Mars:Resurrection

Prologue

F U T U R A

Year 2090 New Singapore, South west Pacific. Coral Flatform Farms

Dr. Kenneth Wong had risen up early on this chilly and windy morning, taking a quick bath after the 5 minute reminisce, and logging about 2 km run on the web app before heading to his field office for the breakfast coffee while quick-scanning the latest web news that Newscast A I had compiled at the break of dawn.

He instructed his digital assistant that was installed on the fiber wall to switch to display mode and the front of his cubicle lit up with a stream of livestreamed video and duo feeds that the Earthweb newscaster AI deemed important. His work load was an hour away, so he savored the fine aroma of the new civet coffee that was brewed by Nestor, a cooking app he just downloaded last week from the south-hemisphere web5 while taking a bite on the veggi sandwich that he self-baked last night.

He requested stories from the North American landmass. Newscast warned him of somewhat depressing developments while murmuring something about an eastern coast city being bombarded by a level 4 laser quantum from a Resurgent confiderate stratosphere artilerry link array as while hundreds of thousands of upgraded rebel ground drone warbots were launched in a winter counter offensive against the AI Yankee state systems.

"Please bring it up anyway", Wong repeated quite impatiently to the AI.

"In a short while doc.."

After two soft beeps, the desired event on-screen cascaded into the main view and the web recorded news from the former US stream. A human female web reporter from the Northern hemisphere news cartel was on the scene of a recent battle front. Pillars of thick black smoke rose up into the darkening skies as swarms of war drones streaked toward new and developing event positions of the resurgent new confederacy. All around her was an apocalyptic scene of ultimate destruction; twisted piles of smoldering federal battle tanks and torn chunks of Goliath machines littered the vast field for as far as the eye could see. It was clear to be the site of a mega-battle as the Federal AI and states tried to stem the great Southern offensive to gain a foothold in the strategic Blue sector of the American mid-east.

Soon the voice of the Asiatic human reporter became audible above the din and roar of the raging fire storms of the battlefield, as the shouting of her web incident crewmates could be heard in the background.

"These are what remained of the AI union second integrated army and parts of the seventh army that stood their ground and bore the brunt of the all-out attack of the confiderate armies in the Eastern coast. According to an unnamed Union officer who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, we roughly estimate that some ten thousand troops perished along with about eighty thousand ground and air battle drones totally destroyed in the surprise attack. Now the Unio AI network is scrambling to assemble a sufficient deterrent force to defend the approaches to the capital sectors.."

Wong sighed deeply as static symbols and digital binary flow washed on the main screen and the hologramic image of the webcaster tried to remain in view. "Those damn rebel AIs are at it again, flooding the southern web with code garbage," he swore under his breath and and drank the last gulp of his cooling coffee.

For weeks he had been anxious at the latest developments in the American civil war, and dreaded the global consequences if, heaven forbid, the new confederacy gained the upper hand. Primarily, the Australian-Asian pacific coalition would be isolated and their resources would be drained in trying to prop up the North American union of Canada and the Federal United States. And what if the radicals in Indonesia win in the future elections? The Pacific League will be fractured..

A series of loud static and fast digital flow enlivened the screens and the Asian webcaster shared the view screen as she live interviewed a Union field marshall. Of course, it was a pre-recorded show, about 12 hours ago and streaming from mobile mirror sites for security reasons.

"Yes, we were caught quite unprepared, the upgraded rebel AIs were able to trick our defense systems and render them useless in the first seconds of the web assault.." The Marshall was mouthing the information he was allowed to spew on the waves on the limited time of the interview.

"So, what is the total damage, and how many cities and critical positions fell to the enemy?"

"Our field engineers are still assessing the full casualty and liability list and toll, but all I can say is it was a significant blow to the war effort."

"The enemy action is quite close to the coastal areas. Are there any maritime losses?"

The Field marshal seemed to weigh his reply, "We are still processing field reports from our naval units, and we're keeping close attention to further consider enemy AI plans."

At this point, the webcast screens were replaced with fast static and random digital flow as the servers dealt with renewed attacks from the enemy AIs.

Wong finished his coffee and requested his assistant to make a secure connection to Kelly, his colleague currently working on the blackhole project.

