📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 6

In which the mysterious new employer is revealed in a dazzling demonstration.

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The black armoured limousine wound through the soft dappled light of the early evening pine forest. It effortlessly negotiated sharp turns, sudden steep inclines, small glistening streams and the perpetually irregular texture of the compacted dirt road. A big bump in the road sent Marcus’s glasses flying off his nose, but he quickly caught them and pushed them back on, determined to not lose any detail of these mysterious environs into the blur of unaided sight. He noticed the gold watch on his wrist. It felt strange. This was the longest he had ever worn it. But something in him felt that while he was away at the Daedalus Project, it had to stay on his person. The thought of the rumoured gold embargo forcing him to surrender it made him grateful that he had chosen to bring it along, to a place where ivory toggles were nonchalantly worn by hotel staff.

The watch was a 1959 Omega Seamaster with a band of gold-plated links. It had belonged to his father’s father, a retired British colonial soldier who had settled in New York only in his sixties, after decades in the service of Her Majesty’s Royal Engineers in India and Africa. When the second World War had ended, Louis Hamlin had found himself a bridge-building job in New York, and so took himself, his wife and Marcus’s infant father there, for good.

Louis Hamlin had died when Marcus was six years old. Marcus had only vague memories of him. He remembered the form of a giant standing over him, taller than any man around him. But there was no sense of menace in Marcus’s muted recollection. His grandfather was a smiling giant.

Marcus had divorced himself from his parents before leaving New York to take up his first Masters degree at MIT. They had always been irrational people, demanding and feeble-minded. He saw a spark of immense intelligence in his father’s eyes, but it was always behind a thick fog of alcohol, pills and self-inflicted misery; the retreat of a mind from the body of a man who felt he had made his bed and that he must lay in it, till death.

His mother was not as intelligent as his father, but she spoke her mind and in doing so afforded herself the congratulation of having one. By virtue of having a mind, she felt she was entitled to rule over her husband who chose to hide his own. This had gone on long before Marcus was born, and his mother assumed that the same malevolent dominance would function with her son. It did not.

When Marcus left New York and headed for Boston at age eighteen to pursue his destiny of great scientific achievement, he had looked at his father for what he knew would be the last time. He was bloated, his eyes swollen and red, his gaze diffused and distant. He shook his son’s hand, and Marcus appreciated that his father sensed that this was goodbye, though he may not have been truly cognisant of the ramifications. He held Marcus’s hand in his, palm skyward, and placed the gold watch in it. Then followed the only words of deep feeling Marcus had ever heard from his father. “Wear it son. I never truly could. He would’ve been proud of you.”

Marcus wore it for special occasions, but something about it felt too significant to wear in the halls and lecture theatres of the Boston Institute of Scientific Research. It was a medal of honour. Not the honour of his father’s love - he believed his father was too perpetually intoxicated to accurately perceive the virtue in others that was a prerequisite for love - but of his grandfather’s achievements and of those that would one day be his.

Perhaps, Marcus thought, that day has finally come.

The time was 5:17 PM. They had been driving through the forest for over an hour. Marcus’s tablet had begun to function again as soon as the chopper had flown out of sight. The GPS application, however, was still not working, nor was his connection to the cellular network. A little digging behind the operating system, while patiently enduring the rough ride to who-knows-where, revealed to Marcus that something was scrambling his device’s external connectivity.

Marcus’s attention was jolted outward from the cabin when he suddenly felt the jerking and rocking of the forest trail turn into a smooth glide, at which point there was no sound again.

He glanced for a moment at Peter, who still sat straight upright, his eyes closed. Marcus knew he wasn’t sleeping, because his hands remained neatly stacked in his lap, palms upward. Is he meditating? Marcus wondered. He leaned to the window and looked down to see the brick-paved road below the tyres. Marcus’s heart was racing, as he finally looked up beyond the immaculate grassy meadow and saw his destination ahead.

In counterpoint to the irregular barbs of granite mountain peaks in its backdrop stood an enormous structure of stone turrets, timber lean-tos and wood-shingled roofs. The aesthetic of the building reminded Marcus of the Swiss ski-lodges he had visited on his first professorial sabbatical. This building featured unusual intricate adornments of shining gold at the end of each beam that jutted out from the structure’s exterior. Marcus took quick stock of the size of the building. He estimated no less than two hundred rooms, and judging by the repeating pattern of tiny wrought-iron balcony rails he could see along the perimeter of the building, he knew that this was the hotel that Peter Porter had mentioned.

