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Across the country, in lecture halls and conference rooms and university offices, a series of quiet conversations were taking place.
"Dr. Reeves, there's someone here to see you."
The neuroscientist looked up from his notes. A man in a dark suit was waiting by the door. Not a student. Not a colleague. The kind of person who showed up without an appointment and didn't need one.
Similar scenes played out in five different cities, at five different research institutions, each one home to a laboratory at the cutting edge of neural interface technology. In every case, the visitor was polite, professional, and very specific about what they were offering.
A new project. Unprecedented resources. The chance to work on technology that didn't exist in any published literature.
One hundred and three researchers across the five labs received the invitation. All of them accepted.
MIT held its freshman orientation ceremony on a warm September morning.
It was early. Weeks ahead of schedule. Normally, orientation came after the initial military training period that all freshmen endured. This year, the president had moved it forward.
The official reason: scheduling flexibility.
The actual reason: Ryan Mercer was leaving campus before training started, and Calloway wasn't about to let his most famous student miss the only freshman ceremony he'd ever attend.
Ryan suspected the president's relieved smile had less to do with celebrating Ryan's enrollment and more to do with celebrating Ryan's departure. The mech was gone. The budget requests would now be someone else's problem. The roads were being repaired. Normalcy was returning.
Ryan stood at the podium and delivered a speech full of the kind of inspirational generalities that worked well in large rooms: dream big, work hard, believe in yourself. Standard material. Nothing revolutionary.
The audience didn't care about the words. They cared about who was saying them.
"I want to join his research lab!"
"He's so young. And so intense. Is he single?"
"He's fourteen."
"I said what I said."
Chloe was in the audience, having received special permission to attend. Her own program at the film school started two days later, and she'd already registered and moved into her dormitory. Today was a visit, not a stay.
She listened to the students around her, catalogued the number of female voices expressing interest in Ryan's appearance, and made mental notes for future defensive operations.
When the ceremony ended, the crowd surged toward Ryan. Autograph requests. Selfie attempts. Questions about his major (materials physics, though he wouldn't be attending lectures), about Scrapper (relocated, can't discuss), about his research (classified, sorry).
He pushed through the crowd like a man swimming upstream and emerged on the other side slightly disheveled.
Chloe was waiting on the steps outside the auditorium.
"Look at you," she said, straightening his collar, brushing lint off his shoulder. "Campus celebrity. You can't even walk to a podium without getting mobbed."
"It's temporary. Once I'm gone, they'll find someone else to chase."
She fussed with his shirt for another moment, then stopped. Her hands stayed on his collar.
"When's the next time I'll see you?"
The question was quiet. Not a joke. Not a complaint. Just a question from someone who'd spent the last fourteen years within walking distance of her best friend and was about to lose that.
"Every break," Ryan said. "Winter. Summer. Any time you're free. The new facility isn't a black site. There's a town nearby. I'll show you around."
"You'll be busy."
"I'm always busy. I'll make time."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The campus moved around them, hundreds of freshmen chattering and laughing and taking photos, and neither of them heard any of it.
"Promise?" she said.
"Promise."
She smiled. Stepped back. Adjusted the bag on her shoulder.
"Go build your giant robots, nerd."
"Go make your movies, drumstick girl."
She turned and walked toward the campus gate. At the corner, she looked back once, waved, and disappeared.
Ryan found Patricia in the workshop, which was already half-empty. The banners were down. The equipment was crated. Scrapper had been disassembled and shipped to the new site three days ago.
"Status update," Patricia said, consulting her tablet. "The new facility is a former coastal radar station, approximately four hours south. Existing structures are habitable and can serve as temporary offices and living quarters. New construction is underway adjacent to the radar station for the primary research building."
"Equipment?"
"In transit. The first shipments will arrive before you do."
"Personnel?"
"The five neural research labs have confirmed. A hundred and three researchers total, arriving tomorrow at the new site. Combined with the existing team, plus the new technical crew and support staff, your total project headcount will be approximately a hundred and fifty people."
Ryan processed the number. A hundred and fifty researchers, engineers, technicians, and administrators. An annual payroll that would eat through a hundred million dollars faster than he'd like.
"The budget will need replenishment before the end of the quarter," he said.
Patricia gave him a look that said I know, because I'm the one managing it.
"We'll apply when the time comes. Focus on results. The funding follows performance."
Fair enough.
Ryan took one last walk through the workshop. The space that had housed Scrapper, witnessed the ball-mode test, hosted twenty-five professors and fifteen terrified research assistants, and produced more headaches for MIT's president than any other room on campus.
Empty now. Just a prefab building with scuffed floors and bolt holes where equipment used to be.
He turned off the light and closed the door.
Time to go build something bigger.
Author: sorry for not posting these days I was sick 🤢