Never You Mind, Death Professor
September 9th, 2022
September 9th, 2022
Deep in the forests of eastern Washington state, a lone security booth sat in the middle of a long and winding country road; it was one of the more well-maintained roads this far outside of Spokane, though only after the first mile past the highway exit. The exit itself was only indicated with signage small enough for the average person to miss when tearing up the highway:
DEVCAMP - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
An unremarkable sedan pulled up to the booth, the man inside reaching first to turn down the jazz album he’d been listening to, before rolling down his window. From it he held out an ID card, and waved politely to the security guard as he caught the man's attention.
“Morning, Dave.”
“Morning, sir!" A feigned look of frustration crossed his face, followed quickly by a genuine smirk. "Now wait a minute, I thought you were the boss - what are you doing coming in this early?”
The security guard slipped the ID card into a small reader on his desk. DR. IAIN SYCAMORE - PROJECT DIRECTOR appeared on a nearby computer screen, along with a photo and a small green check mark of approval.
The guard handed the card back to Dr. Sycamore, who offered a friendly smile and a shrug in return.
“Oh, if only! It’s a big day today. I can’t say much but-”
He leaned out of the window slightly, putting a hand next to his face as he sarcastically imitated a whisper.
“Personnel reviews!”
The guard rolled his eyes, and nodded in understanding. Pushing a small red button on his desk, the nearby gate rolled aside as a set of steel posts slowly lowered into the ground behind it.
“Of course! Gotta catch your people before they take off for the weekend, huh?”
“Right you are!” Sycamore shifted his car back into gear.“Take care, Dave.”
“You too, doc!”
There was at least another mile of road before forest gave way to a large clearing, another checkpoint, and the expansive complex that was the Janus-Hayes Research and Development Campus. Once a decommissioned missile base, it was now a sprawling collection of monolithic, brutalist structures housing dormitories, storage facilities, and data centers. Of them, only the buildings dedicated to housing had windows outside of their security booths and lobbies. This was only part of the facility - underneath, in what were once missile silos, housed several blocks of laboratories too sensitive to leave exposed above ground.
As Sycamore parked in front of a squat, two-story office building, he noted the buzz of activity across the campus. A large transport truck was backing a sealed cargo container into a secure storage building nearby. Sycamore noted the familiar presence of the project’s armorer walking alongside the truck and loudly directing it past the open set of blast doors and into the warehouse. Further afield, he noticed Dr. Falk and Dr. Corvi watching a set of drones buzz through an obstacle course of pylons, seemingly without much input from the young engineers.
Walking across the parking lot, he paused momentarily as a pair of technicians in coveralls crossed his path in a golf cart. The passenger clutched a cooler covered in hazard labels, locking eyes with Sycamore briefly. The driver barely paid any mind, as they carefully avoided any irregularities on the path to one of the below-ground labs.
Letting out a content sigh, Sycamore couldn’t help but feel pleased at the sight of it all.
Months of effort were finally coming to fruition. In the last few weeks, he’d practically tasted the excitement in the air. From the technicians to the leadership, in every division he’d noticed a palpable sense of urgency. Most of them had no idea of the full scope of the Project, by design. The tasks in front of them were complicated enough without ethical quandaries weighing on them all. For the most part, the logistical personnel were the kind of agreeable, highly conscientious individuals who were willing to overlook the clandestine nature of the Project if they were appropriately rewarded, which they were.
Those who were cleared to see the full scope of the Project knew enough to respect the gravity of the situation, and could infer the cost of breaking their silence. Some saw their work here as an opportunity, others as a burden. Most, he suspected, tried not to think beyond their immediate objectives.
Sycamore didn’t have that luxury. He saw a world on the brink of annihilation, pushed closer and closer by shortsightedness and greed. No one knew the enemy within well enough to defeat them. That was his problem to solve. Most would call it an impossible task. Sometimes he believed that, too.
