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  The wood door swung open to reveal a metal stairway dimly lit by overhead blue lights and Chal felt a rush of warm, sterile air blow over her.

  “That’s just the venting system. The building is positively pressurized to prevent contamination from the outside,” Johnner explained, waving her in. “After you.”

  Feeling like Dante Alighieri descending into the mouth of Hell, Chal stepped down into the eerie blue light and out of this world.

  The sedative had not fully worked its way through Chal’s bloodstream and she reeled with dizziness, but she resisted Johnner’s attempts to steady her as they made their way down the steps. At the end of the stairway there was another door, which Johnner opened using a different passcode. They entered a small metal elevator which only had two plain metal buttons on the inside panel. Johnner pressed the lower one and the door sealed shut. The elevator dropped quickly, and Chal soon had to swallow to pop her ears. They kept dropping.

  “How far down are we going?” Chal said. It seemed impossible that they were descending so deep.

  “It’s about two hundred feet down. We’re almost there,” Johnner said, and as if to corroborate his words the elevator slowed and came to a halt. The door opened in front of them into a room that looked like a laboratory, all white and steel. A man with a machine gun scanned Johnner’s ID before they were allowed to enter.

  “We’re going to need to be decontaminated before we can enter the inner laboratories,” Johnner said. “It’s an involved process.”

  “I’m pretty involved already,” Chal said. She had resigned herself to her part in this situation and might as well make the most of it.

  A man in a white lab suit hurried toward them, and smiled perfunctorily at her, holding out his hand to shake hers. She started at the touch of his cold hand. His face was pointed, his hair and eyes dark and oily-looking, and as Chal felt his hand slide out of her palm she resisted an impulse to wipe her hand on her pants leg.

  “Dr. Davidson, pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Fielding.” He scratched the corner of his mouth anxiously. “Let’s get you into the decontaminant room.”

  “Any changes so far?” Johnner asked the doctor as they walked through the doorway. Chal watched the doctor carefully. Dr. Fielding. It had been his notes scribbled on her papers. His appearance unnerved her, though she couldn’t place a finger on exactly why.

  “Not yet, it’s still stable and in suspension. We’re not sure how long it’ll take before it begins to degenerate. A day, two at most.” The doctor waited as Johnner slipped off his shoes and jacket, and Chal followed suit.

  When Johnner walked down the hallway, Chal began to follow him but was stopped by Dr. Fielding’s hand on her shoulder. She cringed at the touch involuntarily but forced herself to relax. It must have been the sedative making her so irritable.

  “This way please, Dr. Davidson. The decontamination rooms are private.”

  She saw why as soon as she entered the room and read the first instructions which were printed across the giant touchscreen wall. A voice spoke the instructions aloud as she crossed over the threshold. It was male, and unsettlingly cheerful.

  “Thank you for entering Decontamination Level 1. Step One. Please remove all articles of clothing and place them in the storage container.”

  The door shut automatically behind her, startling her with a hiss. She was alone with the screen and the voice, which now sounded impatient, repeating the instructions.

  “Step One. Please remove all articles of clothing and place them in the storage container.”

  Chal sighed. She pulled off her clothes and tossed them in the bin. It slid into the wall and slid back out, empty. She crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling strangely vulnerable. They had taken all of her clothes. The instructions on the screen dissolved away and were replaced by new instructions.

  “Thank you. Step Two. Please remove any articles of jewelry, including hairpins and other metal objects, and place them in the disposal container. Metal objects are not permitted to go through the decontamination process.”

  “Will I get them back?” Chal immediately felt ridiculous for asking: the voice was automated.

  “Step Two. Please remove–“

  She pulled off her earrings and threw them into the bin. They had been a present from her mother, handworked steel from a local artisan neighbor. Chal had never been sentimental about things like jewelry but she hoped that these were not lost for good.

  “Step Three. Removal of contaminants and gaseous immersion. Please stand in the center of the room with your arms raised above your head.” Chal did as the voice told her, feeling irritated by how encouraging it sounded. A perky male receptionist, she decided. If it had been up to her, she would have fired him and replaced him with a monotonous robot.

  A rush of air streamed up at her from vents under the mesh floor, blowing her hair up. She shivered at the cold of it. Then the air was replaced with a white gas which billowed in, turning the entire room white and opaque. It was as though she was standing in a cold sauna, unable to see a foot in front of her. She felt slightly claustrophobic, and the voice speaking loudly in the small room only made her more so.

  “Please take several deep breaths.” Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t slept; maybe it was the tranquilizer still making her dizzy. Whatever it was, she wished the voice would stop saying “please” and just tell her what to do. It was getting on her nerves. The cloud of gas smelled sweet, and she wondered idly if it had antibiotic properties.

  As quickly as it had come, the gas thinned out and she was able to see again. In front of her the old instructions dissolved and the new ones appeared.

  “Step Four. Irradiation. Please put on the shielding glasses.”

