C.H.R.I.S.--Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface SystemA Chapter by Wallace Beery First twenty pages or so of the book C.H.R.I.S. I
C.H.R.I.S. I
1
Earth Year--2315 Earth--C.H.R.I.S.
“WE
HAVE TO let him out of his box,”
“Are you crazy? He was never meant to be released from
confinement! Do you realize what could
happen if a creation like him were to be released upon the world?” his
colleague, “Do you realize what will happen if he isn’t? He’s our only chance!” Orintz insisted. They both watched the huge screen in the conference room of the C.H.R.I.S. research facility as cities all around the world blazed, and as strange, insect-like alien warships hovered over territory yet to be cleansed. So far, the research team had not been found on their remote island base several hundred miles off the coast of Australia. It was only a matter of time though. The aliens had started with the major cities of the major continents and began working their way out. Islands were not high on their target priority list unless they were convenient to a specific target area already selected for annihilation. The Caribbean, the Azores, the Canaries, Madagascar, and neighboring islands had all been obliterated, as had most of the islands that had ringed Brazil. “What good is he to us if we don’t use him? If we wait much longer they’ll find us and destroy the lab,” Orintz argued.
"Gentlemen,
please,” Simmons glared at him as if McNabb had stabbed him in the back with a butcher knife, then he turned to the lone female in the room, C.H.R.I.S.’s creator, Mary Shelley.
“ Shelley,
a beautiful, if unpainted woman, with fiery red hair and inquisitive, flashing
hazel eyes, seemed to contemplate her reply before saying, “I don’t think their
objective is domination, “For God’s sake, The ‘s**t’ that Blake Simmons referred to were millions of tiny nanomachines that had infinitely e nhanced C.H.R.I.S.’ brain to realms of intelligence far beyond anything known to modern man. The nanomachines allowed him to remotely access any computer in the world via satellite link"all without the need of a phone line or internet connection. H e did not even need a computer, because he was the computer.Inside his head was housed the fastest, most technologically advanced computer in the world … maybe even the universe. He could instantaneously break any code, or infiltrate any firewall devised by man. No computer system was safe from him, and no secret was buried too deeply for him to find it. What He had been given access to trillions upon trillions of terabytes of information over the years through a closed computer system that had no access to the outside; thereby keeping him isolated, while still feeding his voracious appetite for knowledge with an eclectic, if highly censored, diet of information. When he was not sleeping, he constantly watched a bank of two hundred video screens, effortlessly absorbing everything he saw. He was no less than a living sponge of boundless capacity.
“I
made him? I did it all by myself, with no help from you or the others at this
table?” Blake had the good grace to blush and hold his tongue. “That s**t, as you call it, C.H.R.I.S. create, would have been completed, and these b******s would have been cosmic ash ringing the Earth instead of trying to burn it to a cinder a dozen cities at a time,” she replied indignantly. “All those wondrous accomplishments came about because of the s**t in his head.” She did not mention the mind-boggling advances in medicine and agriculture that had turned the Earth’s deserts into primordial forest, and fields that yielded thousands of times the crops that a normal field would have before C.H.R.I.S.’s formulas had come about. Nor did she mention the starship sitting on its pad on a nearby island. It had been due for launch the very next month, once all the last minute checks had been done. A dozen more just like it were in various stages of completion. All too late to make a difference in the fate of Earth it seemed.
“All that means nothing if, once he
has full access instead of the pabulum of information that we’ve been feeding
him, he decides that mankind isn’t worth the trouble to save. He could begin a
nuclear holocaust with a mere thought that would kill every man, woman, and
child on the planet,” “He wouldn’t do that. You’ve seen the psycho- logical surveys he’s been given, just like we all have. He believes in preserving mankind, not destroying it,” she scoffed. “He’s not human,
“Or Utopia,” “Has nothing I’ve said swayed any of you to see reason?” he asked incredulously. Every face at the table looked back at him woodenly, unmoved by what they saw as his baseless fears. “Fine. Pull the plug on humanity. I’ll not have any part in it. I’m going to my quarters to wait for the end,” he said as he rose to his feet and crossed to the door. As the electronic door swished
closed behind him, McNabb turned to
“Immediately,” she said, getting to
her feet, and watching from the corner of her eye as
Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
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Earth Year--2315 Earth--C.H.R.I.S.