"We have to use the slower web2, sir, hostile AIs are out in force prowling the faster and crowded networks." Edwardson, his digital assistant, opined.

"As soon as things are safe and ready, patch me to Kelly."

The visual screens of Australia software shined visibly protected by layers of encryption software designed by Edwardson to twart any web bots intruding into the systems and grabbing any data.

"Connecting with Kelly's AI now, she'll be online in a minute.."

Kelly's chosen background now was in a busy Melbourne street, in a downtown cafe actually, as she sipped on a cold fruit cocktail and helped herself to an algae sandwich. Wong always knew better, but this thing he never confided with Edwardson. Kelly could be out in her favorite place, a wild park just outside the Perth metropolis, she's just propped up the cafe bench and chair and used a street recording as background to keep her current location secret. Her AI will surely not talk about it.

"A nice, sunny weekend," Wong began.

"Yes, I'm going to the market today." Kelly said , reaching for her bag on the table as if to check on the cash.

"Maybe you can buy some oranges and watermelons?"

"Sure, no problem, I'd bring biscuits and some coffee too."

"OK, see you later."

Edwardson re-checked the screen security the moment Kelly signed-out to detect any observer web bots and was quick to disconnect from the network after detecting sudden traffic approaching the VPN mirrors and reported to Wong, "Some activity down the road sir, anyway, I discarded our Ip addresses and sent to the mirror network near the equator."

"Good, and they almost got to us, these web goons will never stop and they are everywhere there are web signals." Wong genuflected as he took note of their latest coded conversation where they used code words set up during their last meeting in Papua New Guinea in March of last year where they shared notes and full detailed papers discussing the radio waves coming from the center of the galaxy and the latest radiation emission from the black hole.

So this time, they agreed to meet in Jakarta, and from there, go up some suitable beach with blind spots where their discussions are safe.

Dr. Kenneth Wong was so engrossed in his train of thoughts about the events in the United States that he almost didn't notice Edwarson calling his attention through their local web node. "Doc, its 10 minutes before your appointment in Hawking lab." the assistant had been repeating the reminder three times at 2 minute interval before Wong was jolted back to his senses.

Reaching for his beeping working net connected jacket while taking a glance at the city situation screen just above the office/lab door, he noted the best possible route that Edwardson plotted and uploaded onto the room mainframe and into his headgear SSD.

A short sprint along Tiger avenue before taking an abrupt turn on a quiet side street towards entry B of Station Whale of Lee kwan yew subway. He will arrive in 10 minutes at Perth station and emerge on a very busy Sydney avenue and walk inside a nondrescrip 2-story building.

The unimposing building, though just an entrance gate, it housed several heavily armed guards monitoring various camera viewing screens and underground alarms located on several locations of district 11.

Dr. was escorted by two guards on an elevator that went down two floors and then they boarded a waiting tunnel car that brought Wong to a brightly lit underground laboratory called the Hawking park.

Dr. Kenneth Wong leaned forward in his chair, his eyes flickering with excitement. "Gentlemen, we have a unique opportunity here," he said, tapping his fingers on the table. "The black hole radiation emanations we've been tracking could give us a window into the Confederate overmind."

The government officials around the table nodded, their expressions serious. The second civil war in the United States had been raging for months, and the situation was growing increasingly dire. The Confederate forces, driven by a fanatical ideology of white supremacy, were winning battle after battle, and it seemed like nothing could stop them.

Dr. Leopold Martin, the director of the Hawking Institute laboratories, spoke up. "But we have to be careful," he cautioned. "We don't know what kind of data we're dealing with. We need to be sure we're not exposing ourselves to any kind of danger."

Dr. Wong nodded, his expression thoughtful. "Of course, safety is our top priority. But imagine what we could learn from this data. We could potentially discover the Confederates' weaknesses, their strategies, their plans."

The officials nodded again, their eyes fixed on Dr. Wong. He was known as one of the top scientists and spies in New Singapore, and his reputation for uncovering vital information was unparalleled.

"We need to move quickly," Dr. Wong said, his voice urgent. "The Confederates are gaining ground every day. We can't afford to wait."