His fingers tightened around the handle to his briefcase, as the brief moment of levity fell from his face. It was too early to celebrate, even as much as he wanted to revel in small victories.
The central office that had been set aside for the Survival of the Fittest Project didn’t have anything approximating a reception desk, but it did have a particularly attentive administrative assistant. An energetic young woman, she’d taken it upon herself to decorate the staff lounge, turning it from a windowless, threadbare limbo into a genuinely inviting space to rest and reflect. Faded beige walls had been re-painted a warm, deep red and the plastic furniture had been replaced with a set handmade by a carpenter in Spokane. Sycamore suspected the changes had come from a period of prolonged boredom on her part, but he appreciated having a more inviting space to fetch himself a cup of tea.
Turning away from the kitchenette, he noticed her walking down the nearby hallway, making a beeline to the lounge with a messy-looking binder clutched underneath her arm. Too much of their work depended on secrecy to use electronic documentation entirely, which usually wasn’t a problem, but the shift to physical documents was clearly an uncomfortable adjustment for her.
He waited until she’d approached to offer a greeting, taking the moment to put on bleary-eyed smile. “Good morning, Amber.”
Amber smiled, drawing the binder out from under her arm and setting it down on the nearby counter. Doing so was clearly something of a relief. “Morning, Iain! How was the drive?”
She liked to chat. It was her way of coping with the loneliness that came with an assignment like this one, he’d found. Sycamore found it pleasant, though a bit curious. Not unlike how he felt about the room that they stood in.
“Oh, lovely as always. I was a bit puzzled when the Company put me up in that house off-campus, but I’m starting to see the appeal.”
“It’s peaceful out there?”
“Very. I can’t help but find myself meditating on those miles of open road every morning.” It was one of the reasons he had explicitly requested it.
“You’ve gotta take the time when you can, right?”
“Precisely. Speaking of time, is that…?” He pointed to the binder.
“Yes!” Amber bounced on her feet, turning to the binder and opening it in a hurry. From it, she produced a pristinely assembled timetable, the top of the page labeled ROSTER - 09/09/22.
“I know you wanted their schedules for today, so I printed them off for you. So, Dr. Finch is supervising a lab in Silo D until noon. She said she’d make time to meet, but I’m not cleared to know what's going on in Silo D, so I couldn’t say what she’s got for you. Dr. Komarin is here, he's his office all day as usual. I think he had an update for you, actually. Dr. Garuta’s working in Silo B, but she was, uhh-”
Sycamore raised an eyebrow, cutting in.
“Prickly, I imagine. Don’t worry about it, it looks like I can catch her at lunch.”
Dr. Garuta didn’t have a stellar reputation with the support staff, for several good reasons. Amber’s expression softened, clearly happy to not have to explain any more. She continued:
“Well, you can probably get Dr. Leander and Dr. Hatfield then, too! Silo A and Silo B are all blocked out for the same lunch hour. Now, Dr. Falk and Dr. Corvi are like, all over the place today, but they should be in the shop around three, three-thirty at the latest. That just leaves Terry - he’s got clearance everywhere but Silo D, but he’s not blocked off any of his time. When I reached out, he said that you would know where to find him?”
Sycamore glared at the blank spaces next to the armorer’s name. The man had a bit more leeway to come and go as he pleased, given his seniority within the company. It wasn't ideal, but there was nothing to be done. He shrugged.“He’ll be with his toys, I’m sure.”
Taking the schedule, he gently folded it closed and placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Thank you Amber, this is perfect.”
Given how attentive she was, Sycamore couldn’t help but hold suspicions she’d been assigned to keep tabs on him for the Company, though he could neither prove it nor act on it. In the end, it was easier to assume she was simply eager to please.
On that note, Amber suddenly raised an index finger, as if to point at a lit bulb hovering slightly above her head.
“Oh! I just remembered - Patrick dropped off the last set of student profiles in the mailbox last night. I left them in your office with the rest, on your desk.”