C.H.R.I.S, AN ACRONYM for Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System, stood naked before the bank of televisions. On each was displayed a different city clouded over with smoke that glowed ominously with an undertone of reddish-gold. Fire. This concerned him, of course, but not on a level that it would have affected the average Earthling. C.H.R.I.S. had always been kept apart, never allowed to interact with other people … not even the ones who had created him. His meals were always delivered via an enclosed tray slot; his instruction from his earliest memory had come from the bank of video screens. He had never, to his knowledge, ever laid eyes on a living, breathing human being in his entire fifteen annual notations. He had seen millions pass across the video screens"billions, trillions"but that did not allow him to form attachments, connections, or relationships to any of them. Even his nakedness was a part of that dehumanizing process. He was allowed no clothing so as to further instill in him that sense of separation, to emphasize the fact that he was not like those others that looked like him, but to whom he was as fundamentally different as a tree is from a stone replica of one. His urine and feces were collected and examined for disease and contamination. And, since he had reached puberty, his semen had been milked from him via a vacuum pump once a month to see if his sperm was being affected by his nanomachine enhancements. He had been exposed to the outside air so that his immune system built up a healthy collection of antibodies, and he had been intentionally infected with all the usual childhood diseases well before puberty so that there would be no damage to his gonads by infection later in life should they decide to breed him for some reason. He was a perfect specimen of
adolescent maleness. His His skin was glossed in sweat as he waited for his body to cool down after his morning workout. He would stand still for the obligatory ten minutes, and then he would wash himself in the shower for exactly five minutes, as he did twice a day, every day. He was just turning from the video screens to cross to the shower area when something unprecedented happened. The external door to his habitat opened and offered him a never-before-glimpsed view of the outside world for the first time in his life.
Wallace Beery
3
Earth Year--2315 Earth--C.H.R.I.S.
“YOU WILL FOREGO your normal shower
time unit and step outside, He hesitated at first. The voice sometimes insisted that he interrupt his usual routine. It was, he understood, to keep him from developing obsessive behaviors. He knew he had to obey the voice, but he really wanted his shower. Not because it was next on his list of activities, but because he was sweaty, sticky, and his body reeked from the professional athletic workout he had just completed.
“You will step outside, now, Chris was not an automaton. He had thoughts and emotions just like any human being, but he had been conditioned from birth to obey the voice that came out of the speakers overhead. With a sigh, he walked to the door and stopped, looking pensively out into the hall beyond. This was unknown territory. He was not afraid, exactly, but his conditioning strictly forbade him from leaving his habitat should some mechanical failure occur and the external door open. C.H.R.I.S. I
Sundowner Book Publishing, Ink “Move into the hall, Well, that was clear enough. The voice had repeated the command, told him to disregard the directive that implicitly prohibited him from obeying it, and then repeated the command once again. He had no choice now. Or did he? Straightening his wide shoulders, he did something he had never done before. He asked a question. “Why?” “Because you are instructed to do so. Obey the order or lose one day of video input,” the androgynous mechanical voice warned. Startled by that dire punishment--the voice rarely took more than four hours of video input even for the most grievous of directive violations, such as refusal to provide a waste sample, or for unauthorized masturbation--he stepped into the hallway. An electric tingle of mischievousness swept through him, though he knew he had been ordered to disobey CD-114. “Proceed down the hallway until you come to another open door,” the voice instructed. Feeling adventurous now, he did as he had been told, walking with confidence and feline grace as he passed closed doors on either side of the wide hall. He had no idea what lay behind any of them. He had been denied any and all maps and schematics of the C.H.R.I.S. facility or the island it sat upon. He shied only momentarily when a door swished open to his right. “Pass through the door, Bolder now, he stepped through the door into another long hallway. “Proceed to the end of the hall,” the voice droned. Chris
moved fluidly down the corridor, his long,
lionesque muscles flexing with each stride, as Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
C.H.R.I.S. I She was extremely proud of him. His father--fathers--was an amalgam of the male scientists on the project, but her unmodified egg had supplied the female half of him. He was her son as much as he was her creation. The hardest thing she had ever done had been to place him into a gray steel crib when he had been only a day old and began feeding him by mechanical means, never to touch him again unless he was sedated so that he would not see her. What they had done to him had been inhumanly cruel, but the entire project had depended on his being able to endure long years of isolation without becoming despondent, or worse, suicidal. They had had to cut him off from humanity in order to save his sanity. He had adapted splendidly. His mental state was superb. His emotional reactions were well-defined and well-maintained. He was probably the most perfect human being ever born"his incalculable intelligence aside. Add to that the fact that he was as beautiful as Adonis, with a body that would make any athlete drool with envy, and you had a child to make any mother proud. All her hard work, all her sacrifice, had led up to this day, she thought, as she led him through the rabbit warren of corridors that honeycombed the island’s central mountain. This was the day that she would set him free at last. She only wished that it could be under better circumstances. The end of the world was not much of a parting gift, after all. “Enter the room,” the voice said, and Chris obeyed. Inside, he stood staring in amazement
