“An Object has mass and form.
An environment contains Objects.
An Agent is an Object that can manipulate its environment,
in order to affect other Objects.”
Doctor Gerard Jung
Training was becoming increasingly intense. Ottavio had grown used to his implants, and was now putting them use in special operations. The previous week's training involved a physical regimen of swimming, running, crawling and climbing, all very commando. To his satisfaction he found he could complete all tasks and barely break a sweat.
He also found that he was genuinely hungry more often. Doctor Jung explained that his myoactuators drew energy from the glycogen reserves. Because of this, his body naturally craved more food as his adipose tissue became depleted of its reserves after training. It also meant that training was very intense so that his muscles did not atrophy as the myoactuators took the load.
Now he was standing behind a Perspex screen in a mocked up shipping yard, complete with metal containers, barrels, cranes and rope lying about. On a loud speaker came the caw of gulls and the swoosh and splash of waves against concrete. The only things missing were the smell of salty air and a sky.
The training arena was an enormous cavity, one of four that Houston used to simulate operational environments.
A voice announced through his commlink into his ear, “Agent, you have excelled in strength, speed and stamina training. I believe you are growing bored of lifting weights and doing martial arts so today's training involves observation, stealth and timing. If you are a good boy, tomorrow we will be working with live ammunition to calibrate your hand-eye coordination. We shall continue until I am satisfied, understood?”
It was Penelope's voice, and it sounded stern. Ottavio tried to imagine that there was a touch of boredom, or apathy, or anything else remotely human, but there was not. Penelope's voice was modulated at all times, carefully controlled, gently inflected to convey her unambiguous intent.
“In front of you is a course designed to examine your abilities in evading detection, operational environmental awareness and improvisation. Martial arts are for a last resort, after conflict resolution. In the field, evasion is your best option for getting a job done. If no one knows you are there, then there is no need for violence, security is not altered and the scene is left ready for a following mission if necessary,” said Penelope.
Ottavio wondered if she was reading off a script or if she had done this so many times that she just came across as an automated voice message.
She continued, “The goal in this instance is simple, escape through the blue door on the other side of this course. There are a number of operatives, along with sensors, traps and observation cameras that will be looking for you. You are to enter the course at the door on your right. Do not engage any operative, non-lethal or otherwise, but feel free to deactivate or use any equipment or trap. If you are spotted an alarm will sound, and if you are caught you will have to repeat this until you have successfully completed the goal or until we all get tired.”
“The course will begin as soon as you leave the room. Although the time taken to complete the course is a quantitative factor, we are more interested in your methods and abilities. In the field, the time taken to complete a task is seldom as important as the task itself. Take as much time as you need, but please keep in mind that some of us have other duties we wish to attend to at some stage.”
Ottavio guessed that last bit was not scripted.
His commlink beeped and went silent. There was nothing left to do but begin.
From behind the Perspex wall he scanned the yard. It seemed innocent enough, and looked surprisingly real. Shipping containers were placed about in a semi-formal fashion. Coils of rope and other tripping hazards were scattered around. Here was a forklift, there was a truck.
On the far right was an observation room, dimly lit. He imagined peering eyes and touchpads watching his every move. Sodium lamps were dotted throughout, along with a couple of tiny red dots belonging to sentry devices.
Making a mental map in his head, he took a breath and stepped out of the room into the course. An alarm blared into his ears, startling him.
His commlink hissed, “Start again, Agent.”
Ottavio's face blushed with embarrassment as he walked back into the room. He had not taken even a step before failing the course.
Miss Penelope, after a couple of seconds to let it soak in, said, “It gets everyone the first time around. Remember, a mission has no beginning, nor an end. So long as you are alive, you are interacting with your environment. As an Agent, you must always be on guard, you must always be aware of your environs.”
He looked at his optical read-out as his heart rate slowed down and his adrenaline levels plateaued. His commlink went silent.
Again he looked out at the course. Nothing was moving. How had he been spotted? The doorway was concealed from the rest of the course by a large shipping container. Whatever sounded the alarm must have been something close to the doorway. He crouched down and peered around the corner. The red metal of the container loomed before him.