Personality profiles, assembled by a frightening collection of archivists, spies, and private investigators. Each had to be reviewed and approved, lest they encounter any surprises during the test.
His tone flattened, as the weight of the task began to strain his focus.
“Brilliant, thank you.”
For a moment, his attention drifted to a pleasant-looking plate of muffins sitting on the nearby counter.
“Hey, are those…?”
Amber grinned. “Banana chocolate chip muffins! Erin - err, Dr. Finch, she brought those in this morning for the office, they’re home made. So good.”
Without hesitation, Sycamore grabbed himself a muffin, complimenting his colleague between bites.
“Like yourself, our assistant director is a woman of many talents.” Though his relationship with Dr. Finch was adversarial at best, she did make a fantastic muffin.
“Well, tell her that when you see her! I know she was fussing over them not being just right.”
In truth, there would be little in the way of pleasantries when he made it to the high-security labs in Silo D. The thought of it made him uneasy, and Sycamore usually put it out of his mind until he had no other choice.
Nevertheless, he continued to wear a cheery demeanor as he took a sip of his tea, washing what was left of the muffin down and nodding in acknowledgement. “Aye, I’ll let her know they’re being extensively peer-reviewed! Now, there’s a lot of ground to cover so I really must be going, but Amber - you’ve made my day already. Thank you.”
“Have a good one, Iain!”
Parting with a wave, Dr. Sycamore exited the lounge and down a featureless, concrete hallway to his first real meeting of the day.
The door labeled Dr. Vadim Komarin was already mostly open when Dr. Sycamore arrived, and he knocked gently on the steel as he peeked into the room. Although his real name was on dozens of patents, the synthesis of the man’s work was under his chosen pseudonym, which had evidently caused him a great deal of consternation early in the Project’s development.
Consequently, he’d made a point of testing the limits of the extensive accommodation that the company had given the core group of scientists and engineers recruited to Survival of the Fittest.
The office was lavish, with a large oak desk set in the center against a backdrop of bookshelves and decorative cabinets, all shipped in from his real office out of state. A number of badges and commendations all labeled КГБ СССР with his real name written in Cyrillic, were displayed prominently in a frame on one of the concrete walls. Tying it all together was a large Persian rug, which seemed brand new. Komarin no doubt had taken some glee in submitting the requisitions for all of it.
The man himself sat at his desk, watching a video playing on a high-security, company issued laptop. Noticing Sycamore standing in the doorway, he removed an ancient-looking pair of headphones and stared up at him expectantly.
Sycamore motioned with his mug of tea towards the laptop. “Am I interrupting?”
“No. Please, come in.” Komarin paused the video, pushing the laptop to the side of his desk. Beside him sat a delightful-looking saucer, in which he had his own steaming cup of tea. The elder engineer's diction was impeccable, with an accent that seemed almost British, save for the occasional idiosyncratic pronunciation.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Sycamore?”
Taking a seat in a small armchair opposite Komarin’s desk, Sycamore adopted a relaxed posture, as if to suggest he hadn't so much as looked at a schedule that day. He shrugged, and smiled gently.
“Well, I had some time this morning, and I wanted to stop by for a chat, and make sure you were comfortable at this stage of the project.
Komarin cocked his head in astonishment. “So, our esteemed Project Director has taken time out of his busy schedule to come say hello to me? Preparations for the tests must be ahead of schedule, then.”
There was no attempt to hide his disdain. Sycamore offered a middling reply.
“Ah. Well, more to the point, I guess I wanted to get a sense of how you were feeling about the Project so far.”
“How I am feeling?” Komarin asked, as if the concept was foreign to him. “I am not sure what you mean.”
“Are you feeling confident about our deployment of the AIS during Survival of the Fittest?”
A pause. Komarin sat back in his chair, the leather creaking as he idly ran a thumb down the inside of one of his suspenders.
“I see.”
He looked to the ceiling, and sighed. Slowly, he sat forward and rested his hands in front of him, as if to physically set his thoughts on the desk.
