. 02

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Chapter 27, Part Two

Date: November 28

Location: 'Site E' Waxahachie, TX

Time: 1205hrs CST

Ellie came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. Heather sat on her bed, watching her get dressed.

"Spit it out, Heather. Your constant staring is unnerving me."

Heather frowned but was not intimidated, "Hallie is due today, and you need to explain to her what went down at the ranch between you and Jare. The argument you both had could be heard all through Bunty and Dave's home."

Ellie turned after putting on her bra. Heather noticed it was the thin Victoria's Secret uplift cup she bought for the cruise. She faced Heather with her fists on her hips. "I knew returning to my team would bring up the past with Jare."

Heather scoffed, "Specifically, you mean to say coming back to a team with Jason Hendrix on it, don't you?"

Ellie's eyes lit with fire as she worked to contain her annoyance, "Damn rights Heather! Why do you think I insisted on 24/7 surveillance everywhere, even coverage in the sleeping quarters? No one on my team is going to screw around or screw up this time."

Heather shrugged and frowned, "It isn't the rest of the team you should be worried about, Ellie. You just better know I will be watching you like a hawk. Hallie should be, too. You are way too vulnerable to allow that man to get his hooks into you again. Has he tried anything yet?"

"Give me some credit, please?" Ellie spat in exasperation. Drawing a long breath and composing herself, she added, "The answer to your question is no. He has not. I went out of my way the first moment we spoke. I flat-out told him our affair almost destroyed my marriage. I told him I expected him to keep his junk in his pants and do the damn job he was brought here to do because too much is at stake."

Heather nodded, "Just make sure Hallie knows Ellie. I know telling the truth will be difficult for you; she is your daughter, and I get that. You will risk losing some of her respect by confiding in her, but you must tell her the truth."

"What time is it," Ellie asked.

"A few minutes past noon. We have to head to the reception station," Heather answered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two exited Ellie's quarters and walked a short distance to the nearest tram platform. They approached the glass entry doors on the platform. The tramcars were similar to airport-type cars, although here, in the underground tunnels, they were scaled down in size.

The supercollider tunnels were originally 10 feet in width and buried several hundred feet underground. When the government decided to reopen and develop the facility for advanced scientific research, the tunnels were bored out and expanded to 100 feet in width. All plumbing, waste, cooling, water, communications, and electrical power were mounted to the tunnel's outer walls and enclosed in color-coded conduits. The facility's designers had incorporated an inner 95-foot wide hexagonal enclosure within the tunnel. Within this inner wall ran a monorail that supported the tram cars. The monorail was the primary means of rapid transit for the personnel moving between the many laboratories and engineering spaces within ten miles of the completed facility. Spaced at intervals of two hundred meters were tunnels bored outward like spokes on a wheel. These corridors led to more spacious enclosures that were 100 x 100 feet square and 30 feet tall. These were intended as supply storage areas, including refrigeration storage for consumables and perishables. Each of these areas had supporting HVAC units to maintain strict environmental control. One such room had been configured to house Evangeline.

All air in the facility was positive pressure and refreshed 20 times per hour, meeting the ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170-2021, Ventilation of Healthcare Facilities. The running joke was, 'A fart doesn't stand a chance down here.'

Ellie and Heather stood silently and waited for a few moments. The speaker on the wall of the platform announced an inbound tram was approaching. The automated system brought the tramcar to a smooth stop. The doors to the car opened. The car's total length was only thirty feet, seating 24 passengers. This car was about half full, with five people disembarking.

One of those disembarking was Katherine Abdulha. 'Kat,' as she preferred to be called, was a mid-30s brunette. Five feet, two inches tall, she carried an athletic build and was plain-faced. Kat possessed the brightest green eyes and sported a broad smile that exuded charm. Her charm camouflaged a confident, take-charge manner. She was one of many on Ellie's team, but as Jared would say, 'She's the Best of the Best.' Kat was no-nonsense and all about the work at hand.

"Ellie," she exclaimed. "We are breaking for a fast lunch; Jason is headed for a meeting on 'Evangeline's' Security Classification Guide (SCG). Tim, DeShaun, and Rehannon will grab some hot dogs from the 'Gut-Truck' and then head to conference room 7 to meet you for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR)."