Marcus examined the grounds surrounding the hotel. There were two sloping meadows on the hillside, sliced asunder by the brick road. The meadow to the left was partially guarded by a short stone fence that was being built by several workers. It looked to Marcus like they were planning to house livestock here, as he noticed several concrete drinking troughs along the incomplete fence-line. As the vehicle passed, the fence-builders lifted their heads and hands from their work to smile and wave. Marcus sensed there was an air of excitement about them.

He considered the gradient they were ascending, noting that there was no space flat or clear enough for a helicopter to land. For a brief moment this satisfied his frustration at the lengthy car ride from a distant, disconnected plateau on the other side of the wood. Perhaps it wasn’t just obfuscation, he thought, maybe there’s nowhere else to safely land. Then a moving object in the corner of his periphery caught his attention. He turned his head back to the building before him, and saw a helicopter of identical design slowly, inaudibly, lowering towards a large platform on the hotel’s roof. It was hauling a huge wooden crate by chain, which was skilfully placed on the pad, before the chain was released and the helicopter slowly peeled away into the sky. Marcus saw several burgundy-clad men and women run to the crate as the limousine drew closer to the hotel lobby drop-off, obscuring the helipad behind a turret.

Marcus’s frustration returned. Why not drop me right at the hotel? Was that the same chopper and pilot? Did they have a freight run scheduled that I’m not allowed to see?

As the limousine crunched onto the bricks of the level cul-de-sac in front of the hotel lobby, it rolled around the driveway’s centrepiece, which was an enormous fountain that appeared to be made of solid gold. It looked just like the fountain depicted on the gold crest of the porter’s hat, but instead of spouting liquid gold, this one spouted only water. The spray sparkled even more brilliantly than gold against the hue of a cerulean sky, the piercing evening sunlight striking it and shattering into countless dancing flakes of pure white light. The limousine came to an automatic halt, and Peter Porter opened his eyes and smiled at Marcus. “Welcome to Shangri-La, Doctor Hamlin," he grinned, as if with an exultant joy to be the first to say these words.

Marcus squinted for a moment, the name making him strain to recall the details of a story he had heard as a child. The faint voice in his mind’s memory was that of his grandfather, but the words disappeared as soon as they came. As the porter opened the cabin door and lifted the suitcase out, Marcus stepped out slowly and looked up at the words spelled out above the hotel’s spotless glass door. The letters were cut in brass shapes and were suspended on wooden pegs that thrust them out from the surface of the building and made Marcus feel as if they were running out onto the gravel to welcome him, as a gang of porters might.

The words read: The Grand Majestic Shangri-La Hotel, established 1937.

The gentle mountain breeze was carrying tiny particles of mist from the roaring fountain behind him, leaving his skin refreshed and aroused. The smell and temperature in the air made him feel in his whole lanky body that spring was in full bloom early up here, as if the sun reached this secret paradise first. His heart was bursting with excitement.

An older porter ran out across the gravel to Marcus. It was obvious to Marcus that he was professionally senior to Peter, as his tunic was adorned with golden toggles - not the relatively humble ivory ones his young subordinate wore. He was warm and friendly, and there was a sense of urgency in his step. As soon as he reached Marcus’s side he turned full-about to walk in stride with him, placing his hand on Marcus’s shoulder, urging him to follow the other hand that he held ahead of them in a gesture of welcome.

“Doctor Hamlin, we’re thrilled to have you here. Brother Peter will take your case to your room. Please come with me to the ballroom - everyone is gathered and you are about to hear from your employer, Mr. Wells.”

Marcus was momentarily alarmed by the use of the title brother. It was far too familiar for professional colleagues. Before he could dwell on this long enough to form any conclusions, his attention was captured by the last words of the hurried welcome speech.

Mr. Wells.

He remembered his letter of invitation to the Daedalus Project. Mr. E. Wells… Eli Wells! Marcus was almost certain he had correctly deduced the identity of his employer. It seemed abundantly clear now.

Eli Wells was the supremely famous name in the world of technology. The charismatic genius was a multi-billionaire, arguably the richest man in America. He had carved out a name for himself in the private sector of applied technologies on a large scale. While many of his contemporaries concerned themselves with ideologically small but fiscally lucrative advancements such as smaller tablets and phones, then larger tablets and phones, then smaller but faster tablets and phones, and so on, Eli Wells had always seemed to take the riskier road of grand visions, great ventures, and ultimately, superlative gains.