To his right was an uninteresting wall. He looked at the floor and stopped. The floor appeared slightly curved. The light off an overhead lamp bowed lightly over the tile. A pressure sensor.
There did not seem to be any way to deactivate it, so Ottavio carefully stepped over. No alarm sounded. He let his weight move onto his foot as he stepped from the room. Still no alarm.
He checked the surrounding tiles and, confident that he had avoided the first trap, squatted cleanly behind the red container.
His commlink squealed to life, “Very good. It is important to realize that obstacles, cameras and alarms are placed in plain view when used as a deterrent, but are concealed when needed as a genuine counter-measure. Just because you may have avoided perimeter security does not mean that you are ever in the clear when in a hostile environment. Continue on.”
He crept to the edge of the container and peered around. A few barrels of cable and rope, metal and wooden crates, concrete pylons and a forklift separated him from a series of colored containers. The moment he left the security of his container he would be exposed.
He took a moment to examine his optical display.
“As you no doubt realize, it is impossible to cross this portion without being exposed,” squeaked his ear, “Ambient light sensors placed throughout your body measure your visibility with respect to your surrounds, giving you a fairly good idea of how visible you are at any given stage. Notice the value change as you step into or out of a shadow, or stand up or crouch.”
He experimented a bit by raising and lowering his head, amused by how much a small change in his posture affected his apparent visibility.
“Note, too, that your visibility from one direction is not necessarily the same as from another, hence you will need to take stock of your visibility from all sides, depending upon the situation. A clever operative is always aware of how he appears to others in the field, be they friend or foe. Camouflage paint and clothing can help in an arboreal environment, but your best option, especially in an urban situation is to be aware of the enemy's location and use whatever cover you have to your advantage. Proceed.”
Ottavio studied the space for a while. There were no cameras, no bodies walking about. Somewhere at the back of the facility, a generator began to rumble.
He was about to make a run for it when he noticed at the far end a head slowly sweeping from left to right, and then back again. In an instant his optical display placed an orange square around the head. His eyes fixed upon it. Information relating to the distance and relative location appeared above it as the image within the square enlarged to reveal more detailed features of glasses, brown hair and blue cap.
He lowered himself to the floor and began to crawl to the nearest crate. It was not much and he would be exposed on either side but at least the immediate threat in front of him was taken care of. He reached the crate and tucked himself behind it. The glare of a lamp to his left made him feel strangely uncomfortable and naked. Ottavio carefully raised his head over the edge to watch the sentry at the far end.
His head rhythmically turned to look left to right, right to left, pausing every now and then to examine something more uninteresting on the floor or wall. Every time the head swept the other way, Ottavio wriggled and squirmed his way to another shelter, closer each time to a wall of coiled cable. From there he could take a little time to plan his next move. He timed carefully and sprinted, crouching, over to the wall and hauled himself under some loose tarpaulin.
His ear crackled, this time the voice sounded like Doctor Jung's, “Well done, agent. You have, no doubt, observed the processing unit's friend or foe function, a, um, subsystem to determine the significance of another person in your environment. Experiments with, um, artificial intelligence proved to be costly, inefficient and prone to error. Instead, the new unit uses, um, the brain's own interpretation. Ha! Considering the human brain is already highly geared for reading the attitudes and emotions of others, it is a small step to interpret these signals. Saved us a lot of time, I can tell you. Since you are in a position of cover at the moment, I will take this, er, opportunity to explain some of the functionality.”
“Firstly the term 'friend or foe' is a little misleading. I prefer to call it 'hospitable or hostile' in that not everyone who you deem hospitable is actually your friend, nor everyone who does harm is necessarily an enemy. Rather it is your brain's own interpretation, you see, yes, and this is built up from body language, subtle clues in um, facial features, the way they may talk or comport themselves. In fact we, ah, we gather so much data and process it so blindingly fast that our minds are usually made up in the first second. We did have, um, certain, er, issues with one subject, as I recall. Turned out he had a condition not unlike Asperger's...”
Penelope's voice interrupted, “We are on a clock here, Doctor.”
“Ahem, yes, I shall be, er, brief.”
“As always.”
