Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,47
under attack from the east. Can’t see anyone but I nearly took another hit. Who the hell are these guys?”
The red dot coming down from above started traversing east toward Duane and Stacy as Grayson continued to close from the southwest. Things were about to get interesting.
Smith finally managed to spot the Ranger, his outline appearing and disappearing as the prototype software tried to deal with the wind starting to whip up the slope. The sun broke out of the clouds for a moment, glimmering off the raindrops but improving visibility slightly. It turned out to be just enough for the soldier above. A shot sounded and a moment later Duane’s combat effectiveness number spun to zero.
“Calm down,” Smith said. “You’re going to be black for ten seconds, then your unit’s just going to shut down. Stay put until I tell you otherwise.”
Stacy fired at the man coming down on her position, but she didn’t take time to aim properly. Smith couldn’t spot her target but could see that the red dot had stopped and that Stacy’s retreat was slow even for her. He assumed that she’d gotten close enough to force the Delta soldier to take cover and was dragging Duane along with her.
“He’s dead, Stacy. Get the hell out—”
Another gunshot sounded and her health counter spun to zero. With the advantage of the Merges and their early success, it was easy to forget one critical thing: The men they were up against were off-the-charts good.
He turned toward Grayson as he continued his cautious approach. Lieutenant Raymond was on his back in the water, looking directly in the Ranger’s direction but unable to see him calmly raising his dripping rifle. The shot registered center of mass and a few expletives escaped the dead sniper as Grayson rushed the shallow impression and dove in.
Knowing that they were still invisible to the Delta man above, Smith ran over and slipped into the water with the two men.
“Looks like just me left, huh, Colonel?” Grayson’s Merge would have taken Stacy’s and Duane’s icons off the battlefield overview.
“You know how it goes. Things can fall apart in a hurry.”
Grayson nodded, propping his rifle on a wet rock at the edge of the indention they were submerged in. “Let’s see if we can bring it back to even odds.”
Lieutenant Raymond sat silent, futilely searching the rain for what Grayson was aiming at.
The Ranger squeezed off a round and Smith watched the approaching soldier’s effectiveness spin to zero.
“Sir?” Grayson said, wanting feedback on the shot.
Smith just shook his head in disbelief. “That’s a kill. You’re one-on-one now.”
22
Near Santiago
Chile
EVERYTHING IN THE ROOM was a perfect white, every inch of wall, ceiling, and floor glowing with the same soft light. The temperature was controlled at exactly seventy-two degrees by radiating panels so that there was no movement of air.
It was his blank canvas—a place that Christian Dresner could quiet his mind enough to think. Or at least that had been the plan.
In the far corner, a fifty-inch computer monitor was built into the wall and a keyboard sat beneath it on a small shelf. Despite their inconspicuous design, they seemed to dominate the room, an archaic intrusion bordering on vulgar. A reminder of his failure to remake the world.
The monitor displayed a ribbon of yellow-tinted road and the dusty, mountainous landscape moving past its edges—a direct feed from Craig Bailer’s Merge.
Generally speaking, it was impossible to hack into the units and display their input. The software and bandwidth necessary for that kind of upload would be quickly discovered by a media already obsessed with outdated privacy issues. However, the company-issued units didn’t have those constraints, leaving him the ability to provide important players in his world with hardware he could access at the press of a button.
Dresner stood beneath the monitor and watched as Bailer glanced over at David Tresco in the passenger seat and then faced the windshield again to negotiate a treacherous corner. The image seemed hazy and unwieldy, but the use of the monitor had proved necessary when viewing this type of output. Trying to run the images directly into his own visual cortex induced nausea.
He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. It always came back to vertigo and nausea. The mind had evolved to be very rigid about how it received input. If the information didn’t come from the eyes, nose, ears, skin, or tongue, the brain wanted to reject it. Perhaps more youthful