Ellie nodded, "Okay, that all sounds good. Once I finish meeting my daughter, I will join the team in conference room 7. Tell the systems engineering team that the servers are coming in tonight. I want a full inventory and confirmation of all required components for the main boards. We have one week to finish the system core."

Kat was scribbling on a notepad using a disposable fountain pen pulled from her coverall's thigh pocket. "I've got it, Ellie. I will pass the information on. Anything else?"

Ellie shook her head no. Kat turned on her heels and was off. "I don't know what I would do without her," Ellie said.

Heather and Ellie boarded the tram. The doors closed. A soft-spoken automated voice ran, announcing each of the following three stops, the last of which was reception.

Heather shifted to her day job as Ellie's executive admin. "The team is heading to Houston tomorrow for six weeks of training and a quick break for Christmas before final mission prep at Langley. Then, they'll be back in Houston to give Crossthwaite's operatives the impression we remain clueless about their surveillance. So far, Crossthwaite hasn't tipped his hat," Heather stated.

Ellie sat without words as Heather updated her on Control. When Heather reached a pause, Ellie asked, "How are your kids handling life here?"

"They are in shock. Their lives will never be the same now that they know Mom and Dad have this 'cool shit' part-time job. I think it freaked them out when they met the Director and the Secretary of Defense on their first day here," Heather said, shaking her head.

Ellie grasped Heather's hand. "I hope we can all have a normal life again after this ends."

Heather leaned into her best friend, "Ellie, there is no such thing as a normal life. Let's just be glad we all have a life together."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ellie saw her daughter just ahead at the central receiving desk. Several people were speaking to her. Two men stood out as being older adults. One was well over six feet, and the other was perhaps an inch taller than Ellie. Hallie was engaged in conversation with both men. It was clear she was happy and excited by how animated she was. Ellie caught her eyes scanning, and they locked on her as she approached. She excused herself from her conversation with the two men and ran towards her.

"Mother!" she cried out joyfully. Hallie may have been Annie's twin sister, but that was where comparisons ended. Hallie was five feet seven inches tall and carried herself with controlled grace. She opened her arms, closed the distance, and hugged her Mom tenderly. After kissing her on the cheek, she turned to Heather with a smile and greeting, "Aunt Heather, it's great to see you."

Heather moved in and hugged Hallie warmly. The three looked at each other, smiling. Hallie laughed, "I can't believe this place exists, Mother."

A deep, velvet-soft baritone voice entered the conversation. "Aren't you going to introduce us, Hallie?"

Hallie turned and said, "Oh, forgive my poor manners. Mother, Aunt Heather, I want to introduce you to Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson and Dr. Michio Kaku. Doctors, this is my Mother, Dr. Eleanor Hansen, and her colleague Heather Barsdale.

Dr. Tyson extended his hand to Ellie, clasping hers warmly. "I am very pleased to meet you, Dr. Hansen." Ellie's jaw had dropped like Jared's, and her eyes were star-struck, in complete and utter awe of the two men standing before her. Neil smiled and turned to Heather, accepting her hand while repeating his greeting. Then, he turned slightly to clear a spot and said, "Allow me to introduce my good friend, Dr. Michio Kaku.

Michio Kaku's expression was disarmingly warm. He smiled easily. Ellie sensed a gentle and friendly personality before her. With his usual exuberance, he greeted the ladies, "Dr. Hansen, your research on cybernetics is making waves in our circles. Neil and I discussed that the next age in human history has truly begun."

Ellie smiled graciously as she nodded in acceptance of the compliment until Hallie said, "Mother, you can close your mouth now."

Heather nudged Ellie in the ribs and made a throat-clearing sound. Ellie finally came to her senses, "Gentleman, I can't tell you what an honor it is to meet you. I sincerely hope we can collaborate soon and my project can support yours."

Dr. Kaku smiled, "If it has a tenth of the potential that Neil and I have been briefed on, we will have the Near Earth Orbit (NEO) detection, tracking, and targeting system we need that will be able to autonomously control and correlate the responses of a planetary defense system."

Ellie smiled, "I share your hope, Dr. Kaku. I do share that hope."