Jung continued, “So you may notice that, in the field, the highlighting box subtly change color depending on how you are interpreting the person in question. We found that color is a very, um, natural way to associate our feelings towards others. This can help you make decisions about who, um, you can trust, who you should hide from and who you should consider a, er, a threat. Note that it is hardly absolute and discretion must be used. Why, the first operative who had the beta cerebral interpretation friend or foe implant very nearly killed a fellow agent because of a, hum, mild case of, what's it, paranoia fed a positive feedback loop to the point where his own feelings fed off the readings of the unit, ending in a situation where he could happily dispense with his friend...”
“Doctor...”
“Alright, alright. Um, but the moral of the story is, and I can't stress this enough, that is to say, what we can learn, um, is that even though we have eliminated the, um, feedback loop, to an extent, that is, you should be aware that it is an indicator. We hope that it will prove useful not only within a firefight, letting you quickly spot who's who, but also, um, when you might be undercover, performing a covert operation and such. Knowing who you trust, and do not trust, that sort of thing. Keeping tabs on the, er, locations of those around you.”
Penelope rejoined, “Thank you. Very enlightening. Sorry for the delay, Agent...”
Jung sounded hurt, “It was necessary information.”
Penelope sighed, “Doctor we are in the middle... Ah, Ottavio, please proceed. And remember that you may not attack, injure or subdue any opponent. This is about stealth, not strength. Now Doctor Jung...”
The commlink buzzed to a close.
Ottavio shook his head clear and tried to concentrate. Getting past that sentry would take some doing, considering the only other path would be over the crates, and they were stacked four high. He probably could scale the sides easily enough, considering his new myoactuators, but hollow metal containers have a notorious reputation for making a lot of noise. He decided against it, instead thinking of a way to remove the guard from his position.
He peered out from under the tarp and, seeing that the coast was clear, wriggled up to the edge of the cable rolls. The sentry was still there, looking a little bored. The square appeared, still in orange, around him. From this vantage point he could make out more features along with the rest of his body. He wore gray coveralls with black boots. He was seated on small, uncomfortable looking box holding a sub-machine gun. The highlighting box turned from orange to red.
Several options ran through his head, from going back to find another route, to throwing a stone as a distraction, to rigging up some kind of trap with the cable. Dissatisfied with those ideas he looked around for anything that could help. A red light on a metallic box on the wall to his right winked at him. Conduit sprouted from the top and bottom. Wriggling over he followed the conduit with his eyes. They went in a straight line up the wall before splitting into three, each line terminating in an overhead light.
Ottavio tugged a bit at the box, not daring to make too much noise. It gave a little, revealing a set of fuses inside. He grabbed a loose piece of cable and carefully fed it in. There was a blue spark, a pop and the smell of ozone crept into his nostrils.
Two of the overhead lights went out, plunging the area into a gray darkness. Quickly he pulled the cable out, closed the box and wriggled under the tarp.
“Hey!” muttered the guard into a commlink, “He just knocked out two lights! Is he allowed to do that? Huh? Since when? Oh, whatever, just a second.”
The guard grudgingly stood up, cocked his gun and walk to underneath one of the lights, looking up at it in mock wonder.
Seizing the opportunity, Ottavio sprinted as lightly as he could behind him, ducking around the shipping crates, behind a stack of drums. From this point he could see a blue door at the far end. His optical readout indicated it as being eighty four meters away, a short run, but no doubt precarious.
He could hear the guard grunting behind him, “...allowed in the other runs. Well how was I supposed to know? Yes... ah, yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am. Oh, of course, I... yes, at once.”
Footsteps scuffled away.
Penelope's voice, a little miffed, came sighing through, “My apologies, Agent. We do try and make all simulations as real as possible, and I guess this includes hiring monkeys for staff. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to stick with the virtual environment training. Your ingenuity and indirect approach are to be commended. Go on.”
Ottavio scanned about. There was a catwalk positioned a short distance away from which dangled an incandescent light. It led to the roof of a shack, a guardhouse apparently, with poky windows and several cameras positioned on the corners. Crude though it was, it was well situated to observe the room.
He weighed up his options and sidled over behind the barrels.