Eli’s company WellsTech Incorporated had revolutionised the battery and the electric motor, although many of his technologies were still in the lengthy process of attaining government approval to go to market. Marcus had read enough about their pioneering concepts of design and their imaginative reinvention of physical energy to deduce that the last three vehicles he had travelled in were motivated by the batteries and motors of Eli’s design.

They passed through the glass doors and Marcus was led all the way across the red-carpeted foyer, under an enormous crystal chandelier, towards a doorway at the back of the commodious space. The interior of the hotel made Marcus wonder if he had been transported back in time. The building was a relic of a design aesthetic that seemed ancient compared to the cold concrete and steel structures of the Institute. Everything was built of immaculately stained hardwood. Each intersection of timber was decorated with ornate carvings that commanded the eye to trace over every inch, and marvel at the workmanship. The room smelt of cedar and pine, and Marcus found himself surrounded by a bustle of burgundy-clad staffers busily pushing trolleys around with stacks of steaming food-platters and jugs of coffee, as well as various pieces of computer equipment and machinery.

In the corner Marcus saw a black grand piano and he compulsively walked straight to it. Marcus heard the porter’s feet shuffle abruptly to change his own course and follow.

“Doctor Hamlin, excuse me…” the porter called out after him.

“Is that a Steinway?”

The porter finally caught up just as Marcus was lifting the keyboard lid. “Actually, it’s a…”

Marcus saw the inscription before the porter could say it, and he chuckled. Mason & Hamlin.

“Do you play, sir?

“These keys are ivory!”

“Yes, sir, this piano came with the hotel when it was purchased, along with our uniforms. It’s a 1907 model. The original hotel owner shipped it here straight from Massachusetts.”

“Kinda like me,” Marcus mumbled as he depressed the pedal and struck each note of C across the keyboard. Perfectly stretched tuning, he thought, closing the lid and turning back to the porter for instructions.

“This way, sir.”

They continued towards the door at the back. One porter pushing a trolley stopped in his tracks at the sight of Marcus, smiling excitedly at him. Marcus returned the expression, though with more than a little trepidation. He noticed the abruptly halted trolley bob in a peculiar way. Marcus’s eyes scanned down, and he saw that the trolley had no wheels. In fact, it was hovering several inches above the ground with nothing anchoring it whatsoever. Marcus squinted, and pulled his glasses off to clean their lenses and rub his tired eyes. Replacing his specs, he looked again and confirmed that the only thing between the base of the trolley and the floor was a slight rippling distortion of the wall behind it.

Anti-grav platforms! Marcus thought, feeling himself suddenly launched ahead in time to a future he had been reading about and imagining since childhood.

The senior porter opened the ballroom door, and with a generous smile gestured for Marcus to enter. He stepped in and found a cavernous room, with a chandelier even larger than the one in the lobby hanging above an enormous carved wooden bowl. The bowl was filled with something, but Marcus could not make out what. Whatever it was resembled a heaping pile of black sand.

Facing the bowl was a seated crowd of seventy-four restless adults. The room had been configured as a makeshift lecture theatre with two rectangular wings of seating either side of a wide aisle leading down to the centre of the ballroom.

All seventy-four heads turned and stared at Marcus as the door closed behind him. He suddenly felt very self-conscious. Some looked disappointed, as if they were expecting someone else. Some looked thrilled to see him, as if they recognised him. Others looked indifferent, but acknowledging of his presence as if things were now able to proceed.

Marcus scanned over the faces, trying to latch onto something familiar. His vision was hardly trustworthy, especially when he was this weary and a migraine was beginning, but he thought he saw Doctors Hullsworth and Epstein, the famous computer linguistics team, seated side-by-side near the front.

A little further back he saw a face with an unusual expression. He couldn’t make it out clearly, but it felt like loathing. Squinting and stepping forward slightly, he could see the face of Professor Julius Cooper glaring at him without any attempt to mask his malice. Upon recognising him, Marcus laughed silently to himself, and waved with exaggerated friendliness. Cooper lifted his hand in a perfunctory response, but his face didn’t shift.

The seat in the back row of the left wing, adjacent to the aisle, was the only seat not taken, and Marcus promptly sat in it.