Neil and Michio said they hoped to enjoy dinner with Hallie, her Aunt, and Mother. They excused themselves and headed down the corridor together.

Hallie smiled, "Mother, I have never seen you star-struck before."

Heather said, "Hallie, those two men are larger than life. I am excited for you to be working with them." She leaned into Hallie and whispered in her ear, "They don't think I am your Aunt, do they?"

Hallie laughed and shook her head, "No, they don't. They said that to pull on my leg. It may surprise you, but they are both down-to-earth guys despite their stellar public personas. They both share great hope for Mom's breakthrough." Hallie turned again to Ellie, "Seriously though, Mom, this gig is a dream come true."

Ellie finally shook out of her trance. "God, Hallie, you are as corny as your Father. I appreciate the compliment they gave me. Let me show you to our quarters, and then we both need to get to our work."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Date: November 28

Location: Conference Room 7- 'Site E' Waxahachie, TX

Time: 1325hrs CST

Ellie and Heather entered the conference room, riding a wave of excitement at meeting Hallie's two very famous colleagues. The team had patiently waited for them, so the ladies settled quickly into their seats.

Theresa Beach, the lead systems engineer on the design team, immediately lowered the lights and began her brief. The 72-inch display came to life with a sectional depiction of Crossthwiate's ship. "Evangeline's shipboard configuration takes up thirty frames, almost precisely amidships, running for a length of 51.6 meters. The system is housed on two successive decks, equal in dimensions, one directly above the other. The lower deck is configured for high-speed data storage, access, and retrieval. While Ellie planned for Evangeline's entire system on a single level, Crossthwaite's people needed to adapt to the ship's design's limitations. This explains why Evangeline was split across two decks. The system is interleaved with 38-core fiber optics that multi-plex signals in the S, C, and L bands. This is how Crossthwaite's team delivers terabit per second transmission between each section of Evangeline's brain.

Ellie popped her fist on the tabletop, "We couldn't do this ten years ago. Team, the technology finally caught up, and we can move to stage two prototyping. The fiberoptic breakthroughsTheresa alluded to allowed Crossthwaite's team to create the corpus callosum that brings Evangeline's mind together."

Theresa resumed, "Employing 2,400 Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs, each with 128GB of DDR6 memory, enables the virtual three-dimensional mapping of the 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections we initially envisioned."

The upper level consists of eight banks of servers. Each bank has ten individual vertical stacks. Each stack houses four dual-deck racks. Each rack integrates four AMD EPYC 9534 processors supported by 128GB of DDR5 memory, all performing as synapses for the system. It is no surprise how much power this design has to pull. A significant portion is just for the negative pressure pull of the HVAC system, drawing 50-degree air across the main boards and returning it to the ship's air conditioning intercoolers. The upper level is where the real thinking takes place. Three of the eight banks are devoted to cerebral cortex functions. The other banks handle the sympathetic and parasympathetic analogs of the human brain--in this case, the brain of our beloved boss."

Ellie blushed shyly as she shifted in her chair. She was grateful the lights were low and no one could see her reaction. Theresa continued after the briefest pause, "Evangeline is tied directly into the ship's main power system. As configured, the AI draws a nominal 20 megawatts of power to initialize and function. We confirmed that Evangeline can control all ship functions, including navigation, communications, propulsion, and life support." Drawing a quick breath, the engineer continued, stating, "Our analysis indicates that the more Evangeline is asked to do, the steeper her power utilization curve and corresponding demand on the ship's power generation capability becomes." Clicking her pointer, Beach brought up a fact table for the vessel, "This particular ship is three years old and, as designed, has diesel power plants capable of generating 58.2 megawatts of power. At the risk of repetition, I feel the need to remind all that after receiving authorization from the command group, the AI can fully control all of the ship's security and surveillance systems ostensibly intended to ensure the safety of the passengers."

Ellie stood as Theresa ended the initial portion of her briefing to Ellie. The illumination increased as Ellie addressed the team, "If we are successful, we will take back what was stolen from us. It may take us years to understand and reverse engineer all of the hyperthreading code developed by Crossthwaite for the architecture deployed. I am confident that with Evangeline's help, we will succeed. God willing, we will keep the world safer by doing so. Please keep your fingers crossed, put a prayer on your lips, and keep your nose to the grindstone. Thank you, Theresa. Next briefer."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 2210 hours, Hallie was reading from a pad in her bunk when Ellie finally returned to their quarters. Hallie sat up and pulled her covers aside, swinging her legs over the side to bring her feet to the floor. Ellie collapsed onto her bed.

