Doctor Lewis Faber sat on the cold, unforgiving Alaskan ground. He wrung his glove covered hands as his breath condensed into a light fog in front of his reddened nose and cheeks. The sun was beginning to creep down behind the tall trees and mountains.
"You do realize that it's about to drop another fifteen, twenty degrees, sir?" a voice called out behind him. Faber turned back to see his assistant, Pvt. Barrows, walking down the hill behind him. "Besides, I wouldn't want you to get eaten by wolves or bears or something."
"There's not an animal within twenty miles of this place," Faber chuckled. "We're a bit too noisy." Barrows came up to the doctor's side and put out his hand. Faber grabbed it, and the young soldier pulled him to his feet.
"We'll take the cargo elevator," Barrows said as they began walking away. "It's closer." They ascended the hill and then back down on the other side. The scenery was a vast change. Metal grates covered the muddy, leveled ground to the east and created their runway for the cargo planes. Humvees made ruts in the ground as they zoomed back and forth from the makeshift airport to the main building directly in front of them. Lamp posts and metal buidlings cut a gash in the midst of the vast wilderness.
The main building was constructed in the side of one of the larger hills in the area. As the two men approached, they bureaucraticly fished their badges from out of their thick coats and presented them to the armed man outside the entrance. He waved them through as he had done hundreds of times before. They walked through a large cargo door just a few moments before it closed for the night.
"How did the test go?" Barrows asked as they waited for the elevator.
"Excellent. The Legionaire couldn't have performed better," Faber answered. "It both amazed and scared the hell out of them. That's why they cut our funding." The elevator rose up into view. The giant cage doors slid open, and men began moving huge containers of garbage and other waste out.
"I hadn't heard," Barrow said as soon as the news sunk in.
The Doctor nodded. "We start shutting down the complex in a few days. Everything will be loaded up and flown down to Fort Richardson and then to somewhere in the main 48. It'll probably be boxed up and stored in between some tin foil UFO and Gen. Patton's testicles." As the last container was pulled away, both men stepped onto the elevator. The cage doors slammed shut and they began to slowly sink. "They're too afraid of a robot that acts on its own. Apparently, Terminator is a very popular movie in the Pentagon."
"You told me that couldn't happen."
Faber sighed. "It can't. I purposefully designed the software to prevent that. We're not creating sentience. We're creating the appearance of sentience. That's not enough of a fine line for them, though. Hank was right. I should have just created a remote software and let some grunt a thousand miles away control it like some video game." He reached up and pulled the wool sock hat from his head and then ran his hands over his salt and pepper hair to get it to lay back down. "But I had to be brilliant. I had to push the envelope and develop something groundbreaking. So now we get ten years of slaving away on a project instead of five. For what? Just to have it pulled out from under us when we finally get it right."
The elevator came to a stop, and they stepped off. "Do you want to grab some chow?" Barrow asked as the maneuvered down the hallway past the lab.
"Thanks, but I'm not really hungry. You go ahead. I think I'll just go on and start packing."