“Hi there,” came a friendly, feminine voice. Marcus looked at the woman seated next to him, and he felt a sudden shockwave of nerves, and excitement. He felt as if he recognised this beautiful young woman, but in fact he did not. The smile on her face was warm, and she was exquisite to behold.

“Ally Cole,” she said confidently, offering her small hand to his for a friendly shake. He took her hand, desperately trying to contain his smile to something less than ridiculous.

“Marcus,” he said, suddenly forgetful of his expanded identity outside of this meeting.

She shook his hand firmly. “Marcus Hamlin, right?”

“Right.”

“Ooh, it’s great to meet you. Some people around here say you’re going to be the one to crack it first!”

“Crack it?”

“Yeah, you know, crack the case. You’ll be the one to accomplish our mission. People around here think very highly of you.”

Marcus was stunned, “I didn’t think anyone here knew me, except maybe Julius over there.” Marcus looked up to see Julius still glaring at him.

“Well,” Ally laughed, “if they didn’t know about you before Julius got here, they certainly did after. He speaks very highly of you.”

“Julius Cooper. Speaking highly… of me?”

Ally Cole’s expression turned audacious. “Sure. By how much he hates you!”

“Yeah, that seems more likely. But why would you take it as praise?”

“Julius Cooper is a pompous ass. And as soon as he heard that your name was on the manifest he started a slander campaign against you. He hasn’t shut up for three days about you and your ‘twisted philosophy’.”

“I see,” murmured Marcus, a little unsure as to why this attractive woman was so interested in him after what was no doubt a skilful campaign of misinformation against him.

“Is it true, are you a capitalist?”

Marcus laughed, then nodded.

“And… an anarchist?”

“Well sure, but you may not hold the same definition of anarchy as I do.”

“Oh no, Doctor Hamlin, I most certainly do,” she smiled with even more warmth. “It’s good to have you here, Marcus.”

“Do they really think I’ll crack it? Hang on… I don’t even know what it is!”

“Yes you do. It’s your life’s work.”

Marcus squinted, and realised she was right. “Artificial Intelligence?”

“Yes!”

Marcus nodded, in calm knowing. “Who says I’m going to crack it first?”

She chuckled again. “Julius Cooper does. By his claims of how incompetent you are.”

“Projecting?”

“We’ll see. But I suspect so, yes. The only explanation for his hatred for you is…”

“Communism?”

Her laugh cracked the quiet room open like a chisel under hammer. Noticing the heads turning around her, she smiled sheepishly, and quieted her voice, “…inferiority.”

Their smiles widened in tempo, and her eyes glinted with something that flooded him with pleasure.

Marcus realised that their hands had not parted, and that his eyes had been locked on hers unfalteringly. His chest rippled with warmth.

Suddenly, they fell into pitch darkness as the lights of the ballroom were switched off with an echoing click. After a long moment of staring into blackness, their hands disengaged.

Another voice came over an invisible loudspeaker. “Ladies and Gentlemen, your new employer - Mr. Eli Wells,” the educated English accent blasted from invisible loudspeakers, then reverberated momentarily in the huge unoccupied section of the hall. Marcus recognised the voice as it decayed into silence. It was the voice of Angeli, the Daedalus Project recruitment director.

Is she here? His attention was abruptly caught by a crackle of light ahead of him, beneath the chandelier in the centre of the room. It was in the wooden bowl. It began as a spark, but a spark that became suspended in time. The tiniest twinkle of new light in the otherwise black room, which pierced the vision of every onlooker. As if in chain reaction, a cascading series of flashes followed in the bowl until its contents had turned to blinding white light.

Marcus could hear a low hum emanating from the corners of the room. As it grew louder the countless tiny lights rose out of the bowl and with a steady and purposeful swirling motion, each on its own decisive course, reorganised themselves into a glowing sphere floating one metre above the bowl it had first sat in. As the form of the sphere took shape, the last grains of light were pulled by some invisible force upward from the bowl, like straggling school children late for class. The process looked to Marcus like a giant teardrop falling in reverse, upward, ending in a perfect globe of pure white light, but diced into a million pixels, as if no matter how clearly suggestive this likeness of a sphere was, its whole could never be more than the sum of its many individual parts. The sphere completed itself in mid-air, moving in a slowly rotating vortex, producing the sense of a tiny planet spinning in space.