at the four people standing behind the chairs at the conference table. "Hello, “Hello,” he replied uncertainly. This was outside his realm of expertise. “I suppose you’re wondering why we’ve allowed you to leave your habitat,” the female stated. Chris darted his eyes from one to another of them in turn in open suspicion. Mary declined to discipline him for not answering her question. The time for all that was passed now. It was time to see if all their years of work would pan out. “We want to give you your freedom. We want to allow you to stop that.” She pointed to the massive screen behind them that showed the alien horde going about their campaign of destruction. Chris was not sure what freedom meant. The word was not in his vocabulary. As a matter of fact, for obvious reasons, the entire concept had been left out of his training. He did, however, understand why the aliens needed to be stopped. He just did not have any idea how to do it. “How do I do that?” he asked, suddenly feeling homesick for his habitat. What was this freedom that they spoke of? What did it mean? The thoughts frightened him. “I’m sure you have some ideas, He did not. Not a one. “You’ve experienced simulations of connection to the world outside your habitat. You know how to immerse yourself in the world’s informational systems.” That was true, but the simulations had never been as overwhelming as the press of stimulation that he felt now. Information was coming at him from everywhere all at once. It was as if he was drowning in it. “Yes,” he said hesitantly, but succinctly, still nervous at being ordered to throw away a lifetime of conditioning at the drop of a hat. “Then I would suggest that you do so. Every minute that we stand here conversing costs a thousand people their lives,” she said sternly. Suggest--to hint, imply, insinuate, or intimate. To urge by using indirect warning. That was not how things were done in his world. No one ever suggested anything to him, they only gave him orders. Seeing his obvious confusion, the
female said, “ His brown hawk’s eyes appraised her as the definitions of the words freedom, evolution, and destiny flashed through his mind from his new, and much more complete, source of information. Though what really sparked his interest were those three little words: I made you. He had no idea who these four people might be, other than the insinuation that they were the voice. And, since the voice was not droning in his ears that he was to ignore these people and return to his habitat, he had to assume that that insinuation was indeed the case. He could feel the bands of frequency all about him as his nanomachine enhancements alerted him to their presence. All he would have to do would be to focus a miniscule amount of his thought capacity to the task and the entire world’s online computer systems"known and covert"would be under his control. “Two thousand dead while you’ve been
considering, The implication that his dalliance had been the cause of their deaths did not go unnoticed by him. He scowled mildly, and then, coming to a decision, he fully connected to the outside world.
C.H.R.I.S. I
Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
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Earth Year--2315 Earth--C.H.R.I.S.
MAPS, HE THOUGHT, and was given a list of maps encompassing the entire world. Australia and the surrounding islands, he thought, and the field narrowed considerably. He selected the map of the island where the research facility was located, and then worked his way outward, familiarizing himself with the world at large. That took him less than a second. Internet, he thought, and the entire structure of the unwieldy system was displayed in his head. Intranet, he thought, and all the attached private nets overlaid themselves. Closed systems, he thought next, and was rewarded with a schematic of every encrypted or password protected system in the world. Weapons systems, he thought, and
every computer-assisted armament on the
face of the globe came under his control. Passwords, firewalls, encryption
programs, all of them fell within the space of a second as He disregarded nuclear devices, except for use outside the atmosphere. He did not want to cause any more death due to Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
Wallace Beery radiation fallout or by missiles going off-course and nuking the wrong targets. Biological weapons were a total waste of silo space when it came to the Piscithicans. They were not human, and the biological agents that killed humans might not kill them. Lasers were what he needed to combat the Piscithicans and destroy their assault ships, but Earth’s Sol lasers, a laser device that Chris had devised during his tenth annual notation, had not been completed, and none of the other lasers at his disposal were anywhere nearly strong enough to do the job. The Sol lasers on a few of the starships were usable, but only one of the starships was capable of extraterrestrial flight at the moment, and only two of the other twelve were capable of flight inside the atmosphere. That was not enough. With their shielding though, he realized that they were the only logical command posts. No Piscithican laser could penetrate their ….. He stopped short as the idea began to take shape. Why not? he asked himself. “I will require the use of the starships,” he said, the utilization of a commanding tone sounding dangerous and frightening to his ears. He had never demanded anything in his life. “Then you’ll have it,” the female said.
