CHAPTER ONE
Dr. Benjamin Austin was a brilliant man who seemed to have everything he'd ever wanted. As a tenured professor at Cal Tech, he had the dream job. As one of the school's top researchers, he had the freedom to do most anything he wanted. And as the husband of BethAnne Austin, he also had the most gorgeous woman in the state of California as a bride and lover.
And she really was the most gorgeous woman in the state, having won the Miss California title as an 18-year-old undergrad at Berkley and then, after meeting and marrying the brilliant young doctor, she won Mrs. California three years later.
It was a joke mostly. Ben encouraged her to do as she pleased, as long as she was true to him and their marriage. And she most certainly was.
Some 12 years into their marriage, she had never been with another man, or woman, since they met at an art exhibit in San Francisco one summer night, sparking a romance that had the academic-social circles from Pasadena to Berkeley in awe.
They would become the "it" couple, and that included some of the most famous power couples in all of Hollywood. As the years went by, the Austins would throw parties that rivaled anything from Mulholland Drive to the Hearst Castle.
They were the top of the A-list, and their friends included everyone from the Gates and the Bezos to Johnny Depp and Brangelina. The faculty of Cal Tech was uneasy, but the donors were mesmerized. Dr. Austin and his trophy wife were the conduit to the financial and societal captains of industry and entertainment.
They could do no wrong.
So when in summer and fall of 2020, during the peak months of Covid, as the parties all but ended and the endowment cash river slowed to a relative trickle, the federal government showed up at the Austins one evening in the form of a top-secret folder that was delivered by a courier in a long, black limo that slipped into the gated coastal community of Santa Monica, where they had decided to quarantine during the lockdown.
The folder was placed against the massive oak front door, and by the time the Austin's butler answered the ominous doorbell and found the folder in the doorway, there was no sign of the limo.
"Dr. Austin?"
James walked slowly onto the outer deck that overlooked the Pacific Ocean where the Austins had spent almost every evening together since April. The view was breathtaking, an uninterrupted view of the water from a rocky cliff where the "beach house" perched, ocean breezes constantly blowing salt air through the sheer curtains, billowing BethAnne's white sundress and blonde hair, the evening sun nestled on the horizon like a fireball in an orange sea.
They were startled from their reverie, both setting their martini glasses onto the table between them and turning around, facing their butler with sunglasses covering looks of concerned curiosity.
This had to be important.
"What is it, James?" Ben asked, his head cocked slightly, his brow furrowed as the butler walked tentatively through the curtains and handed the professor the manilla folder.
Just as he took the folder, Dr. Austin's work phone rang, something else that hadn't happened all summer.
"What is it, hon?" BethAnne asked as Ben looked at the caller ID and took his sunglasses off.
Without saying a word, he walked through the curtains, answering the call in a low voice.
"Yes?" he said, walking toward his study and closing the door behind him.
Three hours later, he walked out as his wife looked up from a magazine on the large white couch in the den. Ben had an odd look on his face.
"Babe?" she asked, not sure what else to say.
Ben looked at his wife, his lips pursed, no expression on his face other than somber seriousness.
"We need to pack, babe," he said in a monotone that sounded miles away. "Something's come up."
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Life in Pasadena was different from the easy beach life, especially in the strict California lockdown. The streets were deserted. The stores empty except for workers filling grocery carts with items from online lists. A ghost town from the empty Rose Bowl stadium to the empty campus at the California Institute of Technology, where inside an otherwise dark laboratory sat a white-coated professor of Cognitive Robotics and Computer Science hunched over a microscope with a single light beaming over his head.
Dr. Benjamin Austin was for all intents and purposes, the only man alive except for the five black-coated armed men stationed at every entrance to the ultra-secretive Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence.
A computer spat out constant streams of information and conversations from other labs scattered across America and every NATO nation on earth. To the right of the microscope lay the open manilla file, its wax seal broken and a single document shining in the light.
"For Your Eyes Only"
Dr. Austin,
This is a matter of international interest and must be kept an utmost secret.
As you know, your research the past year has been of a delicate nature.
We are finally prepared to go through with all plans at due course.
Operation Vulcan is a go. Repeat. Operation Vulcan is a go.
