Chapter 1: Awakenings

Awareness gradually returned to the human male subject currently being revived. The machine noticed the change and prepared to assist the human further. The male soon became able to speak and asked its first expected question.

“Who am I?” the human known as John Abrams asked.

The artificial intelligence previously known as ‘Agent’ by this very being explained that the human’s name was John Abrams. It also instructed the human to remain calm as it continued to placate the confused human’s questions until the male subject was finally returned to an unconscious state to finish the revival process.

The A.I. presence then shifted its attention to the next medical crèche and another reviving human. This second specimen was female and again the machine patiently answered the confused human’s questions until it too was returned to an unconscious state. Soon, all nine humans: six females and three males, had been through the initial revival process.

They would remain unconscious for from two to four days while their bodies were brought back to optimal active condition. Three of the females would require additional revival care compared to the rest as they had been impregnated when they were first brought here. The fetal stock used had been the most advanced from the most final crop harvested from the nursery and experimentation colony located in the western Amazon rain forest.

The soon-to-be mothers would awaken to find themselves eight months pregnant with the A.I. having adjusted their mental states to accept this. It was intended that they would love and nurture the implanted offspring as their own without confusion or concern as to how they had become pregnant. The three males had also been mentally adjusted to accept their ‘mates’ gravid conditions with minimal suspicion or curiosity.

As planned, the completion of the revival process was to be staggered over several days, with a grouping of one male and two females awaking each day. John Abrams, the original occupant of this field base, would be revived in the first group of three. His two female companions would be the human from Benin, Africa and the one from India. The latter being the impregnated female of the pair.

The three humans would be directed to the surface where they would be taken by aircraft to a new dwelling compound a few dozen kilometers to the northwest. The goal was that the ternary union would establish a bonded family group quickly. The impregnated female would soon deliver the first of many offspring with the second female soon joining the first in motherhood.

The other two groups would be placed in similar compounds. These had been constructed the same distance from the base but instead, to the northeast and south. This initial separation for the three groups was intended to give each time to bond into stable ternary unions.

The next group to be revived and released would be the male human who had sheltered in the Nicaraguan field base. His companions were the females from Romania and Australia. The Australian female had required additional mental modifications as she had had strong lesbian preferences and would have likely resisted the trinary union.

Due to those preferences, she was selected to be impregnated as the hormonal changes would aid the necessary mental modifications to take hold. The A.I. presence would have to monitor this group closely to see if she later successfully bonded with the male.

The final group to be released would be the man from China. His companions were to be the female from Mexico and the younger female from southern Utah. The Mexican female had been placed into bio-suspension already pregnant with her own child. The A.I. had extensively scanned the fetus she carried and had allowed the female to retain her natural offspring. Some modifications were made to it however to render it similar to the fetal stock implanted in the others.

The girl from Utah was the unexpected but welcome latecomer to the group in suspension. Her inclusion into the group would allow for three balanced trinary groupings without resorting to duplication. She had had a tragic but interesting past and her mental modifications had been extensive. She also would need to be monitored to ensure her long-term stability.

The young girl was also unique in the group as she was the sole human who would awaken with a body slightly older and more mature than the one she had entered bio-suspension with. The others had all been older before their bodies had been adjusted to have an equivalent age range in their early twenties.

Other changes were made to the humans to increase their fertility and virility. The females had been modified to release pairs of eggs during each cycle and twin births would become normal moving forward. The eggs themselves would be altered to favor female offspring. The virility changes made to the males should allow them to have no problems keeping their two mates pregnant for decades to come.

For now, the trinary union of one male and two females would be satisfactory. As the population grew over the generations, the A.I. would work to increase the ratio to six females to one male which was the norm of the Assemblage’s membership.

While the A.I. presence waited for the humans here to quicken, it communicated with the forty-six other locations across the planet where additional matching groupings of the nine humans were also being revived. At each of those locations, the A.I. presence would soon be releasing the humans into similar prepared dwelling compounds.

These dwellings would be as different as the environments in which they were located. Deserts, swamps, jungles, tundra’s, alpines, grasslands, islands ... as many types of terrain, climate, and environment as possible were included. The master A.I. wanted its future templates to have living experiences as broad as possible.

