Authors: Penny Tyler
I swipe my keycard and wait for the Allencorp front door to unlock.
Nothing happens.
I swipe it again, this time drifting the thin, plastic rectangle even slower over its glowing card reader.
Still no recognition from the machine as I glance down at my watch and see that today’s big meeting starts in just five minutes. I look over my shoulder to see if anyone else is around who might be able to let me in, but it appears that everyone else is already inside and waiting for the meeting to begin.
“Fuck.” I mutter out loud, pounding on the door with my fist and then cupping my hands around my eyes as I peer through the dark glass for any sign of like. “Hello? My keycard isn’t working for some reason!”
There’s no response.
I know for a fact that there’s a back entrance to our lab facility, all the way on the other side of the building, but that one is well out of the way and almost certainly locked up tight.
The projects that we work on here at Allencorp are incredibly powerful and often dangerous, so I’m not in favor of lighter security, but at least get some security that works.
Suddenly, the glass panel door next to me pops open and Tucker, our front gate security officer, pokes his head out.
“Thank you so much!” I tell him, trying to rush past.
Tucker puts his hand up and stops me.
“Excuse me.” He says, sternly. “This is a high security laboratory, I’m gonna need to see some identification.”
I can’t help but give me a strange look, unsure of whether or not the man is joking. I’ve said hello to him almost every morning for the past two years and suddenly he has no idea who I am.
“Are you kidding me?” I ask. “It’s Mandi.”
Tucker shakes his head. “Miss, I’m gonna need to see some identification.”
I stare at him for a minute longer, flabbergasted, then finally hand him my keycard.
Tucker looks at the plastic rectangle for a moment and then flips it over. “There’s no photo on this.” Tucker tells me. He reaches over and runs it across the scanner. Predictably, nothing happens.
“Tucker!” I shout. “Are you kidding me?”
“No keycard, no entry.” He says.
“My keycard is broken!” I yell, losing it a little.
Being late for the meeting is one thing, but now my lack of respect around this office is really getting to me. How could I have been so forgettable to this man?
Suddenly, Tuckers eyes light up as he glances past me. “Oh! Good morning, Jamie!” He calls.
I look over my shoulder to see Jamie Bird, the beautiful, blonde new girl who’s everyone’s favorite around the lab, walking up the path behind me. Tucker immediately holds the door open for her and steps back so that the pretty young thing can enter.
“Mandi!” She asks, surprised to see me. “What the fuck are you doing out here? The meeting’s in like two minutes and we’re gonna be late.”
“I’m trying to get inside but I can’t!” I cry, throwing my hands up in the air. “My keycard’s messed up!”
Mandi flies through the door and I try to follow behind but Tucker stops me once again, stepping in front of me and shaking his head with authority.
“Seriously?” I yell.
Jamie turns around and quickly assesses the situation. “Oh, she’s fine Tucker. Let her through.”
Turker glances back at Jamie, and then nods and allows me to pass without a hint of hesitation. “Good god, thank you.” I gasp in frustration, and then struggle to catch up to the heartbreaker as she barrels ahead through a series of long, sterile hallways.
“You didn’t get the email about picking up your new keycard?” Jamie asks. “The whole security system’s been revamped from the ground up.”
I’m almost positive that I didn’t get an email, but just to make sure I pull out my phone as we walk and open up my mailbox. There are no messages saying anything about a new security system.
“I didn’t get anything.” I tell her.
Jamie shrugs. “Maybe they forgot to send it to you? I don’t know.”
As if I didn’t already feel invisible enough in this crowd of sexed up scientists, now I’m not even on the official laboratory mailing list.
I put my phone back into my pocket and almost immediately Jamie and I arrive at the conference room of our meeting, which has already started. Jamie pushes through the door and I follow behind, immediately halting the voice of our boss, Doctor Crawford, who stands before a giant, oblong table full of other scientists and lab technicians.
Everyone simultaneously turns to look at us as we head to either side of the table and quietly slip into the only two empty seats left.
“Mandi.” Doctor Crawford nods. “Jamie, so glad you could make it.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor.” Jamie says. “I just lost track of time this morning, it won’t happen again.”
Doctor Crawford gives her an accepting smile, something that I completely did not expect. Crawford is the definition of a hard ass, especially when it comes to being punctual. I look back and forth between the two of them as it slowly dawns on me that they are probably fucking.
I try my best to stay calm, but it’s a real struggle to maintain my mood against the tide of anger and frustration that washes over me.
Doctor Crawford turns his attention to me now. “And you, Mandi? What’s your excuse?”
I sit up in my chair almost immediately, trying to look as professional as possible. “My keycard isn’t working for some reason. I was standing right outside the front door forever this morning trying to get in.”
Doctor Crawford’s eyes brim with annoyance and disappointment. “You didn’t read the email about security being updated around here? Project Chimera is at an incredibly important phase, we need to step everything up at this point.”
“I know.” I tell him, desperately trying to explain. “It’s not that I didn’t read the email, I didn’t even get it.”
Doctor Crawford sighs loudly.
