The Machine of Flesh

Chapter Three: Exponential Gains

ChapterThree: Exponential Gains

July 2nd, 2055

Research and development at the Elite Korps laboratories was exponentially accelerating with each passing month. In the short time between when I first arrived, assumed my duties as second in command and now, we developed and manufactured everything that was once a work in progress prototype. Nanoscopic electrodes, neural nets, exoskeletons, a protosentient artificial general intelligence, the recoil-less weapons systems, the self guided munitions targeting systems, the saline batteries, self powered nanobots and much more. The fifth floor manufactory was in overdrive and without regulatory oversight by the overt government that existed above the underground.

The world we once knew on the outside was stagnant, competing against the world's greatest minds and lacking in degrees of freedom in pursuing exponential gains.

Although the summers in Germany were still sweltering hot, Germany and the greater Reich in the late twentieth century shifted the discourse and ultimately the trajectory of the planet's climate systems towards a human-controlled climate. All weather was in stasis, a glorious equilibrium between the needs and desires of a thousand year Reich and the state of nature. Today, I was going to test the first manufactured set of exoskeletons with Colonel Von Staufen and Karl Von Neumann, although Von Neumann wasn't supposed to be involved with the military hardware, per se. As a private citizen, he had the right to own weaponry, but the right to operate classified hardware and that private right to bear arms were mutually exclusive. Von Neumann told me that the stress of having the state expect of him incredible things was getting to him, so I made an exception for today.

As I finished my pre-duty cigarette in the morning, I thought of Von Neumann and his desire to escape. At this point, I wanted to escape too. The constant pressure of taking nootropic drugs, stimulants and working long hours was getting to me. The exoskeletons we built would be the perfect release valve for the stress we had to face and endure. I made my way to the robotics and cybernetics laboratory to speak to Colonel Von Staufen to suggest that we and Von Neumann go test the exoskeletons in The Black Forest, to release our stress.

Exiting the elevator to the Cybernetics Subsector, the laboratory was in a frenetic flurry of productivity. More schematics, more designs, and more prototypes were being worked on, with their rates of acceleration in productive capacity accelerating. At this point I was losing track of the work orders and production quotas. I was becoming more detached from the actual science of what was being produced and became more like a taskmaster, a master with the whip of the state, a person I didn't want to become.

I saw Colonel Von Staufen at a workbench with a tablet in his hand, documenting the progress an engineer was making by modifying a neural-nanobot interface that augmented the users of exoskeletons with an artificial intranet in the Elite-Korps laboratories. Instead of having the need for a heads up display, the nanobots could literally signal the brain with information quantum mechanically, instantaneously, through quantum entanglement with the Elite Korps servers.

The technological progress of The Elite-Korps was getting out of hand and there was nothing that could stop us, except death from exhaustion and being overworked. As I approached Colonel Von Staufen, I saluted him and he saluted back after seeing me in his peripheral vision. He put the tablet down on the workbench and said to me,

"Good morning Lieutenant Colonel Schriever, I trust that you've taken your daily ration of TPE-49 and you are ready for duty?"

"Yes I have Colonel, but I ask of you one thing this morning.." I said before being interrupted by Von Staufen.

"What would that be Lieutenant Colonel, what do you want to do?"

I smiled at the Colonel and said,