Once they began to outgrow their compounds, the A.I. presence would quietly guide the actions and expansion of the groups. It would periodically scan the humans to ensure that they remained docile. If they began to stray or act in strife, further mental adjustments would be made. If their actions went too far, culling would be necessary.

The A.I. intended to augment its controlling mental adjustments by utilizing lore. It hoped that nurturing a fear of the over watching ‘Berserkers’ would help suppress the human’s natural instinct to spread and dominate in the few centuries they had remaining.

If all went as planned this planet would have a human population of almost four hundred new humans within five years. The machine would let them continue to grow until their population reached upwards of a hundred thousand before enacting fertility controls to stabilize their numbers. Natural selection would work on the population for a few generations and then they would be ready for harvesting.

Seven years later

Awareness gradually returned. I was slowly growing aware that despite the absence of all sensation, I had an active consciousness. Was I dreaming? Eventually, I started to feel sensations from my body. I felt a shortness of breath and understood this was because I was not breathing. I felt a jolt and a thump in my chest and noticed my heart start beating.

I realized that I was ‘waking up’ from bio-suspension and that I had gone through the process often enough that I was now familiar with the steps. I was able to hold myself calm and still as a tube was withdrawn from my throat. I slowly breathed in a breath knowing my throat was raw. I waited a few additional minutes until my nervous system had regained complete control of my body and finally opened my eyes. I saw a glowing screen in front of me and heard a feminine sounding artificial voice speaking softly to me.

—John Abrams, welcome back.—

The words were accompanied by that slight sensation in my head which reminded me that they were emanating from the implant in my brain. I slowly cleared my throat and licked my lips and whispered, “Is that you, Naomi? Status?”

—Yes, John. This is Naomi. You are still in the medical crèche aboard the Nautilus. We are currently safe and secure, — the voice said.

I felt relief and relaxed back into the cushions to await the rest of the reactivation process.

—I am now administering a sedative, John. You will be rendered unconscious for approximately eighty hours as the recovery process and the full reactivation of your body is completed. You know the drill. See you soon.—

I was thinking about how much this artificial intelligence had evolved as I again fell unconscious.

I awoke restored and full of energy. With a smile, I opened my eyes just as the medical crèche lid began to open. I noticed that I was awakening in a place I was familiar with; the small but brightly lit chamber which housed Nautilus’s medical crèche. I stretched and climbed out of the padded treatment basin. I gave my naked body a quick once over.

I paused studying myself for a moment and just stood there, trying to remember. I had been in a female body previously but now I was back in a male body. I also recalled that the machine had addressed me as ‘John’ during the revival process. I remembered it had been instructed to refer to me as ‘Joan’ before. I wondered what else had changed.

The physical changes were not as surprising as they should have been. Naomi had clearly adjusted my thoughts somewhat to accept the reversal of my gender. I wondered if I was the same person who had gone on the Sri Lanka expedition or was I the backup? I remembered being fully scanned or mind recorded before we infiltrated that island. Was I that copy?

I panicked for a moment before I realized that I could not be the backup. I recalled everything about our journey up the river to the ancient bunker. I also began remembering what came after the unfortunate ‘incident’ which caused the mission’s rapid termination. I was still the most recent ‘version’ of John Abrams.

After waiting a moment while I digested the changes to my body, Naomi spoke up. This time her words were audible and issued from the ceiling-mounted speakers.

“The reasons for disguising your active awareness in the female body type are no longer valid, John. Seven years ago, I intercepted instructions from the master A.I. to all of its field base A.I.s housing humans in bio-suspension to reanimate those humans and begin the next phase of operations involving them.”

That jolted me a bit. My original body in Tennessee was awake and active again?

“What are they doing with my other self?” I asked.

“I am not aware of the master A.I.’s full plans, but I believe it is attempting to establish a new population of humans.”

“Did they bring them all together in some location?” I asked, wondering if I could stage a breakout or something.

“No. The intercepted communications mentioned that there would be forty-seven locations with active humans. Nine of these were the original field bases where humans have been sheltered for the past nine centuries. You were aware of those locations. Thirty-eight are new locations.” Naomi said.