“Construction on the apparatus continues as planned. Digging in that terrain is not an easy task, but the personnel provided are all competent and capable individuals, and I have no reason to believe they have deviated from my instructions. The system will function as expected.”
Sycamore stared ahead at Komarin, his face little more than a blank slate as he listened. There was no mention yet of the request he had made at their last meeting.
An expression returned suddenly, just as he responded.
“That’s brilliant, I’m glad to hear it. I had asked you if you could find time to demonstrate-”
Komarin cut him off, motioning towards the laptop.
“Yes, you did, you asked me to arrange a live test of the system. I am not senile. Naturally, following our conversation, I spoke with our mercenary captain. He informed me he might have a use for it. Please, take a look.”
Komarin detached the headphone cable from the laptop and turned it to face both of them. On the screen there was a paused video, with a date and time overlaid at the bottom of the footage. The camera held a static perspective of a white hallway, leading into a well-maintained, well-lit warehouse.
“This footage is from a data storage facility in Vancouver. You can see the apparatus at the edge of the screen, here.” Komarin pointed a scarred finger at the edges of the screen; a set of cylindrical devices were set up behind two structural pillars, just out of view of those at the far end of the hallway.
Sycamore set his mug of tea down on Komarin’s desk, leaning in to focus on the video as the small progress bar marched across the bottom of the screen.
After a few moments, a group of three men clad in black hoodies and balaclavas turned a corner into the hallway. They walked at a steady pace towards the camera, in formation. One had a duffel bag slung across his shoulder and a small tablet computer in his hands. Another carried a pair of bolt cutters, while the third took the lead with a suppressed handgun.
Komarin spoke over the video, glancing between the screen and Sycamore, watching for his reaction.
“Gardner had uncovered some kind of a plot. They were small-time bandits, hoping to profit from corporate espionage. I dispatched my two best technicians to the facility; in twenty-four hours we had set up the mobile power pack for the system, and calibrated two pylons. Forty-eight hours later, this heist took place.”
As the men crossed the threshold between the two devices, a burst of static briefly corrupted the footage. In unison, all three men were knocked to the ground. While the distortion had completely overwhelmed the audio feed, it was clear enough from the footage that they were screaming. One covered his eyes in desperation, blood dripping through the cracks in his rapidly blistering fingers as he struggled in vain to escape. Another vomited blood and bile before collapsing in a fit of convulsions, the tablet he had been clutching in his hands bursting into flames. The third man was able to stand back up only moments before the pistol in his hand exploded in a shower of shrapnel and gore. The static faded to silence, interrupted only by the sound of footsteps off-screen. The final frame of the video lingered on a team of men in clean suits emerging from a nearby custodial closet.
Komarin closed the laptop, glancing over to see an expression of horror and shock spread across Sycamore’s face.
“My God. Were they all…?”
Pride tinged Komarin’s otherwise matter-of-fact explanation. “The system was set to denial so yes, one hundred percent lethality. Each man lost consciousness in under thirty seconds. I have the autopsy reports here if you’d like. The real storage drives had been switched out ahead of time, of course. Electronics do not survive exposure to the Anti-Incursion System. As you may have noticed, neither did the firearm. An unintended but welcome side-effect.”
Komarin slid a small folder across the desk, which Sycamore opened gingerly. The autopsy report was meticulously detailed, and he recoiled slightly as he turned to a page of high-resolution photos.
The room fell silent, as Komarin waited patiently for Sycamore to finish his examination. By the time he had finished, his disgust had tempered into a quiet restlessness.
“You’re… pleased with this?”
“Quite so. The system functions as expected, and I have now established a viable framework for further development.”
Komarin reached out and gently plucked the report from Sycamore’s hands, meeting no resistance. Taking a final glance at the photos, he carefully closed the folder and placed it back in his desk.