Admiral Stanley R. Manning
Director of Military Science
National Atlantic Treaty Organization
Brussels
Austin has indeed been working feverishly on a project he'd only hinted to his wife was about something she had no concept of. In truth, he was one of hundreds of scientists, robotics experts, military advisers and brilliant doctors from every field of technology and neuroscience who had been preparing for something that once seemed a fantasy of dreamers.
They were building a man. A living, breathing humanoid with senses and identity, a man of perfect dimensions, demeanor and intelligence. They were building a superman.
In the months leading up to the pandemic, NATO received startling and earth-shaking information. China was also building such a man. But their man was no intelligent and debonaire dream being but instead a stone-cold military killing machine.
Project Vulcan was no longer under the control of men of science but under full control of the industrial-military complex of a select few nations within NATO on a need-to-know basis.
The world was changing in dark labs across four continents. Dr. Austin's work was the most delicate and dangerous of all. He was in charge of something no other scientist or techno wizard could even imagine.
It was the project of Benjamin Austin to create a central nervous system for a "man" of feelings, nuance, abstract imagination and moods. He was in charge of creating a man in full.
CHAPTER TWO
BethAnne Fawcett was born in Hollywood, the daughter of an American actress who died young and left her only child with the grace and natural beauty of a model and the money of a princess. She barely knew her father, or at least the man she assumed was her father.
She was sent to private schools, briefly studying abroad before coming home to go to college at the University of California. BethAnne studied art and literature with no apparent dream of using her education for anything beyond an MRS degree. Her field of study was men.
She had her pick, and she was indeed picky, dating football players and debate team members, young heirs and young professors. They were all basically the same, rich, enabled, confident and handsome specimen with more brawn than brains, all interested in the same thing - getting into the pants of the prettiest and sexiest girl on campus.
And one other thing. They were all madly in love and pathologically jealous.
She witnessed countless arguments and fights over her, entire fraternities going to wars over one woman, a modern-day Helen of Troy, who had the face that launched a thousand ships.
BethAnne Fawcett had the face, the body and the sex appeal that launched a thousand hard-ons and ejaculations like liftoffs, mostly in dorm rooms and frat houses of guys she didn't even know.
She was tall and tanned, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who knew she was beautiful and used it to her full advantage. She had the features of her mother, angelic yet wind-blown, a California girl with the bloodlines of a Texas beauty queen.
In the summer of her junior year, at the encouragement of her sorority sisters, she entered the Miss California contest having never stepped onto a stage in her life. She won going away, reading a dramatic passage from Homer's "Oddysey" an oration in a perfect West Coast accent interspersed with a few memorized lines in the original Greek.
The swimsuit competition was the deciding factor though, that and the fact that she figured out which judges held the most sway, flirting with them and legend has it, fucking two of them in the presidential suite of the Orange County Hyatt Regency the night before the competition.
She returned to Cal a living legend, dated the quarterback until he was drafted in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft and then dropping him the weekend he reported to training camp in God Knows Where, Wisc.
The very next weekend, at an art exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she was introduced to a young grad student from Cal Tech, a striking man with dark features and a mysterious look in his eyes, the look of deep intelligence and natural charm. She was intrigued. He had no idea who she was.
They walked through the exhibit looking at paintings by Gunther Forg and Albery Oehlen, sculptures by Antony Gormley and Louise Bourgeois, drinking wine and taking turns interpreting and making fun of the serious works of modern art.
"That looks like a dead flower," BethAnne said of one painting.
"More like a dying strand of DNA," Benjamin said.
She took his hand as they laughed, she pulled him from exhibit to exhibit, teasing him along the way.
"You really don't know who I am?" she asked playfully, both impressed and astonished that people outside her insular orbit didn't know the gorgeous young Miss California from Berkeley.
More than once he stopped her and looked long and inquisitively into her eyes, then shrugging.
"Nope," he said. "Nothing."
She squealed and pulled him along, drinking glass after glass of wine before he finally stopped her and said solemnly, "Listen, BethAnne. I have a class in the morning that I can't miss."
She looked at him as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously," he said.
The smile left her face for a second.
"You can't just skip? You're nowhere near Cal Tech anyway.
"No," he said. "It's at Berkeley."