  Chal found the glasses on the table next to her. They must have been placed there while the gas was obscuring her vision. She put them on and faced forward again. Her arms were beginning to be sore, and she wondered if she still had to hold them up. When she lowered them, though, the voice spoke up quickly.

  “Please raise your arms above your head–”

  “Okay, okay,” Chal muttered, following the order.

  “Thank you.”

  Chal wondered if she was imagining the note of annoyance in the automated voice. She felt like kicking the wall with the embedded screen, and immediately chastised herself for being silly.

  “While irradiation is occurring, we will conduct a brief medical history. Please keep the glasses on until a chime has sounded to signal that the irradiation has concluded.”

  Before Chal could prepare herself for the irradiation, a purple light flashed brightly on all sides of her, illuminating the room in a harsh glare. She blinked behind the glasses, temporarily blinded. The room hummed with a high buzzing sound.

  After ten seconds passed, the chime sounded.

  “You may lower your arms. Please keep the glasses on.” Chal shook her arms out; they were half numb from being raised for so long. The purple light continued shining on all sides, and she looked down at her naked body. It seemed alien and pale to her in the glare, her veins standing out and bluish under the irradiation. Her nipples were hard from the cold and the areola gleamed a dark purple against her skin, which was almost white.

  “Please use the touch screen to indicate your answers or speak them aloud.” Chal looked back up, black spots swimming in front of her eyes. “We will begin with basic history. Please note if any of the following need correction.”

  A list of medical facts popped up on the screen. Sex: female; height: 170cm, weight: 57kg, blood pressure: 124/70, normal... Most of the facts she was able to confirm immediately, although she was uncertain how the program had already gained so much information. Sensors in the floor, perhaps, and in the walls. It wasn’t as though she knew her own blood pressure, so she simply assumed they had gotten it right.

  “Thank you. Have you contracted any viral or bacterial infections within the last three weeks?”

  Chal pressed th
e box on the screen that said “no.” She wasn’t going to talk to this program aloud. It was entirely too annoying. The buzzing stopped, and the light began to shine more dimly.

  “Thank you. Please indicate if you have ever contracted any of the following illnesses.” The list that came up on the screen was long, and some of the diseases were strange to Chal. Dengue fever? There hadn’t been a case of that in decades, she thought. Dutifully she pressed “no” on all of the boxes, and the screen dissolved into new questions.

  “Thank you. Please indicate if you have ever been diagnosed with any of the following conditions.” The list here was predictable: heart problems, cancer, epilepsy. Chal hesitated when she came to the line marked “mental illness/depression,” her hand hovering above both boxes. Finally she pressed “no.”

  “Thank you. Please wait until irradiation has finished.” A minute passed before another chime sounded, and the purple light faded completely. “You may remove the glasses.” Chal did so, and a drawer slid out from the wall. In it were clothes, a white technician’s suit. She pulled on the underwear, which were tight and slightly chafing, and finished dressing as quickly as she could.

  The exit door slid open when she approached it, and she met back up with Lieutenant Johnner and Dr. Fielding in a different hallway. They looked like triplets in their white lab suits, and Chal noticed Dr. Fielding checking out her body under the outfit. Typical. She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “Why is everything underground?” she asked, as they walked through the hall. “Is it to hide it from outside detection?” With everything built so deep into the earth, the structural costs must have been enormous.

  “In part,” Johnner said, “though satellite espionage would be able to track us simply by the heat signatures. We put out a lot of exhaust. It’s a safe bet that most of the big powers already know where we are here, even if they’re not exactly sure what it is we do.” They crossed under an arch manned by two military men, where Johnner showed his ID for the third time. There were more steps leading down. The second circle of hell, Chal thought.

  “Really, though, it’s for security’s sake. This laboratory was constructed to be able to withstand the consequences of nuclear war.” Dr. Fielding said nothing, but Chal noticed that he looked anxious as they began to descend the staircase.

  “Nuclear war? Why is that?”

  “This facility is the third most important military structure in the United States today, right after the Pentagon and the nuclear navy base in San Diego. If there is war, we need to be prepared to be targeted.”

  “You said that nobody knew what happens here.”

  “They don’t. It’s not an issue and there is no real threat of a nuclear strike. Just a safety precaution.”

  “A safety precaution.”

  “That’s right,” Lieutenant Johnner said, opening the door for her and Dr. Fielding with his ID card. “Just in case.”

  ***

  The holding room they were in had only a couple of metal benches, chairs, and a medical cabinet. On the far wall the first frame of the video was paused. Dr. Fielding handed them both pills and bottles of water.

  “Is everything set up?” Johnner asked, tossing his pill back and swallowing it without need of water.

  “It’s all ready to go once she’s briefed,” Dr. Fielding said, scratching his lip again in what Chal realized must be a tic. He wouldn’t stop touching his face, and it was beginning to irritate her.

  “What is this?” Chal asked, looking at the large blue pill. She did not trust Dr. Fielding, didn’t trust anyone anymore in this sterile place. It had only been a few hours since they arrived, and already she felt ill at the thought of staying underground for any longer, no matter how intense her curiosity about the experiment.