“To answer your initial question, I suppose I would say that I feel excited to see how it will perform on Severniy Norin. The location presents some interesting challenges.”
The two men stared at one another across the opulent-looking desk, in silence. In deference to Komarin’s apparent lack of conscience, Sycamore had dropped any performative aversion to what he had just witnessed.
It was clear enough, he hoped, that Komarin’s transgression wasn’t conducting such a test, but taking such an action without consulting him. Nevertheless, Sycamore couldn’t help but be impressed.
Almost enough to overlook his purpose here.
Almost.
He took a sip of his tea, his gaze lingering at the bottom of the mug. Without looking up, he broke the uneasy silence.
“You’re confident it will perform even under adverse conditions?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, he met Komarin’s eyes once more.
“So. You have no lingering qualms about the nature of the Experiment or how we plan to use these devices?”
“Your mercenaries will be happy to have the Fence standing between them and your test subjects. Of this, I am certain.”
Sycamore let the response hang in the air, and continued to stare down his colleague. Searching in desperation for a satisfactory answer, Komarin continued.
“I am a scientist. If I have qualms, they are with your methodology. Yet my role is not to hold opinions about the nature of your work, is it?”
His question was met with a joyless smile.
“True. But surely a brilliant scientist such as yourself has something to say about Survival of the Fittest? About what we are building here?”
Irritated, Komarin opened his mouth to speak, but caught the words before they left his mouth. After a brief pause, he shot back an adversarial, gold-toothed grin and laughed nervously, looking away from Dr. Sycamore. It was his turn to pretend to be enamored by the sight of his tea.
“No matter where I go, you people are all the same.”
“Who?”
In response, Komarin stood up from his desk and slowly ambled towards the set of medals hanging on the wall.
Wordlessly, he picked up the frame and brushed dust off of the glass. Memories seemed to rush back to him. He held it out briefly.
“Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti. Ministry for State Security. KGB. You would have made an excellent chekist."
Komarin placed it back on the wall, somewhat carelessly, before turning back to face Sycamore, pacing as he spoke.
"You know, people in the West really do not understand. Back in the Soviet Union, after Stalin, you did not so much fear being led into a basement and shot for your troublesome beliefs or ideas. The dull, gray men who led the country had little taste for open bloodshed. Bureaucrats and careerist party men preferred subtlety, and stability. Nothing so brutal and obvious. You kept your mouth shut because of something far worse than a bullet to the back of the head. What you feared was quiet, invisible even.
"What would happen is this: one day someone would approach you, maybe a stranger, maybe a distant acquaintance or a relation you had forgotten about. Seemingly, at random. They would strike up a conversation, ask you about your day, share some meaningless gossip. You would find this person charming, pleasant even. You would barely notice how little they offered of themselves. They would play you, just enough that you felt comfortable speaking your mind. Pulling at the thread of any long-kept secret or gripe until you could not help but offer more. It was enticing. After all, you kept your silence day in, day out. It was exhausting. What was the harm in speaking your mind, just a bit?
"All they needed was for you to say the words. The mask would fall away. Perhaps they would respond, mocking or belittling you, or maybe they would smile and leave without a word. You saw just enough to know the mistake you had made, because they wanted you to know what you had done. It was not enough to catch you. You had to fear them.
"Then things start to fall apart. Opportunities would vanish, appointments were revoked, the engine of bureaucracy would bury you in contrivances. Those around you would see what was happening, and shun you out of fear of being tainted themselves. You became a nonperson, alone and vulnerable. The State would kill you in spirit before it even touched your body. Only then would they come for you.
"When your friends and family later found your frozen corpse in a ditch somewhere, next to a few empty bottles, they would accept it. There was no other choice, even if they knew the truth. No one would bother to count the sets of footprints in the snow."
By the time he had finished speaking, he had sat back down once more. After a moment, he met Sycamore’s eyes again. In them, the Project Director could tell that had been no mere anecdote.
Komarin leaned forward, his voice near to a whisper.
