Devil in the Moon by James Axler

Author:James Axler [Axler, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dystopias, Action & Adventure, General, Science Fiction, Revolutions, Adventure, Military, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373638345
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2002-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

Concept's subdivisions and spin-off researches were relocated to these redoubts. Chronos was moved to

Chicago and Cerberus was moved to Montana.

The most ambitious COG facility was code-named the Anthill because of its resemblance in layout to an ant colony. It was a vast complex, with a railway, stores, theaters and even a sports arena. Supplies of foodstuffs, weapons and anything of value was stock-piled, often times in triplicate.

Because of its size, the Anthill was built inside Mount Rushmore, using tunneling and digging ma-chines.

The entire mountain was honeycombed with interconnected levels, passageways and chambers.

Erica learned that once construction on the Anthill was completed, the entire Totality Concept program would be moved into it and she was ordered to go along. She couldn't understand why exactly and com-plained bitterly. When the world blew out on noon of January 20, 2001, she ceased to complain. She would be part of the new world order that would emerge from the radioactive ashes of the old.

The prolonged nuclear winter changed ideas about a new world order. Even if the Anthill personnel man-aged to outlast skydark, they would still sicken and die, either from radiation sickness or simply old age.

So they embarked on a radical and daring plan. Cybernetic technology had made great leaps in the latter

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James Axler - Outlanders - Devil in the Moon part of the twentieth century, and Erica herself had made some small contributions to those advances.

General Kettridge, the self-styled commander of the Anthill, ordered operations to be performed on every-one living in the Anthill, making use of the new tech-niques in organ transplants and medical technology, as well in cybernetics.

Over a period of years, everyone living inside Mount Rushmore was turned into cyborgs, hybridi-zations of human and machine. Radiation-burned flesh was replaced by synthetic skin, limbs with can-cerous marrows were changed out for ones made of plastic, Dacron and Teflon.

With less energy to ex-pend on maintaining the body, the cyborganized sub-jects ate less and therefore extended the stockpile of foodstuffs by several years.

Since the main difficulty in constructing interfaces between mechanical-electric and organic systems was the wiring, Erica oversaw the implantation of super-conducting quantum interface devices—or

SQUIDs— directly into the brain. One-hundredth of a micron across, these devices facilitated the subject's control over their new prostheses.

Although Erica herself had designed the implants and oversaw the early operations, she certaialy didn't care for the process being performed on her. She knew the SQUIDs could be used to electronically control the personnel, and she wasn't fond of being turned into a biomechanical drone. However, ske was even less fond of the alternative—euthanasia.

Of course, the transformations didn't solve all of the Anthill's survival issues. Compensation for the natural aging process of organs and tissues had to be taken into account. The Anthill personnel needed a supply of fresh organs, preferably those of young peo-ple, but obviously the supply was severely limited.

So General Kettridge, now calling himself the com-mander in chief, came up with a solution—cryogen-ics, or a variation thereof.

Kettridge was

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