A hologram? Marcus considered, but this is different. Marcus had seen primitive trapezoidal projections onto glass used in many experiments at the Institute. As a child he once watched a magic show with his grandfather that stunned the audience into believing that the magician could clone himself and fly over them in his grand finale. But even five-year-old Marcus was able to deduce that there was some sort of two-dimensional film that the image was being projected onto. It was merely an optical illusion.

Here in the darkened ballroom, Marcus knew this was something else. There was no smoke, no sheet of film, and no discernible source of projection. There was, however, the strange hum that was slowly growing in intensity, and was probably only audible to Marcus, whose ears had always been unusually sensitive.

The crowd of curious minds sat in silence as the orb suddenly extinguished its light. A moment later, it cycled through what appeared to be a system boot-up. It flashed red, then green, blue and golden yellow. The globe’s surface turned into a strangely stretched likeness of a human, with textures and colours of skin, hair, a pair of elongated eyes, some navy blue cloth, some apple green cloth, and some indistinguishable elements. It was as if a human had been steamrolled then pasted onto the surface of a ball. It was grotesque, especially when the eyes blinked and a distorted pair of lips moved and a voice was heard.

“Are you guys getting me there?” said a confident, youthful voice through the loudspeaker. Marcus saw the ball creature’s lips move in tempo.

Angeli’s voice responded, “Just a sec, Eli, hold on.” As the blinking, twitching spherical abomination suddenly began to lose its integrity and its tiny luminescent floating pixels moved outward from one another, each unerring in its direction.

In the span of a few seconds, the tiny grains of varied colour and luminescence had reordered themselves into the distinct and fantastically tangible form of Eli Wells, standing on the floor of the Grand Majestic Shangri-La Hotel’s ballroom, looking around with a triumphant grin. The only element that told of this projection’s illusory nature was its glow in the empty darkness of the room. His light reflected on the faces of the scientists seated nearest to him, and on the polished timber floor of the hall.

The room was silent for a moment, as Eli slowly stepped around himself in a circle, demonstrating his three dimensional form. He returned to the front with a smile and spoke, his voice unnaturally loud and clear through the hidden loudspeakers. “Hi folks. I’m Eli.”

The room burst into a roar of applause, with a number of sighs, laughs, moans of disbelief, and exclamations of awe.

Eli nodded towards the door of the ballroom, and with an echoing click, the chandelier and the ceiling lights activated, spreading even light around the edges of the decadent timber-lined ballroom. Marcus squinted for a moment in automatic defence against the blinding light from above, then he looked at Eli Wells walking down the aisle of the room. Walking towards him.

In the enveloping brightness of a well-lit room, this projection coming his way no longer cast its own light outwards. It seemed to be a normal human body, and for the briefest moment Marcus wondered if it was a party trick, or an act of another magician’s flamboyant sense of drama that had brought the real flesh-and-blood body of Eli Wells into the room with the ignition of the ballroom lights.

As Eli stepped closer, Marcus noticed that the shadows cast on the people around him, and on the floor and chairs, did not match the shadows that moved and rippled over the body of Eli as he walked. It was as if he was the subject of an oil painting from another time and place, sliced with great care from his canvas, and pasted onto the photograph of this room in the here and now.

Marcus could see Eli’s eyes locked on him. He could feel an implausible person-to-person connection as their eyes met. There was a sharp confidence in Eli’s eyes, that matched Marcus’s mental image of him from the magazines and science journals.

“Doctor Marcus Hamlin,” Eli said, though his voice emerged from a direction other than his lips, echoing through the chamber for too long to seem human. “Welcome to the Daedalus Project, we’ve all been anxiously awaiting your arrival so that I can begin the first project briefing.” The projection held out his hand in a gesture of friendship and Marcus rose to his feet. All eyes in the room were on him. Marcus looked at him, feeling with a sense of unease that the eyes that looked into his really did see him.

He was unsure how to proceed. Standing so close to this projection, Marcus was able to gather more observational data. It can move freely. There is no external projection, though the hum seems to fluctuate in amplitude as he moves. The frequency holds, though. Sixty-four Hertz, he estimated, making a mental note to measure it sometime with the oscilloscope app on his tablet.

“It’s okay. Shake my hand," the distant voice of Eli said softly, with a knowing smile.