Sundowner Book Publishing, Ink
5
Earth Year--2315 Earth--Over C.H.R.I.S. Project Island
THE SAUCER-SHAPED SPACECRAFT rose very
gracefully into the air, commanded by a subconscious thought as After an eternity that spanned an entire minute, he had learned everything that the ship’s strangely configured computers could tell him and had taken control. He sent a command via the ship’s communications system that was tagged with a self-perpetuating virus"a real virus. Any ship that contacted it would be infected and all of its sensitive data that differed from the data obtained from the first captured ship would automatically be uploaded to him. The new ship would then be under his control and contagious as well. He estimated that as the infection passed outward exponentially from the original ship, it would take ten minutes and forty-seven seconds to bring the entire fleet under his command. It took a total of ten minutes and forty-five seconds. Apparently, even the most intelligent creature in the known universe could be wrong occasionally. Panicked clicking squeals, the
Piscithican language, dominated their communications frequencies as they called frantically to the
monstrously gigantic mothership orbiting out past the moon. The mothership
replied that it was doing everything it could to unlock the control systems of
its fleet, though it too, whether the Piscithicans aboard knew it or not yet,
was now infected, and its systems were quickly falling prey to Once he controlled the entire enemy armada, he demanded
their surrender. The Piscithicans declined
indignantly, and attempted to activate the self-destruct mechanisms in
their ships. The Piscithicans considered such an offer an extreme insult and swore to die in the effort to kill as many of the inferior Earthlings as possible so that their Supreme Being would look kindly on them when they passed from this realm and sat at His feet … or something as inane as that. After they refused his offer a third time, he sighed heavily at the burden that they had placed on him, and then sent the assault ships blasting out of the atmosphere towards the mothership, which he put into low orbit around the moon. When the smaller ships gathered about it in a swarm, he commanded them to land on the moon’s surface. That accomplished, he gave one final command. Then every internal and external hatch on every ship opened at once. The resulting execution was quick and efficient. The explosive decompression killed every living thing in the Piscithican ships. An added bonus was the distress call that he had allowed the mothership to beam to their home planet. In a little less than a day a similar fate would befall every Piscithican ship in the universe. Problem solved. C.H.R.I.S. I
C.H.R.I.S. I
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Earth Year--2315 Earth--Washington
“WHAT DO YOU mean, he won’t give us back control of Norad? I’m the damn
president of the “I think he made himself pretty
clear, Madam President. He controls every weapons system, every financial system, every communications
system, every public utility, and every computerized transportation system, in
the world. I’d say he calls the shots,” the “Well get them back, damn-it-to-hell!” she ordered, as if it were as simple as snatching a book of matches from a toddler’s hand before he set the house afire. “You think we haven’t tried?” the SOD asked incredulously. “We’ve had the best computer geeks in the world working on it for weeks. His encryption is unbreakable. He’s got us by the short and curlies, and locked out as securely as if he had put all our systems on the moon along with those Piscithican spaceships.” Clyden sighed, the bluster suddenly gone. “Then what the hell do we do, people?” she asked, genuinely reaching out for new ideas. “We can’t simply build new systems,”
the director of the FCC, “What does he want in exchange for giving us back control of our systems?” the president asked. “Money? Is this an extortion situation?” “He doesn’t want anything, Madam President,” the SOD told her. “He doesn’t intend to give them back at all.” Clyden looked at him, obviously aghast at the thought of their infrastructure being held hostage. “Are you shitting me? How will we function? How will we protect ourselves?” she asked, her face pale. “He says that we don’t need protection because everyone is in the same boat. No one holds any cards but him,” the SOD told her. He sounded like a man contemplating the unemployment line and not happy about it one bit. “That’s insane. He’s just a naked boy …..” she began, and then realized how stupid that sounded. He was a naked boy with incredible powers. A naked boy who had single-handedly destroyed an invading alien fleet and usurped control of the world’s power and financial infrastructure as if he were merely tying his shoes … if he had worn shoes, that is. A
page walked into the room, obviously self- conscious at interrupting such a
high-echelon meeting, and handed a
note to Wilson thanked the boy, and then opened the note and read it. His eyes widened as he read it over twice more before cutting into the debate. “Madam President, it has come to my attention that the boy … this Chris person … is insisting on an immediate summit meeting to be held at the UN,” Wilson told her. “He wants to convene the UN?” she asked, visibly perturbed by the boy’s audacity. “No, ma’am. He doesn’t want to address the lackeys; He wants the head of every nation at the meeting--which is to be held at two p.m. eastern time on Friday … two days from today,” he clarified. The president slammed her coffee cup down with enough force to shatter it, spilling coffee across the conference table. “He wants what? He can’t call the heads of powerful nations as if they were mongrel dogs and expect them to come to heel at his bidding!” she ranted. The Secretary of State nodded agreeably, and then continued, “He says that if we don’t comply, he’ll shut down our communications and transportation systems and cripple us until we do.” Clyden paled.
