that I am a fan of your work,” he finished as he let go and took his seat again.
“Er, thanks,” I said, feeling inadequate.
“I’ll get to the point again,” Amir said from behind the desk as the keyboard tapped to the rhythm of him inputting his personal credentials. “John here works in the US-based part of the company in network security, and Christopher is from our UK office where he develops new software. I want both to work with you, and both to have a basic version of the ANII for programming. All three of you will have different roles to play, so each of you will move off in different directions when the time comes,” Amir said as he finished typing a long password and looked up at me directly.
“I don’t like reiterating what sounds like a threat, but nothing we discuss can be repeated to anyone who isn’t here right now, is that understood?”
All three of us mumbled our assurances that we understood him. The Edwards guy stood in the corner and said nothing, obviously his silence was already a done deal.
“David,” Amir said to me again, “you will program your ANII for the space station. Christopher will program his for a repository in Europe, and John will program his for a site on the African continent which is being excavated as we speak.”
I opened my mouth to ask more about both sites but managed to swallow the words before they escaped. I decided I’d ask the Brit and the douchebag when we weren’t in front of the boss.
“So,” Amir asked, “what do you need?”
I fought down the childish jealousy I suddenly felt. I wanted to keep Annie for myself, and the thought of giving away two copies of her to people I didn’t know was like having to pick my favorite child and give away the others. Luckily, good sense and reason managed to poke its head into my thoughts and I created the shopping list in my head.
I told him what I needed, listing off everything as he typed. He glanced back up at me whenever he caught up with what I was asking for. I decided to try and lighten the mood by asking for a brandy glass full of red M&Ms each morning to be left in my dressing room, and only Eades laughed. Amir smiled politely at my joke, but I got the impression that he didn’t actually find me very funny. He told me that he would get everything, then opened a drawer and pulled out three keycards bearing our names on one each.
“Lab K has been assigned for you,” he said as he offered me the cards, “I’m sure you can find it and get started. Gentlemen,” he finished, dismissing us with the polite manner that seemed to leak from his skin.
In truth, I was still reeling a little to learn that there were two other projects running as well as the space station idea. No doubt other suggestions were agreed from our individual recommendations, and then I was kind of in a slow tailspin that I was actually the asshole who was getting shot out into space to wait for the world to calm down again. That was basically the plan: hide or run away, wait in the freezer until the earth was a safe place again, and go back to start over. I wasn’t much of a conspiracy theory guy, and I also wasn’t one for disaster movies, so hearing the level of destruction we were facing was kind of an eye-opener.
Here’s what I understood would happen to the planet after spending six months with the other geeks:
There was an asteroid, not a meteor or a comet apparently, not that I cared much for the distinction, that was about ninety miles across heading for Earth travelling at a little over thirty thousand miles an hour. Now that sounded real fast to me, but realizing that it’s so far away and will still take a decade to get here makes you feel a little small in the universe.
When it does eventually get here, it will hit us. I listened to hours and hours of arguing over whether the sun will pull it closer with its gravitational field and make it miss, but of all the dozens of calculations they did, only one model had the thing missing the planet. So, we concluded, it was coming.
When it hits us, and hopefully by that time I’ll be a human popsicle in space,