Marcus capitulated. As his hand met Eli’s he curled his fingers to squeeze the flesh of the man he had wanted to meet his whole adult life, but the hand of Eli crumbled under his grip and disappeared, leaving Marcus holding a handful of firm, cold, illuminated grains that felt like tiny ball bearings.

The grains are the source of the projection! They must be emitting their own light, and following some kind of magnetic suspension matrix to shape into his image, Marcus thought, as his eyes scanned over the hologram of Eli. Eli was watching Marcus’s face intently, smiling, and nodding slightly, as if to approve of Marcus’s inner monologue.

There was a faint collective gasp in the room, followed by a silence. As Marcus adjusted the pressure and position of his hand to roll the cool grains in his palm – a gesture that had no effect on the now severed wrist of Eli’s hologram – he wondered how much force would be required to turn this image of his employer to dust on the floor: A strong breeze? An electromagnetic pulse? A voice command?

Eli’s smile widened, and as Marcus reactively released his grip, the tiny balls inside his hand expanded outwards and reasserted their original form; that of a living, moving palm with five long elegant digits protruding out from it.

Eli shook his hand in the air, his fingers flapping about and slapping into each other. He hunched over slightly. “Ouch!”

The crowd murmured with uncertainty, until Eli snapped his body into a tall and straight posture, held his hand up in the air and called out, with a smile. “Just kidding, just kidding!”

The crowd laughed awkwardly, and Eli threw a wink to Marcus as if to say thanks for playing, old boy, as he walked back up the aisle to the front of the makeshift lecture hall, and began his long-anticipated explanation.

“Welcome, everyone,” his accent was elegant, educated, Queen’s English. “It would not be conceited of me to say that you all know who I am, and you know my face. Right now I am standing in a large empty room in my building here in Lincoln. I am speaking to you through a new experimental system of holographic projection that I call Real-time Anti-Gravity Diode Suspension. Or, RAG-DOS for those of you with a speech impediment.”

The crowd chuckled softly.

“It is essentially a motion capture system, but with lightning-fast bi-directional transmission. The lag is so minute it would take an AI to be bothered by it,” he paused to examine the faces of his scientific team. Many of them inched forward in their seats at the mention of AI. “Yes, we’ll get to your job here, and yes, as you all guessed, it is AI-related, and I don’t mean that machine learning software gimmickry that’s flooded the market for more than a decade!”

There was a murmur from some areas of the group as some of the scientists whispered excitedly to each other.

“With the RAG-DOS system, I can see you all as well as you can see me. Let’s talk about this hologram first,” he said, gesturing up and down his own body. “I’m sure you all noticed the pile of what looked like poppy seeds in this wooden bowl as you came in. This is a collection of about twenty-five million LEDs. Now these are no ordinary diodes. They have been manufactured by some of the most cutting edge production machinery ever built. Each diode, though only a metallic filing as far as the naked eye can see, contains four colour super-emitters and an electromagnet which is connected to a zero-latency ultra high-band transceiver tuned to its own unique frequency.

“In the corners of the room are four magnetic control emitters - you may have heard their hum when they were activated,” he looked at Marcus again, as if he knew that Marcus was the only one who had heard it. “These are ported into a single dedicated processor which is running through my own private satellite network, to me down here in Nebraska. The emitters produce an electromagnetic field in the room, forming a sort of three-dimensional grid. Each of my twenty-five million little Poppy Seeds here responds to the field created by the emitters. And so they float around the room in the magnetic field, and make whatever shape the emitters tell them to. That also includes what colour they should emit, and at what luminosity.

“The image they get is coming from the three-dimensional scanners I have in the room that I’m in. These scanners are watching me walk around in here, gathering the required data of my position, the colours of my skin and clothes, where the shadows and light fall across my body, and they are sending that visual data stream into space and back down to the processor in the ballroom there at the hotel. The emitters make my Poppy Seeds configure into a pattern that should rather resemble me!”

There was a pregnant pause.

Eli looked around at his team of scientists, his face expectant, “It’s okay, guys. You’re right. It is freaking amazing. You can clap if you like!”

With a collective exhalation and a few polite chortles, the scientists applauded obediently.

