told me I was a soldier before I became a CEMP. I’d have to ask her to lay it all out for me at some point, but I didn’t want to lose focus now.

  Next floor down is the Reactor.

  I didn’t answer but went down. The concrete stairs went in a counterclockwise fashion on the way down. I remember reading somewhere that stairwells in old castles were always like this. The theory was that if an enemy were coming up the stairwell in a clockwise fashion, the defenders coming down would have their sword arms free to swing and the attackers wouldn’t have as much room to swing. It seemed that the US government had the same sort of thoughts. Still, it did little to settle my nerves as I waited for something to reach out of the darkness, snag me by the ankles and…