Sparks of Chaos (15 page)

“Oh believe me, I am very much looking forward to meeting our young Mister Chase, our first meeting was when he was unconscious, let’s hope he doesn’t end up that way after our second meeting.” Rex said with a sneer.

“I will keep you informed as we make progress on the girl, do not worry everything is going to work out tremendously, you’ll see.”

“I wish I could believe you.”

“You can,” he said as turned and left him to return to the others.

Chapter 27

The paperwork seemed to get worse and more onerous every year. It could be that he was just getting older; he had already celebrated his sixtieth birthday last month and realistically wouldn’t be dealing with this for many more years. His staff had been trying unsuccessfully to persuade him to use the computer because it was faster. He didn’t care what they thought because for him it was far faster to do it the old-fashioned way on paper. Just because some things were new did not necessarily mean that they were better.

He ran his hands over his steel gray hair cut short in what Americans called a “buzz cut”; he liked it that way because it was easy to take care of and he knew it made him look rather rough and unyielding. He didn’t need a hair style to make him tough, you didn’t get to be the Chief Inspector of Police without becoming hard. After almost forty years as a policeman Franz Keitler had seen and endured more than enough to earn his toughness. With so much exposure to murder, crime and viewing the cruel inhumanity of man, you either toughened up or you got out.

He had a reputation as a no-nonsense guy who was absolutely relentless when it came to uncovering criminals. He took his job seriously and drove the staff hard to produce results. It had taken a toll on his personal life. Of course it was a cliché, the hard bitten police detective divorced and dependent on alcohol but those clichés were there for a reason. His wife had left him more than twenty years ago and he never bothered to replace her with anything that didn’t come from a bottle. He still drank, but didn’t let it interfere with his work and kept it very much a secret.

Monday afternoons were when he caught up with his paperwork so he could devote the rest of his week to actual police work. Sometimes he did his best thinking while doing this, it was somewhat like running and you could almost turn your brain off while doing such routine tasks.

Franz was startled from his thoughts when his phone rang and automatically answered it, “Keitler.” It was his lead detective Mattius calling from the University. Mattius was smart, aggressive and loyal. He was twenty years younger than Franz and wanted his job but was prepared to wait for it.

“There have been some developments here at the University; you said you wanted to be kept informed because of the sensitivity. The administration was less than happy about having me speak to Professor Hauptmann. Apparently they have been trying to keep it secret that their famous Nobel Prize winner is senile. I haven’t determined if they are more concerned in letting donors find out or if they are afraid he is involved in this girl’s disappearance somehow.”

“What’s the latest news you’ve found out so far?”

“The girl’s father Professor Freund is going crazy and stirring up a lot of trouble at the school over her disappearance.”

“That is understandable given the circumstances.”

 “True, but it is going to put even more pressure on us to find some answers. I am afraid the girl’s father is going to be relentless,” Mattius explained.

“All the more reason to find the truth quickly, the longer this goes on the less likely we are to find her. Do you believe Professor Hauptmann is involved in any way in this?”

“No, it is extremely unlikely he had anything to do with this. First he is too old and frail to have been able to do anything to a physically fit teenage girl. She had to assist him every day in just walking a few blocks to his office. Second no one ever saw him leave the building at all the day she went missing. As a matter of fact no one has seen him leave the building during the daytime for years now. He comes to the office, stays for a few hours and leaves directly for the old-age home on the campus, where he lives.”

“But does he know anything, or did he see anything?”

“It is possible but he hasn’t been lucid enough to get anything coherent from him so far. We will keep trying, they have said his lucidity tends to come and go. He may very well have been the last person to see her. As a matter of fact he sat in his office for hours past his normal time to leave, waiting for her to walk him back home.”

“Where was the last confirmed sighting of her?”

“She was seen entering the building with a young man around noon but no one noticed her leaving or remembers seeing her after that.”

“Is there a security video that we can check?” Franz asked.

“There is a video camera at the main entrance but there are a number of doors into the building and not all have video, making it impossible to determine when or if she left the building.”

“We need to determine who the boy was and if he was involved in all of this.”

“I have already requested the video from the university security department; I expect to have it shortly.”

“You’ll need to interview some of her friends to see if she may have left on her own, maybe with this boy. We may also have to search the building to see if her body is hidden somewhere in there.”

“Of course, Thomas is on it now and I’ve told him to be discreet, we don’t want to arouse the whole campus until we know more. I’m still not sure if we are dealing with a kidnapping, runaway or something worse. My gut tells me that this isn’t going to end well, something feels off about it and I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Mattius explained.

“Sadly our gut instinct is right more often than not. If you’re correct this will become a very high profile case with the University, a famous professor and a teenage student involved. So while our gut may ultimately be right we are going to need to have all the evidence to back us up, I expect that…”

“Wait sir, sorry to interrupt you but Thomas has just come back, just hold on for a moment please.” The sound went off for a few moments as Mattius held his hand over the mouthpiece and heard from Thomas. Franz could still hear some conversation in the background but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Coming back on the line, Mattius said with a somber voice “I think it would be wise if you could come over here now, there have been a few developments and the best course will be for you to be directly involved. We will be waiting for you in Professor Hauptmann’s office in the main administration building.”

Grabbing his coat, he answered “I’ll be right there.” He knew Mattius wouldn’t ask him to come if it wasn’t important. It was also a great excuse to get away from the tedious paperwork. He glanced longingly at the bottle of scotch he kept in the lower desk drawer and wondered if he had time to take a quick drink before heading out. He resisted the pull because he knew he needed to keep his head clear and it would be waiting for him as a reward for going out in the chilly night when he returned. It would definitely start to impact his performance at work but he knew he could quit whenever he wished, it just so happened that he didn’t wish to quit.”