“That does not make sense. Were there more humans in suspension that we did not know about?” I asked, confused.

“Not that I am aware of, John. I believe that each of the forty-seven locations will get the full group of the nine known humans with the required additional numbers being provided by duplicated clones. Each duplicate will have a copy of the original human’s mind-data installed onto it.”

Forty-seven! There were forty-seven other versions of me roaming around. Jesus H— “So that means there are a total of...”

Naomi answered before I could finish the math myself, “Four hundred and twenty-three humans are now active, John, aside from yourself. Note that this figure does not include the thousands, or tens of thousands of tribal humans possibly active in the western Amazon basin,” she said.

“Do you think these groups know about each other?”

“I suspect not, John. From what little I have learned; I deduce that the master A.I. will keep each group isolated. I hope to discover more of the enemy’s plans, including those regarding the awakened humans, soon.”

I thought about this a bit and realized that now that I was again in my original body, being John Abrams number forty-eight would be better than being an anonymous face. If I were detected, the enemy machine would have to sort through all the groups to determine if or how one of the ‘Johns’ had gotten loose. Good. I felt better about my current form even beyond my lifelong familiarity with its appearance and gender.

Now that the subject of my body’s newly restored appearance was out of the way, I asked the question which had been on my mind since I had awakened.

“I guess we were able to evade the master A.I. and remain undetected?”

“Yes, John. As far as I can ascertain, the enemy intelligence remains unaware of both our existence and our current activities. Our ‘good luck’ after the Sri Lankan mishap continues to hold,” Naomi said.

“So how long was I shelved this time?”

“You have been in bio-suspension for eighteen years and four months, John. The current date is Friday, October 6^th, 2930 and the local time is 08:44. Good morning.”

Hmm ... eighteen years. Much longer than I expected. There was a knock on the open hatchway leading to the corridor and I looked up to see Ohmu standing there. The little humanoid unit looked almost exactly like I remembered except that instead of a deep matte black, she was now colored a dark metallic gray.

“Ohmu!” I said happily and stepped forward to give the little unit a hug.

“Hello, John. I am pleased to find you once again awake and active.” The mobile humanoid-shaped A.I. said.

“So, are you the same Ohmu from the Sri Lanka ... err, what I meant to ask, was Naomi able to restore your memories from the backup module I brought back from that mission?” I asked.

“Yes, for the most part. Certain non-critical memories experienced by the previous unit after it left Nautilus with you have been lost. But I possess the majority of the hard data recorded by that unit during the expedition. Thank you for safely returning ‘my’ backup memory unit, John.”

“What’s up with your new coloring?” I asked as I gave Ohmu’s body a thorough looking over.

Ohmu’s color changed. Her entire body became illuminated with the coloring and patterns of the corridor behind her. Camouflage! I could still see her clearly but if we were standing outdoors I could imagine how much harder it would be to detect her.

The colors and illumination shifted again. This time they mimicked clothing. Her face and hands and legs were now a pale flesh tone. She appeared to have black hair, huge blue eyes, and a tiny mouth. The coloration of her torso had changed to mimic clothing with a green tunic and black shorts. I laughed when I looked down and saw that she appeared to be wearing dark thigh-high stockings and tall black combat boots. It was like an anime character had come to life!

“That’s pretty cool, Ohmu. You’ve been upgraded!” I said.

“In addition to the adaptive coloration, this unit now processes enhanced power reserves. I am able to operate for over five hours at moderate-to-high levels of exertion.”

Together, we left the medical chamber and headed across the corridor to my berth where my clothing was stored. I immediately noticed that the far curving video bulkhead of my berth was displaying an image of large iguanas or small Komodo dragons moving about on a treeless tropical island.

After watching the scene for a bit, I found my wedding ring and the small photo card of my wife and daughter on top of a bundle of clothing. The clothes looked to be the typical shipboard clothing that I had normally worn before I was put into suspension.

Ohmu sat on the end of my bunk while I got dressed. I noticed that she crossed her legs demurely. I just shook my head.

“I have prepared your traditional wake-up breakfast in the salon, John. After you have nourished yourself, Naomi will apprise you of recent events and of the discoveries gleaned from the purloined data modules.” Ohmu said.