  “Just another series of antibiotics,” Dr. Fielding said. “You’ll need about an hour before we can ensure they are effective. With all of the expensive biological substrates down here ...” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, and Chal realized why she found him so creepy. His pupils were so large that you couldn’t see even the faintest ring of his irises, and it gave him a reptilian look. Like a snake waiting to strike its prey.

  As she watched him, his tongue darted out to the corner of his lip, then back in, completing the image. She hid her shudder and placed the pill on her tongue, tasting its bitterness before washing it back with the water.

  Dr. Fielding turned and left through the glass door, a soft hiss of air blowing around the doorframe as it closed. Johnner went to the wall screen and turned up the brightness. Onscreen was a frozen image of a man lying naked in a hospital bed, an assortment of medical recording devices displayed behind him. Chal recognized the wired board over his head as an EEG reader. At the bottom right of the screen the timer was marked at 00:00.

  “Since we don’t have much time, I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you the recordings now while we’re waiting,” Johnner said.

  “What is this?” Chal asked, but her pulse was beating faster. Could it be?

  Lieutenant Johnner nodded, as if reading her mind. “This is the initial questioning of the first full human-substrate biological organism developed here. What you’re about to see is highly classified. Most members of Congress don’t have access to the results of these experiments.”

  “Yes, of course,” Chal said, impatient.

  Johnner hesitated, as if he wanted to say something else, but decided against it. He pressed the play button and sat back down next to Chal. The timer began to run.

  The voice that they heard first on the recording was Dr. Fielding’s.

  “Prototype One consciousness trial. Aluminium core and memory stats all checked and normal. Vital signs within expected parameters.”

  The camera blurred and refocused as Dr. Fielding came into view. He was sitting next to the man who was asleep, it seemed. IV drips ran into both of the man’s arms. His chest rose and fell regularly, the silence broken only by the soft beeping of the monitoring equipment. He had dark hair, almost black. Then Dr. Fielding spoke.

  “We will now awaken the prototype.”

  ***

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” -Genesis 2:7

  ***

  Chal had seen this done before with rats grown in her lab. The consciousness and intelligence experiments that she had attempted had all tried to achieve the same results. They had all been rated miserable failures in the end.

  She had grown rats from single cells, adjusting the development of their brains with chemical and electrical alterations as they grew into maturity. At first they stayed comatose in the grow tanks designed specifically for this purpose, never interacting with the world until their brains were already developed in a specific way.

  The rats, when awakened with anti-anesthetics, seemed normal enough at first. They ran around, sniffed at things, ate without overfeeding. The interesting part came when they were placed into maze tests.

  At first Chal’s lab believed that they had somehow messed up the memory centers of the brains. For when the rats were placed into mazes they had run before, they sometimes did well but sometimes sat motionless at the entrance of the mazes or at the first turns, seeming to indicate that they had no recollection of the paths they had run. Further tests of intelligence also pointed to the same memory impairments.

  It was an almost-serendipitous moment when one of Chal’s interns decided to run EEG trials with the rats, doing test after test with single-digit numbers of electrodes wired into different parts of their brains. He was looking for confirmation of memory impairment to see if the kinds of brain malfunctions matched with human Alzheimer patient malfunctions.

  To his surprise, the rats all had fully functional memory centers, at least according to the EEG readouts. The problem lay with the consciousness development process. There were new efforts m
ade to study the rats, but the results were inconclusive. As their development continued, many of the rats began to perform erratically, running the mazes into dead ends again and again, almost as if they were intentionally avoiding the correct path. Some of the rats self-mutilated, chewing at their limbs. Others starved themselves to death despite available food.

  Funding for the project ran out, and since there were no practical applications to be seen, Chal’s lab accepted the failure and moved on.

  It was perhaps Chal’s biggest mistake as a scientist, for if she had spent more time studying the rats she might have realized that her attempts to induce conscious development had been successful. Indeed, the experiment had been too successful in that regard. The rats were not just conscious, they were conscious to a very high degree.

  Moreover, they were emotionally conscious.

  The connection between over-developed consciousness and depression would not be made until much later, at a neuropsychology lab in Singapore. But by then Chal had already forgotten about the rats.

  ***

  The timer was at 01:13 when Dr. Fielding reached over and adjusted the IV drip into the prototype’s arm. The liquid dripped green through the clear plastic tubing. Chal leaned forward, her eyes glued to the screen.

  The man's eyelids fluttered open. The recording was high-definition but Chal wanted to get closer, to see the expression in his eyes. Dr. Fielding reached over to turn the dial on one of the EEG readers, blocking the view of the screen, and Chal felt like reaching through the screen and swatting his arm away.

  "Hello," Dr. Fielding said softly, sitting back into his chair.

  "Hello," the prototype said, almost automatically. Chal inhaled sharply at the voice. She knew that language memory chips were good, especially at installing preferred adjacency pairs such as responding to phrases like "Hello" or "How are you?" Still, this was not a human with an already-functioning language network in his brain. This was a new person entirely, or a new brain, at the very least.