Before him buzzed a camera, rocking back and forth. It swept passed his location but, being tucked away safely behind the barrels, he avoided detection.
His foot knocked against an innocuous toolkit next to a lunchbox. Ottavio rolled his eyes. It was all too convenient. He was used to these set ups from his earlier training, props that had been placed at various parts of a course to prompt him into action.
He knelt down and opened the kit. Inside was an assortment of tools, including hammers, screwdrivers and spanners. He fished around quietly and took out a pair of side cutters and a long screwdriver.
Something nagged at him. It would be too easy to reach the cables of the camera undetected, and this was not a lesson in how to cut wires, this was about stealth, awareness and observation.
From where he currently hid he could see nothing obvious that prevented him from disabling the other camera. Nothing obvious, but perhaps he should not be looking for the obvious.
He examined the walls and path looking for tripwires, light beams, pressure plates or anything else that might indicate a trap, but there was nothing. Unconvinced, he closed his eyes and listened.
He heard a faint whirring above him.
Turning, he looked up and saw the glint of a lens poking out from a gap high up between two crates behind him, pointing straight toward the first camera in a classic configuration enabling mutual observation. There was no way to get to its cabling, protected as it was between the heavy metal crates.
He squatted again and rummaged through the toolkit.
Smashing the lens with a hammer would indeed disable the camera, at the expense of creating a racket, and if he missed and hit the metal of the shipping container, he may as well ring the alarm himself.
He poked around a bit more and found some duct tape, a lighter and a center punch; there was nothing he could use to remotely disable either camera.
In a flash of inspiration, he grabbed the center punch and used his incredible strength to drive a hole in the side of one of the barrels. Nothing came out. He tried again a bit lower, and goopy black bitumen dribbled from the side.
Ottavio held a spanner in the tar and flicked it at the camera. After a few attempts he managed to spatter enough tar to cover the lens completely. Confident that it was clear to proceed, he waited until the first camera swept away before scuttling up and cutting the cable with his side cutters.
It ceased humming and buzzed to a stop. His commlink squealed, “Impressive thinking, Agent. The barrel was actually meant as a prop, but you have used this to your advantage. A resourceful Agent thinks not only of what is on his person, but what is about him. On that note, another method of disabling the cameras is to use the tools to open the access panel you passed a few feet back and disconnect the cabling.”
“Or failing that, um, you could have used the conductivity of the shipping container to which the camera is attached, and, um, shorted a power cable to it,” added Doctor Jung.
“Quite.”
“Or, and I am yet to try it, but I think it would be possible to, um, use a series of electromagnetic pulses, short range bursts if you like, you know, make and break a circuit to produce an arc. I think if you match the electronic resonating frequency of the camera's circuitry...”
Penelope quickly interrupted, “Yes, yes. Skinning cats and all. Proceed.”
Ottavio pressed himself against the wall of the shack, slid along silently to a window and peered in. The windows were covered in a brown, hazy film, obscuring the guard seated at a desk inside.
He appeared to be sleeping, no doubt playing his part for the 'simulation', although Ottavio could not help but wonder if he was just making light of a boring situation.
He could hear the noise of a camera around the edge of the shack going through its motions, waiting for the sign of an intruder to crop up. Ottavio decided to get this over and done with.
Like a cat he turned the corner, popped past the doorway to the internals and crept underneath the camera.
In a moment he had cut the wires and arrested its humming. He sneaked back to the window and peeped in, noting that several of the monitors were now blank. The guard still snored soundly, so Ottavio moved around the corner and looked toward the blue door.
He saw the faint glow of a laser trip-wire and, confident that it was the only obstacle between himself and his objective, stepped lightly over it and grabbed the door handle. It did not turn. He grimaced, stepped back over the trip-wire and sprinted back to the shelter of the shack.
“Nicely done, agent. You have indeed reached your goal in a solid time, but the mission parameters have changed. The door is locked, as you have discovered. Although undoubtedly you could pick it, or smash it to pieces, this simulation requires that you find the key,” said Penelope, “Even in the simplest of missions the parameters may change at a moment's notice. An agent must therefore adapt to any change seamlessly. So, to save everyone some time and avoid you hunting around in the wrong area, the key is within the guardhouse. Also, if you do sound the alarm, you will not need to re-complete the first part of this course. As always, do not engage the guards or resort to violence of any kind against them. Carry on.”
