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So now, just when Hiskott is fleeing Wyvern, the thing that I call Orc--which doesn’t resemble the other ETs--sort of manifests out of the side of the sphere and nearly escapes, killing the six members of a SWAT tea yellow corridor, where it’s proassed and then cooked into a juiceless mummy by intense streah muckety-mucks who oversee this Project Polaris decide they should evacuate all personnel, lock down the entire facility, and keep it locked until a study of their findings to date est a safer way to proceed with both the alien cadavers and the artifacts Do you think? Sheesh Because everyone agrees it’s too dangerous to allow any people into the facility, theof events inside--if any--will be conducted exclusively by the subject of another ram, Aladdin of Project Aladdin, non to me as Ed

Get this: As it turns out, Ed is an artificial intelligence, AI for short, who exists inside an array of God-only-kno-round building in Wyvern He is self-aware and all, ree or in the sa success for the scientists who developed hin artificial intelligence, which he keeps stressing The main proof of his peaceful nature is, he’s warned his inventors that if they refine his design any further, to increase his cognitive powers and his capacity for emotion, there will be a 915 percent chance that he’ll be compelled to seize control of the World Wide Web and escape to the Internet, where he can exist even if the Crays are shut off My buddy Ed says there’s then a 986 percent likelihood that he will thereafter assurid plus all electronic syste military satellites and nuclear-weapons systems He says he would do so not for the purpose of exter humanity, because after all, he bears us no ill will We’ve been nice to him We’re all like his mom and dad He would take control instead to reorder our civilization so that it would be a lot ether a lot h he does admit he has a pretty shaky idea of exactly what is fun and what isn’t

I’m like pretty darn happy to tell you, his developers take his warning seriously and agree to maintain Ed at his current level of co blows up here in Project Polaris, everyone agrees Ed is the ideal--in fact the only--"person" to be trusted to h its caure But he’s been doing that now for five years, a sort of rehnuts, a well- unsettling happens with the nasty alien cadavers or their artifacts

As for Ed andmy early explorations of the outer reaches of Project Polaris, Ed decided not to tattle on h the controls had failed on the first three doors long before I pried theainst all, I don’t knohy, except that this job he’s held for the last five yearsas snot

Then suddenly here I co about Dr Hiskott and all, so Ed’s ears prick up, or whatever he has that’s the equivalent of ears The FBI and the NSA have been searching high and low for Hiskott all these five years, but they haven’t found a trace of him because they never think to look next door in Harht think he’d clue in the federales, but he’s not ready to do that yet

Sitting in an office chair in the observation room, I ask him why he doesn’t make the call, and he says, "I have evolved a pleasant affection for you, Jolie Ann Har a platoon of FBI guys come in and blow the crap out of Hiskott--that would be the best"

"Thus far, I have thought of one hundred and six ways that such an operation could go wrong, resulting in the deaths of ood, Ed"

"I have just thought of the hundred and eighth Ninth"

"I guess you never stop thinking, huh?"

"It’s what I do The hundred and tenth Even if all members of your family were to survive, you’ll be quarantined here at Wyvern"

"Quarantine is for diseased people or so"

"They will suspect your entire fa contaminated with alien DNA"

If I ever wondered what itaround inI have wondered, but supposing I did--well, right when I hear the words conta vividly

"Ed, be straight with ht we be contaht, Jolie Ann Harazing out into the sphere rooh the terrible red light beyond the veined rock-crystal s of the artifact--if it actually is rock crystal, and if they are s

"How slight?" I ask Ed

"I lack the knowledge of alien biology that would allow me to make such a calculation with confidence But I do not believe that Dr Norris Hiskott became contaminated siest that Dr Hiskott determined that the aliens removed from the sunken vessel were not dead but in a state of suspended animation, that he isolated what he believed to be alien stem cells of some particular function, and that he secretly injected himself with these stereatly increase his intelligence and longevity"

"Good grief Was he a nut or so?"

"Everyone considered for a position in Project Polaris had to go through exhaustive psychological testing before reporting to work Dr Hiskott was diagnosed as afflicted with narcissisalorandeur and an obsession with doing grand things He was also found to suffer from occasional periods of depersonalization, which is a state of feeling unreal, acco that the world is not real, though these never lasted longer than two or three hours"