Dr. Ketchum awoke the next morning and had a very boring breakfast in the compound mess hall. Cold cereal and half a grapefruit. Even a thousand miles away from his wife, he couldn't diverge from her strict dietary mandates, despite how much he'd of loved to. His eyelids hung heavy from sleepless night before. He'd spent the last couple of days perusing the file on the newest innovations in design from Dr. Faber for the latest model. Yes, Dr. Faber. Not a machine aping the behavior of the deceased scientist. No. But the real article itself. After all, what was a man other than his thoughts? One might argue that the soul is the essence of man, but who has ever monitored the soul of a person? There is no test to prove how a soul operates the body; but chemically induced electric impulses, those can be measured and studied.
"I can take you to the lab when you're ready," Pvt. Barrows said as he stepped up to Ketchum's table. The doctor nodded and pushed away his tray. He stood and began to walk away. Pvt. Barrows remained standing next to the table. "Sir, no offense, but this isn't an IHOP."
Ketchum stopped. "Hmmm?" He looked and noticed the rest of the men and women around them who had just finished their meals. "Oh. Yes, I see. Sorry." The doctor, feeling a little like a scolded child, returned to the table and picked up his tray.
As Barrows led him down the corridors, Dr. Ketchum kept flipping through his file. He'd wanted to be fully caught up on the project before being introduced to Faber and Little, but so much had been done so quickly that he felt more like one of his students who'd waited until the very last moment to study for a test. They approached the door to the lab and presented their identification and clearances. "Is Dr. Little in yet?" Ketchum asked, still scanning over the pages in his hands.
"Yes, Sir. Dr. Little was already in the lab when I came on duty," the guard answered as he grabbed the handle on the door and gave it a push. With a grunt his shoulder met the thick steel without it budging. "It must be locked." He pressed the button to the intercom. "Dr. Little, please open the door." A few moments passed, and nothing happened. "Dr. Little, this is important. We need you to open the doors." Still nothing.
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The crackle from the speakers made Dr. Hank Little jump a bit. He tried his best to settle his nerves. He was in the process of connecting the very intricate wiring of Faber's digital brain into the new robotic body. The process was very unnerving. Some of the strands were almost invisble to the human eye. It required him to use a surgical microscope and very fine dripping tools to guide the threads into the right ports. He'd already spent hours cradling the brain onto it's dock inside the unit and placing the larger, easier wires into their ports. As the night wore on, the work became slower and took longer as the lack of sleep crept up on his body and mind.
A deep, banging sound rang through the lab. Were they really trying to bust down a steel door a foot thick? As useless an act it was in breaking through to the lab, it was doing enough of a job to distract Little from the task at hand. And there was still much he had to do.
