Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,38

in question with absolute certainty.

He’d considered wearing a headset and throat mike for the field test day after tomorrow, but then dismissed the idea. After all the germ, drug, weapon, and radiation testing American soldiers had been subject to throughout the years, going in halfway felt oddly dishonorable. And so, like countless others before him, he had been promoted to guinea pig.

Smith hit the light and aimed for his unmade bed, falling into it in the old sweatpants that had been his uniform at home for more than a decade. He reached for the alarm clock out of habit and then stopped, instead laying his Merge on the charging mat spread across his nightstand. When it recognized a power source, the grayed-out icon for the sleep function went active.

The truth was that he didn’t sleep that well anymore. In darkness and silence, the past had a way of consuming him—dead friends and enemies, close calls, critical mistakes. Too many of them.

Of course, he’d written himself a prescription for Ambien a number of times, but it always ended up in the garbage. Why, he wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe he subconsciously saw it as a sign of weakness. Or maybe he just thought the dead had a right to be heard.

Smith stared at the icon for a few seconds and then activated it, reminding himself that this wasn’t about him. It was for king and country.

The interface was typically simple and similar to all the others in the way it used eye movement and simple mental commands. He set the start time on “immediate” and the wake time as six a.m. The app provided a number of advanced functions including the ability to wake up at various times throughout the night, but he left those unchecked and settled back into his pillow.

* * *

SMITH’S EYES SHOT OPEN and he blinked a few times in confusion. The adrenaline rush he normally got when his subconscious mind identified an out-of-place sound was completely absent, as was the grogginess that always accompanied nights weaving in and out of sleep.

He frowned into the darkness, realizing that he’d probably never even fully drifted off. And he knew himself well enough to know that he wasn’t going to anytime soon. No, despite all the hype, it looked like he was about to enjoy another night of infomercials for improbable exercise equipment and B horror flicks. Even Christian Dresner couldn’t knock it out of the park every time.

A clock icon at the lower right of his vision gained in strength and he squinted at it out of habit despite knowing that his eyes had no role at all in generating the image.

6:00 a.m.

He rolled toward his nightstand and confirmed that his alarm clock read the same. Unable to believe what he was seeing, he went to the window and pushed the curtains back. Outside, the densely packed homes were just beginning to glow with the first hint of sunrise.

“Jesus…” he said aloud.

He hadn’t slept like that since he was a kid. And even then he’d remained groggy until he was halfway to the bus stop. Right now, he felt like it was the middle of the day—undoubtedly thanks to the Merge optimizing his brain waves for a state of alertness.

Everyone, himself included, had been confused by Dresner’s incorporation of the sleep function into his system. But now it was obvious that it was just another testament to his genius. Even if the Merge didn’t do anything else—if it couldn’t so much as conjure up a decent game of Pong—anyone over the age of thirty-five who tried it would sell their children to own one.

19

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

USA

A LIGHT RAIN WAS FALLING on mountains tangled with overgrowth. Harder on his team, Smith knew, but almost perfect for what he had in mind.

The trail—such as it was—had turned to mud, grabbing at his combat boots and splattering his meticulously pressed camo as he worked his way toward a rendezvous site that he knew was 326 meters away. Normally, in this kind of unfamiliar terrain he’d be relying on a soggy map and wondering if all his men were already gathered, but now that seemed like a scene from ancient history.

In addition to distance, the Merge’s military training software displayed an arrow pointing him in the right direction, an ETA at current speed, and individual green dots representing his volunteers’ positions on an overhead map.

He waded through some wet bushes and came out into a small clearing where five combat-equipped soldiers were