"So, what do you think of the place, Hallie?" her Mother said.

Hallie smiled, "Spartan, but I loved the picture of us at Yosemite six years ago."

"Yes, your Dad and I savored our fun on that trip. It was the best of times," Ellie sighed wistfully.

"Tough day, Mom?" her daughter asked.

Ellie turned her head and smiled, "Certainly was a long one, but I have to get used to them, sweetie. There is a lot of work to do."

Hallie strecthed and stood up. She came over and sat on Ellie's bed. She placed her hand over her Mother's and asked, "What happened between you and Dad when you were working away from the family ten years ago? That project you could never talk about."

"That project is this project," Ellie answered.

"I thought so," her daughter replied. "You were so distant and detached then. Annie and I sensed it. Even if we hadn't, the sadness in Dad's face told us something was wrong between you both. What happened?"

"I had an affair with one of the members of my team," Ellie whispered.

Hallie gasped. She just stared daggers at her Mother. Ellie felt shame and disapproval, turning her head away.

"Don't you dare look away, Mother! You look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. Was this an affair of the heart?" Ellie looked Hallie in the eyes and nodded. "How inconvenient having to come home to your dreary husband, raising your children while you were gone," Hallie said in utter disgust.

Ellie sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. Tears dripping from her eyes. "I have done two horrendous things in my life. The first was losing my first pregnancy through stupidity and utter irresponsibility. The second was my affair with Jason Hendrix."

"Why, Mom? What led you to throw Dad over for another man?" Hallie probed.

"Arrogance, selfishness, and loneliness. Your Father dressed me down when he found out. He told me that he would never have believed me capable of such a despicable act, and of all the things he has ever said in disapproval of something I had done, being called despicable placed me in a basket case of self-loathing--the sheer enormity of opening my heart to someone other than your Dad gob-smacked me. I truly accepted my guilt. I was ready for your Father to kick me to the curb," Ellie said, falling silent.

Hallie filled in the blank, "Obviously, he didn't though. How lucky for you."

Ellie began to rock, still clutching her knees to her chest, "Your Father is the finest man I have ever known. So much more than I deserve. He loves me unconditionally and fights to sustain our love so selflessly. I had foolishly forgotten what a loving man he was. I pledged to recommit to keeping our marriage and love firm. We went for months to couples counseling after he confronted me."

Hallie's eyes had welled with tears, "That explains it. Does Annie know?"

Ellie silently nodded in affirmation, "Needless to say, the project was suspended because I never returned to my team. The effort was shelved because the project could only continue with me. We used the excuse that the technology needed to catch up before we pushed ahead. That was true, but I was the cause of the work stoppage. I rejoined the NASA group I had left, but until recently, I had yet to speak to any of my team again. I later learned the designs had fallen victim to espionage or an insider threat. Regardless, they had been stolen or leaked to some shipping billionaire I had never heard of before.

Hallie moved around and sat with her Mom against the headboard. She wrapped an arm around Ellie, pulling her in, "You fucked up royally. You owned it, Mom, to your credit and worked it out with Dad. Is this why Annie contacted me and warned me storm clouds were building between you both?"

Ellie nodded and leaned on Hallie's shoulder, "Yes, sweetie. I went to great lengths to have Heather here with me. When I found out you were coming, I asked you to share quarters with me. There is nowhere to go where I can mess this up with Jason again."

"Do you think you could be tempted again?" Hallie asked.

Ellie shook her head, "Not a chance in hell, but why put it to the test? Whatever I felt for that man once was just infatuation borne of familiarity and opportunity, all masquerading as love. I spoke with your Dad before coming here. I wanted to reassure him. I told him that was why I had asked the President for a written Executive order allowing us both to retire from federal service early. When this is over, we both are returning to Illinois. To where we first fell in love, the University of Illinois. That is my promise to your Father. It is one I intend to keep."