CHAPTER 15
THE IN-FAMOUS SCIENTIST
LOCATION: SEARCHING...
Becoming the most wanted man on earth made Steve have some unplanned vacations. His location was unknown. The USA suspected that he was at an alleged cave uphill the North Pole but it was never confirmed because he had built an anti-radar-satellite mechanism, therefore, no one was able to pinpoint his location.
Weeks after Steve destroyed the AI they were planning to bomb the North Korea, the USA suspected that he was at his facilities at the North Pole so the president sent an fierce elite squad of independent missionaries to make sure no one else is feared by other countries except him. If the mercenaries somehow died, it wouldn’t trace back to him.
“I am not letting a teenager who was stupid enough to deny a Nobel fuck up my last mandate. My ancestors have invaded big powerful countries for much, much less,” Those were the president’s exact words when asked by a journalist what he was planning to do about Steve Lotch.
The soldiers arrived at the arctic at 100 hours. They were dropped off by a helicopter 3Km away from Steve’s compound to avoid radar detection and they closed in towards it by iceskating. When they arrived at the location, the captain debriefed, “Operation Knockout initiated.”
“I want that son of a bitch dead,” The president said on the other side of the line, then he paused and resumed, “or alive. I want the real AI but if he doesn’t comply, you can accidentally put a bullet in his freak expensive IQ skull.”
“Copied sir. Team approaching location.”
The mercenaries were right outside the compound. It was in front of them and beneath them. They could see it because of their x-ray glasses. One of them said to the captain, “How will we breach the door captain?”
“What door?” The captain asked sarcastically.
“Exactly”, the soldier answered.
“Well, I suppose we could break the ice”, another said.
“What do you mean ‘break the ice’, like saying ‘hi’ to him? Or breaking, breaking the ice?”
The soldier just said, “What? I just meant to break the bloody ice, it’s everywhere. I don’t know why those environmentalists keep bitching about. They should come here sometimes. A little global warming and ice melting can be actually good.”
The president got infuriated and shouted “Just bomb the damn thing, for Christ sake.”
The first soldier, nicknamed Wiggle, said, “Yeah sure, it’s just 2 metres of ice and then 60 cm of steel.” “Wiggle, let’s try it,” The captain said.
They got away from the entrance, put 10 kilos of C4 in it and blew the ice. They managed to see the steel platform now.
“Now what sir?” Wiggle asked the captain.
“What about using that huge missile launcher you are carrying?” The captain ordered. Wiggle saw something hostile and said, “About that sir...” The captain who had already turned around facing him shouted, “What?” Wiggle just said, “Don’t look up sir, use my glasses as a mirror”, he saw 2 enormous missile launchers and 4 automatic movement triggered 90 mm bullet weapons pointed at them. The president looking on the screen via satellite saw that they were put, motionless so he said, “Debrief?!”
“With all due respect Mr. President, pardon my French but shut the fuck up. If we as much as sneeze, we are dead,” the captain informed.
“Watch your tongue soldier,” The president shouted, “How do you know they are movement triggered, I thought only we had those.”
The Captain on the other side of the line was running out of patience so he said, “Exactly. Perhaps you must stop selling your stuff to people you want to kill. Seriously, how do you control the world like that?” Wiggle, who was the only one very next to the captain whispered, “Captain, why you are talking to the president like you are talking to me? I mean, it’s OK to talk to me like that but he is the president.”
The captain just asked, “Wiggle, how much time till we freeze to death?” Wiggle made a few head calculations and reported, “Due to our mobility impossibility, since we left our thermal jackets on our transportation, about 45 minutes.” The captain resumed, “Well, I have always hated President Harvard so before I die, either by hypothermia or a 90 mm bullet, at least I won’t die a coward.”
“So what,” The president finally interrupted. “You are going to stay there?” Wiggle answered, “Oh Yeah, we are not The Flash, you know?” The president shifted his attention and started talking to his operatives back at the headquarters in the USA, “Can we use our supersonic aircrafts to launch missiles and destroy the compound?” Wiggle got shocked and said, “Mr. President, you are still broadcasting to us and we are going to die covered in ice if you do that.” The president without even looking for alternative options ordered, “Send the damn aircrafts!”
The supersonic aircraft flew towards the arctic and a few minutes later it was already only 10 Km away from the compound. A bit closer, the pilot activated the missiles to shoot but instead of exploding the compound, the aircraft went into pieces. The captain, Wiggle and the other 5 soldiers yelled motionless, “Hurrah”.
“Suck on that America,” The Captain said. Wiggle stopped celebrating and asked, “Captain, we are Americans too.”
“Not for long Wiggle, not for long.”
Back at the Operatives Headquarters the president intelligently said, “Whatafuck. How did that happen?” A man in the control room was brave enough to answer the rhetorical question because he suspected that it was not an actual rhetorical question judging by how ignorant the president was about hightech weaponry, “The compound has very sophisticated antimissile automatic mechanism sir!”
“Oh,” The president said in a Eureka gesture, making the operative pretty sure that he was actually right, then asked again,
“Did we give that too?”
“Yeah sir, we did!” The operative answered a bit nervous.
“You know, we should learn to keep some of our secrets.”
“We can’t sir. Only the Chinese and the Russians can. We are a bunch of egocentric megalomaniacs, like a certain writer put it.”
“You know, somehow I think that’s a bit true and yet I feel proud of it.”
“Yes, it’s weird sir. So do I!”
“So what do we do now?”
“We quit,” The operations man said, “Not because the government doesn’t pay us extraordinary hours but because that place is unbreakable. You only get in if you are invited in.”
“But ... What about the mercenaries?” Another asked.
“Oh, I thought we were using mercenaries because they are disposable!”
“Yeah, yeah, right. I forgot that.”
The president and all operatives left the Operations room. The next day they kept going with their lives like nothing never happened. The mercenaries came back safe and sound in a remote-piloted drone but they had no memory of what had happened there and they were in glacial state.
Inside the compound at the artic, Steve received a signal from a very strong energy consuming machine. It was trying to hack his computer. It had already gone through 5 firewalls, only 5 more were missing. Steve tried to defend himself by trying and doing the very same thing to the computer that was hacking him by creating a reachable ordinary and useless virtual database just after the sixth Firewall. If the person who was trying to hack him entered this fake virtual database, would assume that it was the actual computer. It would take at least 5 minutes to find out that it is a fake until then, he would already managed to hack into his enemy’s computer and find out who he was, what he had and where he was. Surprisingly the signal came from an island off the coast of Mozambique. That filled him with curiosity. He prepared himself to leave. His ship had supersonic speed and, Africa was minutes away. If it was a call from his enemies, even better because he had prepared a lethal gift for them.