Ottavio scratched his chin and looked back around the corner to the doorway. It was open, beckoning for him to walk straight through. He crept slowly up to it and looked in.
The guard was slumped in a chair, snoring exaggeratedly. On the wall behind him was a key hook, and upon that hook was a rather obvious looking key with a blue tag.
The flooring of the shack looked wooden and old. In fact it was a veneer of wood over a solid steel frame, but the effect was the same. Ottavio imagined it creaking under the lightest of pressures, making it impossible to get to the keys without waking the guard.
“Simple,” he thought, “But effective. No, there is another way.”
Above the key was a manhole leading to the roof. The catwalk, of course!
He crept back to his spot behind the barrels and looked along the catwalk to the far end. Several metal ladders poked down along its length, each well-lit in the glow of bright safety lamps.
Perhaps he could knock out a light or two, or kill the power. He decided against it, as it could bring attention, and while he knew there was one guard in the guardhouse, there might well be others positioned in obscure locations, ready to sound the alarm should anything strange happen.
He crouched low to the ground, moving along through the shadows to the far end of the room, dodging the downward glow of the safety lights. He stopped underneath the end of the catwalk.
A way above him, he heard footsteps clanking softly on the metal grating. The shadow of a guard patrolling it flickered through the bands.
The thought passed through his mind, which he quickly dismissed, to take the guard down quietly. He decided instead to wait and watched the silhouette as it paced toward the guardhouse.
When he was convinced that the guard was far enough away, he hoisted himself up a crate, scrambled up a rope dangling from a large, rusted pulley and plopped himself neatly onto the catwalk with a faint twang.
He looked over and saw the guard turning back along his route, straight toward Ottavio. He gripped the side of the railing and hurled himself over, and clung to the underside of the catwalk like a gecko, his feet pushing on each railing, and his fingers gripping the sharp edges, and just in time.
The guard had indeed seen something, a blurred flash, and had taken out his flash light. The beam danced around on the walk, revealing only a lonely set of rails and some rusted flooring.
Sweating and starting to feel the burn, Ottavio stayed silent, clinging upside down to the metal rails, praying his fingers would continue to obey him. His mind imagined the metal digging into his skin, but still he held on.
Eventually the sound of the guard's footsteps became louder until they passed straight over him, receding into the darkness around the corner.
Tensing his muscles and preparing himself mentally, Ottavio let go with his left hand, swung smoothly out from under the catwalk and pulled himself back up. Without pausing for breath he began to creep toward the guardhouse. In a trice he had made it to the manhole, and he lowered himself onto the roof.
He flattened himself and poked his head into the manhole. The guard was in pretty much the same position, snoring with a lesser intensity. The key was dangling temptingly on the wall, just out of reach. He tried anyway, to no avail.
Ottavio sat back up and put his feet in the hole, gripped the sides of the manhole and smoothly lowered himself in.
Dangling a foot off the ground, his biceps rippling gently, he let go with his right hand and pivoted himself slowly. He looked much like a ballerina, floating lightly and gracefully in the air, turning easily, supported only by his arm. He reached out and lifted the key from its hook.
Ottavio popped the key in his mouth, grabbed the top of the manhole with both hands and hoisted himself up. The snoring of the guard stopped. Ottavio, convinced he had been made, rolled to a position underneath the catwalk and listened.
“Bloody hell, did you see that? Well you should have! Moved down the hole like a snake, barely made a breath of... oh, yes? Yes, ma'am! Sorry I... But he came like... No, I thought that was the end. Yes, ma'am, at once!”
Immediately the snoring started again, louder and stronger than before.
Ottavio's ear squealed, “Oh, for Pete's sake! Agent, ignore the ape in the guardhouse and make your way to the blue door.”
Penelope sounded more than a little peeved.
“Your performance today has been more than impressive, and while you have discovered many aspects of your new abilities, I do think we have only witnessed the tip of the iceberg.”