I can’t help but notice some of the other scientist around the table exchanging quick glances, reveling in the fact that I’m about to be taken to task by our boss.
“Just…” Doctor Crawford starts, clearly upset. He pauses for a moment and then tries again. “I’m sorry. We’re all under a lot of stress right now, myself included. Just go see Hank in lab seventeen, he’ll set up with a new keycard.”
“Thank you.” I say with a nod, then stand up and quickly exit the conference room.
As the door closes behind me I can’t help but hear Jamie add. “Well,
I
got the email!”
I start making my way deeper into the facility, seething, but trying my best to hurry back for the rest of the meeting. Time to suck it up, I tell myself. This has become my daily mantra.
The farther I get, however, the more my frustration evolves into a genuine lack of care. I feel like I am up against a wall and, at this point, any more effort from my end is just going to go to waist. As the token frumpy, celibate girl around here, I could probably show back up in the conference room a week from now and people would barely notice.
By now, my pace has evolved into what could only be described as a mosey; sauntering down the halls and peering into the windows of various laboratories that are well beyond my clearance level. I’ve still got a lot of area to cover before I reach lab seventeen, so I might as well see if I can scope out something interesting while I’m at it.
I suddenly realize that this is the emptiest I’ve seen the lab here since I started working at Allencorp; all of the head scientists in conference with Doctor Crawford while the lower level technicians are at home for the day, waiting for the new security protocols to be implemented. The whole time that I’ve been walking, I haven’t run across a single other living soul.
Having not seen the most recent developments in Project Chimera for myself, all of this precaution seems a little unnecessary, but I suppose that if it’s anything like they say it is, we have reason to be fearful.
Project Chimera is the first stage of a technology that Allencorp has been contracted to develop for the United States military, specifically the Special Operations Taskforce. It’s not the first work we’ve done for the military, but it’s certainly the most secretive and well guarded; with all of our employees signing gag orders almost immediately after locking down the official bid for the job.
The basic premise of this project is a practical application of the nanotechnogly that I helped create here at Allencorp when I first arrived two years ago.
For those you don’t spend your lives buried in thick computer science textbooks, Nanotechnology is an exciting, and frankly horrifying, new field of robotics.
The basic premise is simple enough. Take a robot and make it smaller, then smaller, and then smaller still; until the robot itself is the size of a cell.
We are all made of building blocks that are fused together in just the right way to create the shape of a human being, billions upon billions of atoms stacked in a pile that can eventually walk and talk and grow. Some people find this method of looking at the universe as sad and lonely, breaking everything down to a scale that’s so analytical and scientific that it leaves no room for those incredible moments of magic that life is all about.
I, on the other hand, think that this is where the magic truly lies, right down here at the base level of all existence. It’s why I became a computer scientist in the first place.
Once you have robots this small, there is no telling what you can do. Stack enough cell sized nanobots in the right arrangement and you’ve got yourself a bowl of ice cream, with absolutely no difference in taste or sensation when compared to the real thing. Even living creatures are made up of cells that can be replicated with nanobot programming; a tiny insect, a playful dog, or even a human being.
When people talk about scientists going too far and playing god, this is exactly the type of thing they are talking about. It’s a dangerous game, but if we don’t harness this technology then someone else will.
Project Chimera is Allencorp’s first attempt at combining nanobots with a human’s natural biology, allowing the tiny machines to fuse with the cellular structure of a willing host through the means of a simple injection. Once this is done, the applications are endless, but we are starting simple enough.
Our first goal is to program our nanobots with the ability to change a person’s physical appearance at will.
Essentially, we’re on the verge of creating real world shape shifting.
The process is still a long ways off for human beings, but we’ve tested it on rats and already received astonishing results. In one study, the rodents were put into a tank with a portion of food located on the other side of a clear glass panel. Rats can certainly fit into small places, but the hole between the two partitions was much too small and much too high up for the rodents to fit.
After their injection, however, It only took ten minutes for the rats to shift into rail thin creatures with necks long enough to extend up to the hole. Soon after, they were able to pull themselves through to the side with the food.
It was incredible to watch, and had I not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed in a million years that this kind of technology was even possible.
Of course, all of the rats died only hours later, their bodies eventually changing into shapes not meant to support biological life. We’ve tried everything that we could to revise our nanobot code into a stable program, but all of the trails have been failures.
At this point we’ve narrowed the programming down into four distinct nanobot codes; but without more testing, we’re not quite sure which one is going to remain stable, if any.
I finally reach laboratory seventeen and try swiping my keycard, only to find that the entire card scanner doesn’t exist. Instead, there is a gaping hole where the machine used to be, the lock left wide open. I must have arrived here at the precise moment of transformation, the building itself changing right before my very eyes as we upgrade security systems.
I slowly push the door to the lab open and peer into the darkness. The overhead lights are off but the room is abuzz with all sorts of flickering displays, running at full speed in the dark as they process data. I’ve never been in here before, so I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m damn near positive that this isn’t the right place for me to receive my new keycard.