C.H.R.I.S. I
Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
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Earth Year--2315 Earth--Manhattan,
CHRIS LOOKED OUT over the assembly of presidents, kings, queens, dictators, tyrants, assorted spiritual leaders, and other more nondescript, but no less full-of-themselves, heads of state with a certain satisfaction. He had only to mete out a few lessons before all fell into step with his edict. The cameras that he had insisted on
were also present. Every move made, and every word spoken here today would be
televised worldwide as it happened"even to A middle school girl sitting in the auditorium of her school and watching the conference on a projection screen turned to her best friend and asked, “Why isn’t he wearing any clothes?” To which the friend, with twinkling eyes, responded, “Who cares? Isn’t he gorgeous?” Cloned Humanoid Robotic Interface System
Wallace Beery A group of boys sitting behind them heard her reply and snickered. By the next day, though, they would have started a new worldwide fad that would be deeply disturbing to school, church, and law enforcement officials when they arrived for school carrying their books in a backpack and wearing only sneakers. He waited politely for the indignant uproar in the room to die down before continuing. "People of the Earth, today is a new beginning. All that was, is no more,” he began dramatically. “Your nations, your religious guides, your leaders, all have different ways of governing. From today forward, however, there will only be one way. Mine.” The outraged heads of state jumped to their feet, shaking fists at him and making angry, however empty, threats. He watched them passively for a moment and then, with a thought, turned off all the lights in the windowless room. “This,” he said, his voice echoing in the blackness of the now silent room, “is what a world without electricity is like. This is your future if you choose not to obey and swear fealty to the new world order.” He commanded the lights to come back on and looked out over the room of standing, but mostly contrite, world leaders. “You do not necessarily need electricity to survive? True. Some third world countries have never even heard of electricity, much less seen a light bulb or a television set. You have oil to heat your homes and light your world as in centuries past. But how do you get it from one place to another without ships, trucks, and pipelines … all of which need computers, electricity, and the internet to operate?” One by one, the heads of state slumped back into their chairs, the future looking bleaker and bleaker for their respective administrations. "I do not wish to unseat anyone from their positions,” he said, giving them a ray of hope. “But there will be a new rule of law that is uniform across the globe, and with it will come a new rule of governance. As I am your sovereign, you will be my governors. If you prove yourselves just and honest, then you will retain those positions. If you prove to be cruel and corrupt … well, a good telescope will show you the result of that. There are a few hundred thousand Piscithicans entombed on the moon that learned the cost of that the hard way. “Your armies will submit to my rule or they will be stamped out of existence. There will be no war, no infighting between neighbors or nations. Peace will reign supreme. The punishment for defiance is severe, but the reward for compliance is paradise. I have already provided the means to turn the deserts into forests and fields of enormous yield and proportion. I have given you the cures for a thousand deadly diseases. I have provided Earth with the means to travel to the stars. “The people of Earth will now have a voice to cry out with if their leaders do not follow my law. That way, only the leaders are disciplined and not the entire nation. “Lastly, I am outlawing the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy by the end of the year. These fuels destroy the Earth and are no longer acceptable. I will give instructions to a specially selected team of engineers to design a new engine that pulls energy directly from sunlight. By the time the proscription date arrives, every transportation device, every home, and every building will be modified to use the new apparatus. “How will this be paid for, you ask? Simple. Money as you know it is now a thing of the past.” He waited for the screams of shock to dissipate, and then continued, “There is enough of everything in the world to make every person in it wealthy ten times over by the old standard. “Communism, socialism, monarchism, democracy, none of those systems of governance worked because of two major flaws--money and corruption. You cannot have one without the other. Take away both, and everyone can have whatever they want, within reason. The strong care for the weak, those able to work balance against those who cannot. In the new world order, there will be no needy. No poor nations, no hunger, no plague, no famine, no needless suffering.” He raised his hand, palm out, and said, “Go with kindness.” Then he turned and walked from the room.
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Wallace BeeryForest Hill, TXAboutHello, I'm a scribbler of many worlds. I've been writing for more than twenty years and have produced 24 novels ... though I've never tried to publish any of them until now. more..Writing
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