Franz drove quickly to the University and walked to the front door of the main building where he was met by a young officer who directed him up the stairs to the office. Glancing at the photos on the secretary’s desk outside of the open door, he thought of the missing girl as a person and not as a case to be investigated. Entering, he went directly to the far end of the room toward the large wooden desk where Mattius and Thomas were awaiting him. “What have you found?” he asked getting directly to the point.

Mattius answered him by pointing to the mess on the floor and saying “Thomas searched Professor Hauptmann’s office and found signs of what looks like a struggle.”

“You brought me down here for this” he asked.

“No, we brought you here for this,” he answered, pointing to the other side of the desk. We didn’t notice it at first but when we examined the area closer, it was slightly sticky and appeared to be blood. We tested it with luminal and it was positive. There was blood and quite a lot of it. It also is almost certain someone made an attempt to clean this up and hide it.”

“I am afraid this case just got a whole lot more serious. It definitely isn’t a runaway and it appears we may be looking for a body now.” Franz responded sadly.

“There’s more, security brought us the footage from the front door. On Friday at noon we saw the girl exiting the front door and coming right back inside with a young man, about twenty minutes later the boy is seen walking out alone. No one has reported seeing Birgit leave the building or even see her after that time,” Mattius explained.

“We need to find out who that boy is and talk with him; he very well may be the last person to have seen her alive or he had something to do with her disappearance. What I don’t understand is how he could have harmed her and hid her body in this building filled with people. Have you searched the building yet?”

“No sir, we wanted to do that now, it’s the weekend and the evening, there are very few people inside now and we should be able to do it quietly.”

“Good, come up with a reason and get everyone out of here, search the building thoroughly, top to bottom. Regardless of what shape the Professor is in we need to talk to him and get some answers. Get the blood samples to the crime lab and get some DNA from Birgit’s father or some hair from her brush for a sample to compare with. We must ID that boy as well, talk with her friends and see if they know him or if she has been dating him, maybe a jealous ex-boyfriend. Let’s get cracking we need some answers.”

Chapter 28

Armstrong entered the long room, he wasn’t sentimental but he always felt something inside him when he was here. It was the room after all where he was ‘born’, The Creatatorium they called it. This was where all BLI were created. They weren’t born the way humans were of course. They were created fully formed; they were not babies they didn’t grow. It was a cold sterile place more a factory than a hospital.

Like an assembly line, the various pieces put into place to make the whole. He picked up a metal and ceramic alloy skeleton which was the building block of the BLI and virtually identical for all. While they were indistinguishable from humans on the outside, the inside was a completely different matter. The skeleton he held was a single piece, light weight, flexibly strong and virtually indestructible. There was no rib cage as they had no internal organs. No stomach, they didn’t eat or drink, no lungs, they didn’t breathe, no hearts, they had an internal power source inside the skeleton.

Their bodies also drew power from the wireless power source that broadcast on the island. They had been designed to outwardly resemble humans down to the details of fingernails and hair, even to seemingly breathe. In appearance the BLI looked like an average male in his fifties. Thinning and or graying hair, bodies that were past their prime and thickening and weakening. Nothing was farther from the truth. Though they resembled everyone’s kindly uncle, they were deceptively physically strong and massively powerful.

The design of the BLI bodies had been created with a clean sheet of paper and no preconceptions. Rex had spent a lot of time perfecting his creations. He had used every bit of technology to make them incredibly efficient and flexible. Armstrong warmed at the recollection of the time that Rex told him he had considered the BLI as not only one of his most successful and essential inventions but also as his children.

Placing the skeleton back upon the tray, he walked toward the next stage of the creation process. The skeleton was suspended while an organic compound was created around it. Starting from the feet, using a process that was somewhat akin to 3-D printing, the organic soup including biobots that become the meat and muscle was applied to the skeletal platform. When completed, the body was dipped into a vat of thick viscous liquid consisting of organic and inorganic compounds that melded with the body and formed the outer skin-like material. While it looked and felt like human skin it was resilient, protectively unbreakable and like the BLI themselves, indestructible. Along with their skeleton it meant they could twist and move their body in many ways that a human never could.

It was at this stage in the process that all BLI were the same. They were essentially generic blank slates awaiting customization. Whereas in humans, genes and DNA inherited from one’s parents determined the physical and mental characteristics that differentiated one person from another, the BLI had no parents. Rex’s goal for the BLI was not to have a clone army of interchangeable robots similar to what he had accomplished with the Taskers. Rex and Armstrong both hated the term ‘robot’ and refused to use it. They felt that it didn’t represent their true nature and was offensive.

Rex wanted each BLI to be an individual and have their own distinct appearance and personality. To accomplish this he compiled an enormous database of every possible permutation of physical and behavioral characteristics. He also created a random generator that ensured the uniqueness of each BLI produced. They all were required to be within established parameters ensuring that there would never be any that were mentally or physically defective.

Once the individual traits were selected the body was taken for its final customized imprinting. A molding form was programmed along with the body’s internal biobots to make the original form longer, shorter, thinner or whatever was required. The final touches, including skin tone, teeth, hair and eyes were then customized.

The chosen personality traits were then programmed to be added to the body’s processor unit which was sealed in the skeleton and located in the BLI’s torso. In effect it meant that their brain and their soul resided roughly where a human’s lungs and heart would be. The BLI’s skull was used for sensing and interpreting visual and other inputs. Their senses were also beyond a human’s; they could see in infrared, identify smells and see sound waves. They could overlay information onto their sight and instantly call up data visually. The BLI were sterile, could not reproduce and lacked the equivalent of human sex organs to do so.