“The last piece of the puzzle is how I can see what is happening in the room you guys are in. Well, you can’t see them, but I am wearing two cutting edge contact-lenses that act as a HUD. They serve as a parallel transmission system. You see, two of these Poppy Seeds are extra special. Instead of emitting light, they receive it. They are ultra-high-resolution, high-sensitivity microscopic camera lenses and sensor chips, and they float among the pack of their light-emitting buddies. They are specially programmed to recognise a human subject’s eyes, and position themselves in the centre of them. So, right here.” He held up two fingers. “These illusory eyes you see, really are watching you. I get two disparate video streams back to each side of my HUD lenses, so the result is I get a stereoscopic image of whatever my hologram is seeing there. I can control additional display parameters with programmed blinks, and when I deactivate the RAG-DOS system, the virtual space ceases, my lenses go clear and return me to my actual space. I can even set the opacity of the virtual space I receive so that I don’t walk into a wall here in my mo-cap room. Don’t worry, they’re padded!” He smiled, eliciting another laugh from his entranced audience.

A peculiar feeling washed over Marcus. It was the feeling he had wished for at the magic show at age five. The silent plane and helicopter, the driverless limousine, the anti-grav trolley, now this. This was the magic Marcus had yearned to be part of his whole life. He realised the feeling was euphoria, and he turned and smiled at the beautiful Ally Cole beside him.

“This is about as there as I could possibly be without being... there,” Eli continued. “It’s bi-directional, three-dimensional, fully immersive real-time virtual reality, and it’s the future of communications on Earth.”

The crowd applauded again, as if now knowing the rhythmic pauses of Eli’s speech well enough to perceive when he expected interaction.

“But this is just a toy. Just a hobby project of mine. It’s not why we’re all here, though perhaps it can be part of our project – one day. I appreciate your faith, and your trust, and your willingness to take an unclear offer on the basic premise that here at the Daedalus Project you will be free to use your mind fully, without limitation of finance, or resistance of politics, to unleash the greatest achievement mankind will ever produce.”

The crowd was silent. Eli quietly chuckled. “Hyperbole, you might think? We shall see,” he walked in a slow arc around the front of the crowd, his face serious and downturned, as if considering his next words carefully. He stopped and turned to his team, and spoke gravely. “We’ve got every gadget and tool we could reasonably need. Technology today would have scared the living daylights out of the wealthiest and most advanced man only five decades ago. The future is here. But still… war looms. Hunger and famine abound. Violence and crime are on the rise. Our technology hasn’t helped us evolve beyond our animal instinct for greed and violence. We need help.”

Marcus watched many of the scientists in front of him nodding.

“Artificial Intelligence is next, right?” Eli continued, to more intense nods in response. “And look, I’m not here to waste your time developing an AI that can manage a social media account, or demonstrate a preference of blue, over red, or have a polite chat about the weather, or help you edit your book or impersonate a world leader! These gizmos have come and gone, they’re historical novelties, but they aren’t what we are here to do. We’re here to propel humanity into its next evolutionary step, and to find the answers to the flaws in our very nature.

“The WellsCell battery that I invented twelve years ago revolutionised portable rechargeable energy for everyone. Gone are the days of plugging your phone – or your home - into the old grid. It charges itself perpetually from all the heat, light and movement it absorbs while in use. It always draws in more than it expends. And, it made me a fortune.

“With that fortune, I bought this majestic hotel and the mountain on which it sits, ten years ago. This place was forgotten by time. It’s not on any maps. We spent five years tunnelling out the rocks below and we have built the most advanced laboratory facility for you to use, in total seclusion. I don’t care if I have to spend my entire fortune and ruin myself, as long as we can get the job done. There will be no politicking to disrupt you. No budget restrictions. No distractions. I have tried to create the ultimate setting and conditions in which to perform miracles of science. And now, with you all here, we have the minds. The seventy-five greatest minds on Earth, and I say that with no equivocation. There were no second-choices. Everyone on my A-list was invited, and everyone made it along. The team is complete, and collectively we form the most powerful brains-trust ever assembled.

“We have but one task, and I expect it will take years, but as each of you already know, your patience and commitment will be rewarded handsomely. It is my hope that no one will leave this place until we have reached the singular goal of the Daedalus Project.

“The legendary Daedalus conceived of the masts and sails that carried the fleets of Minos across the world, and created statues so life-like that they possessed self-motion. He transformed himself and his son into more than just earth-bound men. They became flying supermen! In the spirit of the improbable achievements of a mind like his, our mission here at the Daedalus Project is one that will undoubtedly propel humanity into its next quantum leap of evolutionary growth.

“We are going to create the first fully sentient Artificial Intelligence. We are going to invent a living mind.”