Chapter 14

The sun was sinking into the western horizon; Mike was leaning back into the sand occasionally sipping his Bahama Momma. Cerelia was lying down on the beach asleep, completely exhausted from playing in the surf most of the day. It had been fairly easy textbook landing, no one even noticed them land the fighter. After landing they walked towards downtown Hamilton, sometime cutting across the narrow roads, and narrowly escaping being hit by a taxi. Cerelia tried in vain to see everything at once, running from shop to shop, while the storeowners just smiled at the exuberant child. Once the shops lost their fascination they moved between the local eateries and sports bars, deafening roar of the NASCAR races showing on multiple TV's. For an hour or so they watched one of the big cruise liners pull up anchor and maneuver out of the bay while avoiding the rock outcroppings. Mike even bought a sundress for Cerelia in a pale blue color from one of the local shops. Wandering around had been fun but Mike thought that going to the beach would complete the day. Crossing the street in Hamilton had been like playing 'Frogger', though traffic was only going fifteen miles an hour. Getting a taxi hadn't been difficult at all; plenty of tourists going to beach always attracted plenty of taxicabs.

When Mike saw the first taxi parked across the street, it looked more like a family mini-van than a taxicab. Only took eight fifteen minutes to reach Horseshoe bay (and cost about ten dollars American). Now that the sun was setting, Mike was wondering what they were going to do for the night. Sleeping on a beach wasn't on his things to do list, they'd probably get pinched by Sand-Crabs during the night anyway. As Mike was looking up and down the beach, he noticed a newspaper lying nearby. He walked over and picked it up. It was a copy of the 'New York Times', three days old from the looks of it. As Mike was browsing the articles he noticed an article in current events section which read.

"... investigations still continue into the disappearances of five FBI agents who were investigating 'The Church of The Third Eye' which have branches in almost every state in the continental US, and several branches in Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, even in the far reaches of South America. Controversy has always surrounded the 'Church', some saying that it is a 'new-age cult', though no concrete evidence supports this theory, it is apparent that the 'Church' has all the makings of a cult. Leader of the 'Church', Jordan Cross, owner and CEO of 'Cross International', declined an interview with this reporter and only making a brief statement that... 'The Church of The Third Eye is not nor has it ever been a cult. It is a place for people, who have been misplaced by other religious institutions, to look for God in this new day and age. Also they are looking for the potential to become more than what they were.' This reporter has talked to several families, who have family members inside the 'Church'. These people haven't had any contact with relations, since they joined the 'Church', and have tried in vain to make contact with no success. It is in my opinion, that the 'Church' is just another cult, scamming people out of their life savings, while they delude themselves into believing mystical mumbo jumbo that will never come to pass. Also Mr. Cross should be arrested for whatever he has done to these poor people."

--News York Times Press Room.

Mike threw the paper down onto the sand with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn't like this one bit. He threw the paper into a nearby trash can and scooped up Cerelia in his arms. She barley woke up when she was disturbed and just settled back to sleep. He headed back to the fighter, humming a soft tune while he walked.

'Time to move on. Maybe Florida should be the next stop.' Mike thought.

Mitch stared at the three dimensional image with a fire behind his eyes. He was starring at what he hoped would be, the future perimeter drone. After watching the first four or five seasons of Stargate: SG-1, he came up with the design from two different episodes. What he came up with looked like a pyramid, bronze in color with silver inlay covering the entire surface. He knew it didn't serve any practical purpose but it looked fairly impressive. When tripped the four corners of the pyramid would pop out, containing re-engineered particle beam cannons, while each tip of the pyramid had a mini thruster, these would be used for course corrections and maneuvering in orbit if that became the case. In each face of the pyramid was a sublight thruster that was the main propulsion for the drone. That alone would make the drone very maneuverable out in space but what you didn't see is what made it even deadlier. Mitch was able to scale down a shield generator to the size of a suitcase, just right for the drones purpose. During all of this Jack was not idle; he worked on the power chamber and the cloaking device, utilizing the new power crystal. Sam had installed the sensor package for the drone so that it would recognize sensor input and transponder data when it came in.

"Hey, what do you think about putting a replicator on board?" asked Mitch, rubbing the weariness from his eyes.

"You want it to be self-replicating?" Jack asked curiously.

"Yeah, if we can manage it that is." Yawned Mitch. They had been going at it for a while now. Mitch tapped the console, until its display flashed the time.

"Shit, quarter to four in the morning. How in the hell did it get so late?" asked a perplexed Jack.

"Don't know. Let's finish this up and get some sleep." Mitch said.

"It's going to take a lot of programming to get it just right. We don't want the damn things to continuously self-replicate; we're going to have to emplace very specific governing protocols. These drones will have to have some measure of intelligence, so they could perform their job." Jack suggested.

"Yeah, we could do that. Although creating a new AI to handle that task of system defense might be a better idea." Mitch said.

"Hmm. But how would we be able to go about it though? Do you know how to create a functional AI?" asked Jack who started to tap a pen against the console.

"No, but I can 'cut & paste' with the best of them." replied Mitch.

"Not exactly what I wanted to hear but it will have to do."

Jack opened a basic programming application. Meanwhile, Mitch accessed Sam's resource file, which held thousands of lines of codes. As this appeared on the holo-display Mitch opened a secondary window that display the code in a similar HTML format, commonly used on the Internet web pages.