The Oracle Trilogy Book One Ohm's Node

Part 1 Everything on the table / Alligator Crossing

'I told you, I think you should change the name. What's wrong with alliance or consortium?"

'Everybody wants it. I know but well, they have pooled their resources into a single focused mission.'

'Yes, sometimes the names for things grow and change as the story evolves, Tad.'

Maybe. First, I want to explain that what I'm proposing here, is completely my idea and no one will be privy to it. Just between you and me. Frankly I've fought calling you but I'm up against a shrinking wall and beginning to dream darkly. Okay, so as you know, we've been actively working to create an augmented human that could live longer under adverse conditions until whatever solution is found kicks in and things improve.'

'Boy, that's mouthful! How about contacting God, and asking for a big favor?'

'I'm uncertain they wouldn't listen.'

Laughing for the first time she nodded okay.

'There have been major problems along the way. Simply put, for every success, we encounter failure. Since the body works synergistically, everything has to be looked at when changing something.'

'Um hum.

'So to start with, the holy grail as you probably know has been to devise an easy way of cleaning our DNA of all the defective genes. We've always suspected that once rid of everything detrimental to human growth, we would respond, well, in a highly functional way. Chip augmentation could then commence. To make a long story short, it has been put on hold.'

'What, why?'

'Location. We believe we are close! The tests with animals have all been successful. As you know every day is critical and until we have a secure place to operate from, we're hamstrung. We don't just need security; we need the best surveillance with sophisticated never before seen tech. In other words, total invisibility. This isn't just about improving humans but fighting entropy. Beth, a few months ago, we received a message from a mole in China, saying that they've put the trials on ice. The best of our team has been over it many times and we believe it's a red herring. Supposedly the data was there to keep going but then a moratorium was called because of an unknown. They may not have wanted to continue and be faced with something they couldn't deal with but that hasn't stopped them before.

'I don't understand.'

'All the possible things that could happen, that could go right or wrong, were collected and studied and answered to the best of their capabilities at the time and it was decided they weren't in the position to go ahead.'

'Same question.'

'Let me answer it this way. To do it, to take one human being through the trial with all injections and the cocktails would require a massive supporting mechanism that would keep track of every second of that human's life.'

'Yes, and...'

'Who knows. But what I'm saying is that we could offer that mechanism now but only under the right conditions.'

'What are you talking about?"

'We wouldn't go ahead unless the subject could freely move within their environment. The subjects of the first trial would first move within a certain space then slowly allowed greater and greater freedom of movement until they were completely autonomous. For this to happen the subject would have to have their own flexible, mobile platform and thanks to all the tech devised over the past five years, it's now possible.'

'That's why they stopped or didn't stop?"

'We're not sure Beth but from the little intelligence we just received, we have an informed guess that they haven't.