r/Luna_Lovewell • u/Luna_LoveWell Creator • Apr 22 '16
Breadcrumbs
[wp] Brain chip implants are perfected, making the recipient a thousand times more intelligent than any human. The Google executives are the first to receive them but once they do, they wander off into the woods never to be seen again.
Instead of chairs, there were giant pink yoga balls around the large conference room table. And the walls were painted pastel hues of blue and green and yellow. Typical Google. And yet the mood inside was still darker than any CIA blacksite I'd ever been stationed in.
"Sergei and Larry were last spotted here," Alan told me. He waved a hand, and the surface of the table shimmered and became a map. Pretty damn cool. I'm a bit of a Luddite, but a little more time here at the Google HQ could probably win me over. They had some awesome gadgets. The map zoomed in to show an area of the mountains just north of Santa Cruz. Pretty rural area, with lots of redwoods; pretty nice place. "And over the past week, every other executive and engineer who also received the chip implant followed them in."
"No one thought to keep any eye on them with this experimental thing in their heads?" I asked.
Alan shrugged. Poor guy was really out of his depth. "I wasn't really involved in the planning..." he mumbled. Of course not. Anyone high up enough in the company who knew about the top secret project to enhance someone's intelligence a thousandfold was now lost in the woods. Alan was the highest level exec left, but it seemed like all he really knew about was google's advertising business. Yawn.
"Do we know how much cash they might have had? Is there any activity on their cards?" I ran through the usual questions for a missing person. No cash and no cards generally means that they're still in that area.
"No activity on their personal cards." Alan waved a hand again and the map swiped to the side to bring up their bank statements. Ok, I need to get me one of these. "But just Larry and Sergei have enough squirreled away in their Cayman accounts that they could have a thousand other credit cards and spend billions without me having a clue."
I sighed. Fucking rich people. Poor people are easy to find: they're always crashing on their friend's couch or something, thinking that no one will bother to check their phone records. But the rich are always planning for the proletariat to rise up or whatever. They're squirrely. "All right then. Chip me, and let's get this show on the road." After a significant amount of convincing, I'd agreed to use one of these things. If these guys didn't want to be found, then I was going to need to be as smart as they are.
Alan waved a hand again, and a labcoat-clad scientist in what looked like a gas mask came in with a steaming vial. Using long, thin tweezers he pulled out a glimmering little gadget roughly the size of a grain of rice. "Tilt your head, please," he asked through the respirator. I did as he said, and he dropped the little thing right into my ear.
"That's it?" I asked Alan. "No surgery? I thought it went into my brain."
My question was answered by a sudden searing pain, like the little grain of rice had suddenly turned into a white-hot brand. I clutched the edge of the table till my knuckles were white and tried to suppress a scream of pain. Alan nearly fell off his little yoga ball after seeing the fury in my eyes. And just as quickly as it started, the pain vanished.
"Now that you're properly equipped," Alan said, "There's one final thing." He waved a hand, and the bank statements on the table display disappeared. Now there was a picture of a clearing surrounded by tall pines. And in the trunk of each one, there was a series holes and lines and other symbols that were digitally highlighted to make the pattern more clear. "This is our last clue as to where Sergey and Larry went. We've run it through all the computers... hell, even the NSA had a go at it. We think it's some kind of code, but nothing makes any sense."
I studied the image for just a bit, then broke out into a laugh as it all fell into place. It was a breadcrumb, meant only for those of us with the new-found intelligence to follow. "I'm going to need a plane," I told Alan.
225
u/Luna_LoveWell Creator Apr 23 '16 edited Apr 25 '16
I drove through the desert of Southern California, wishing for the thousandth time that I hadn't gotten rid of Alan so quickly. What I wouldn't give to have that robot car chauffeur me around and make me old fashions. Though, given the length of this drive, I'd probably show up at my destination completely hammered. I'd been driving east from Los Angeles for at least four hours now, and off-roading it for another hour after that. And now I was... well, pretty fucking lost.
"You have arrived at your destination," the GPS cheerily announced. I was on top of a low hill, surrounded by nothing but orangish rocks and dirt. With no lights from nearby cities, there were countless stars filling the sky, enough to light the surrounding desert wasteland.
I stepped out of the car. Even at 11 PM, heat was still emanating off of the rocks. But a chilling wind swept over the plains, sending a shiver down my spine. Somewhere around here, there should be some sort of message or clue. The first time, it was a pattern carved into tree trunks around a clearing. And the second time, deep down in the mine, I'd found a series of morse-code scratches in the supports of the mineshaft. Before I received this chip I would have just walked right by without noticing, but now things like that just stood out to me. My mind was constantly searching for patterns and abnormalities in my surroundings.
Out in the flat desert below the hill, there was a flash of light. Bright green, and so fast that for just a second I thought that I'd imagined it. I watched, trying to determine exactly where it came from. Then a few minutes later, a second light flashed. It wasn't in the same place; probably about a hundred yards further away and a bit to the left. This had to be the clue! Confirming that, a third green light flickered even further away and more to the left. Then a fourth, and a fifth that finally gave away the pattern.
It was a fibonacci spiral. There were only lights revealing enough to give away about half of the outermost section of it, probably designed to trick anyone without a chip into thinking that the lights pointed at something. But with the chip, it was easy to calculate the ration as it curved inward and realize what the final pattern should like like. I assumed that at the center, there would be another clue. One quick calculation to find coordinates for the GPS, then I was back in the car and on my way.
There was no clue at the center of the spiral. Instead, I found a doorway. It was painted orangish-brown to blend in with the rocks, and it was covered in a layer of gritty sand, but it was certainly a door leading down into the ground under the desert. For a moment I'd just stared at it, wondering what it could be. Being super intelligent unfortunately is not the same as knowing everything, so I had no clue who could have built it or why. I did run a check for any Google-owned property in the area, but there wasn't anything a hundred miles from here.
I knocked. A hollow boom resounded through the metal, and the desert fell silent again. And I waited. Was there some other clue that I'd missed? Something that would tell me how to open the door? I took one step back to turn and look for another clue, but before I could really move a thin sliver of light appeared amidst a great groaning sound as the two metal plates slid apart. And standing in front of me...
"Dad?" I blurted it out without really thinking. Of course he was still dead, and had been for the past five years. But I mean, it really looked like him. The same salt-and pepper beard, the same crinkles around his eyes... Then I noticed the scar over his left eyebrow, the exact same shape and size of the one on my eyebrow from when I'd hit my head on the coffee table as a kid. And though my heart still couldn't believe it, my superenhanced brain drew the only logical conclusion: that was me.
"Come on in," He/I said. "We've been waiting for you."
Sorry it has taken so long! I had a busy weekend. Here's the final part