“You want to find out how this world will die. My efforts are a small but valuable part of this enterprise. Therefore, I have no political or ethical concerns to note. I believe in my work. That is all.”
"Thank you for making that clear, Vadim."
"Is that all?"
There was nothing more to ask of him. The man knew his place, clearly. Sycamore expected as much, though his actions had briefly called that into question.
Standing up from the small armchair, Sycamore’s voice once more took on the cheery, pleasant tone he had entered the room with.
"I appreciate you meeting with me this morning. I’m pleased to say you’ll be one of the first Project Leads to see our new monitoring station on the island. The accommodations aren’t quite as comfortable, but you’ll get to see the work on your devices firsthand. Amber will provide you with more details."
Komarin nodded gravely, as Sycamore picked his mug up off of the desk and began to walk towards the door, leaving a small ring of condensation behind on the desk.
As he’d just begun to cross the threshold, Komarin spoke up again.
"You know, I was there before."
Dr. Sycamore stopped and turned around, true curiosity on his face. The old soviet engineer seemed strangely serene as he continued.
“I was in Serensk once, on assignment. Back when it was a real town, you should have seen it. They constructed this place at such expense. An experiment, a test of our grand theory of humanity. My colleague at the time, Vanya, he liked to say it was one of the only places where we’d really built Communism. I could never forget that. There were no empty promises there. It all seemed so real.
Now, it is only a ruin. What will you learn from this place, I wonder?”
Dr. Vadim Komarin (Project Lead - The Fence)
Name: CLASSIFIEDPseudonym: Vadim Komarin
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Alma Mater: Moscow State University
Research Interests: Infrasonics, Directed-Energy Weaponry, CLASSIFIED, Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Previous Consulting, Patents & Other Employment: Research Associate, Ministry of Atomic Energy and Industry of the USSR (1980-1982) ; Operations and Technology Directorate, Committee for State Security (1982-1991) ; Minatom (1993-1996) ; Hayes Aerospace (1998-2008) ; Janus-Hayes (2008-Present)
Selected Articles: Novel Techniques in Forensic Seismology (1981) ; CLASSIFIED ; Set Phasers to Stun: Response to Mallory et al. and SOLARIS D.E.W. Proposal (2000) ; CLASSIFIED ; CLASSIFIED ; CLASSIFIED ; Dead Silent: The Future of Directed Energy Weapons (2011) ; CLASSIFIED
Dr. Vadim Komarin is a long-time employee of Janus-Hayes and a brilliant physicist and engineer. A scion of the former USSR’s intelligentsia, he was a star academic and a long-time resident of one of the USSR’s many “Secret Cities” devoted to clandestine scientific research. His early work focused on novel methods for detecting atomic tests, from which his interest in Infrasound grew.
Quickly scooped up by the KGB who noted his brilliance and ideological reliability, Dr. Komarin quietly spent the next decade working for them exploring various clandestine weapons systems. His work primarily focused on the offensive usage of infrasound and microwaves, though his reflections on this period noted frustrations on the part of his superiors for a perceived “narrow view” of his work and its potential.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dr. Komarin briefly worked for the new Russian ministry of atomic energy, a position he found largely uninteresting and dull compared to his work with the KGB. While he was approached by its successor to continue his work, he saw little future in the new Russian Federation. Komarin emigrated to the United States in 1996, briefly working as a taxi driver in Seattle while he attempted to obtain recognition of his education. A chance encounter with a Hayes Aerospace employee resulted in his employment by the company, which he has held ever since.
Dr. Komarin has been free to pursue his research at Janus-Hayes, contributing greatly to the company’s CLASSIFIED and CLASSIFIED programs. The Janus-Hayes Anti-Incursion System is the culmination of his life’s work, which is now entering the final stages of development. Its installation on Severniy Norin is considered a live-fire test of the system. Construction was supervised directly by Dr. Komarin, who has also overseen instruction of the tactical team on its usage.