The officials exchanged a look, and then one of them nodded. "All right, Dr. Wong. We'll authorize the mission. But remember, this is a highly classified operation. We can't afford any leaks."

Dr. Wong nodded, his eyes shining with excitement. "Understood. We'll get to work right away."

Most of the committee then proceeded to a large holographic digital table where a realtime 3d display of New Singapore was projected and various important points were highlighted in flashing amber while they discussed a security scenario.

Martin nodded to the lead technician, Shaw Lindberg, who was controlling the holo, to show the next level view. For a while, the tech typed away at the glowing keyboards, as he passed through layers of security gates and unlocked the necessary commands to get the desired holo scenes.

The holo screens lit up, changed color and hue ranging from red to glowing green and images were reflected on the eyeglasses of the officials studying the flood of images playing accross the representation of New Singapore and some portions of the Pacific ocean.

Dr. Wong sat in rigid attention as he was captivated by the holo scenes. New Singapore was displayed in various layers of ohysical domain, the upper districts, the surface area, and the sprawling subterranian sectors fanning hundreds of feet below and wast swatches of reclaimed territory beneath the sea surface.

Martin was explaining as Shaw focused and enlarged a point near the southwest of the underground and a super complex building several stories high was expanded to scale and animated.

"As you can see gentlement, this is the Project X, where currently we are feverishly doing work on the interstellar radio wave signals and the latest black hole emissions for a couple of years now."

Most of the officials gazed up, some trying to comprehend Leopold's words while other sat and studied intently the representation of Project X as an animation of a whale dominated the views.

"Mercury the whale has been augmented with now invasive quantuum chips to enhance electrical and digital flow into his massive brain and to ease decoding processes to Project X super computers, which digests all of Mercury's intercepted transmissions from the void." Leopold continued.

As the meeting came to a close, Dr. Wong and Dr. Martin exchanged a glance. They knew the risks involved in their mission, but they were both driven by a fierce determination to do whatever it took to turn the tide of the war. They left the room, deep in thought, already planning their next steps.

Out of Africa

Tens of millions of earth years ago, an epochal event that was to change the course of the only known habitable point in the galaxy to what humans that ever existed on the surface of the Earth had known unfolded in the biggest explosion since the violent formation of the solar system.

During that era, long before the earliest human species wandered on the face of the Earth, strange creatures of varying sizes, the so-called dinosaurs, lumbered and thundered on the man-less lands everywhere on the adolescent planet. Then the famous tyrannosauros rex, one of the earliest, and rather crude kings on Earth that held sway over most of the massive animals living then and presided over b****y courts of flinging chunks and slabs of dinosaur meat and all kinds of ancient animal gore and viscera.

North African wilderness

About 2 million years ago

Near a Homo Erectus encampment and hunting area

The rain had started to fall and wet the sun -baked ground and foliage as Nhimbal ran towards a line of boulders at the foot of the forested hill not far from where he staked an antelope and marked its passage and direction, deducing where its other companions usually stayed for the night..

For days, their group of about twenty hunter-gatherers did not have much luck, and now, with their stores of dried meat rapidly dwindling, it was imperative that Nhimbal had to work hard to find plenty of food while they prepared to embark on another leg of travel toward the north as they followed thousands of animals that seemed to be drawn in that general direction.

Nhimbal was quite perplexed by the nearly constant rain that suddenly poured from above. Did they do something to incur the displeasure of the burning stone that traversed daily across the sky from east to west? He was too worried about the food supply to detach his thoughts from his present worries. They had to find meat fast before the plains and hunting grounds become too flooded or they would starve and perish.

He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he almost did not hear Kupri, his second, calling him a few paces behind. "Ra!, ra!" Kupri uttered while gazing upward at the brightening face of the sun that momentarily peered out from the thick clouds.

Partly he considered fleeing from the rain which could soak his animal hide coat wet and muddy from the thick dust kicked by a troop of horses that galloped past their positions and ran towards the trees and also because he was intent on tracing the footsteps of the nimble one who wore a strange coat as shiny as lightning and seemed to beckon him and others to a crevice among the rocks. Suddenly, a bright flash of white light streaked across the gray void above, followed by a deafening thunderclap that caused many of his pack members to cower among the bushes where they gathered twigs and edible berries.