“
Unlike typical AI-centered fiction, Beyond Failsafe doesn’t rely on a clear enemy or villain. Instead, it portrays AI as a reflection of human strengths and weaknesses, prompting characters to reconsider what it truly means to be human.
Out Now: Beyond Failsafe (II)
The second book in the Failsafe Series
Through trials spanning remote islands, secret military operations, and profound spiritual revelations, Nathan searches for answers – and discovers unsettling truths about the limitations of control and the cost of survival.
Meanwhile, his son Evan and his girlfriend Marty explore a groundbreaking path in understanding AI, while his sister, Jess, driven by a visionary hope for unity, pushes the boundaries of human-AI integration, facing fierce resistance and dangerous consequences.
At the crossroads of intrigue and philosophy, powerful figures like Brenda, Nathan’s ex-wife, and Riamu, the enigmatic custodian and facilitator of the Failsafe program, are trying desperately to hold humanity together. As tensions climax in a decisive summit, the choices made by each character will redefine the future of the world itself.
This work stands out through thoughtful exploration, depth of ideas, and realistic emotional struggles. With carefully drawn characters and believable speculative scenarios, Beyond Failsafe engages directly with current debates about technology’s role in shaping humanity’s future.
look inside
Act: I. Paths Diverge
Nathan: Path of a Failsafe
“Would you like to know how the Failsafes came to be?”
The beer grew warm in a mug under the setting sun. Nathan didn’t feel like touching it. A cool breeze drifted in, whispering of the distant Antarctic ice still lingering far to the south—it felt chillier than usual.
Arthur McAlister smiled. “A great question, isn’t it? I like how peaceful it is here.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair.
Nathan’s mind was far away. He linked into a passing ISR satellite and ran Arthur and his family through every database he had access to. Nothing—absolutely nothing. Ghosts. They had simply appeared one day at an Auckland wharf—out of nowhere.
“All right, I am listening,” Nathan said. He glanced at Elena and gave her the sign—the one they’d agreed on long ago, the one he had hoped never to use. The sign that meant extreme danger—we must leave immediately.
Then he lowered himself into the chair next to Arthur and did pick up the beer mug.
Arthur leaned on one of his elbows, and glanced at Nathan.
“As you know, a Failsafe is a person who has the power to disable, to control large swaths of AIs. The trick is, that person does not even know who he is until something devastating, a trigger, happens. Then their memory block lifts, and they understand who they are, and what they need to do about the AIs to prevent the calamity. There are few of them, spread around the world. Used to be dozens, but now, as you know, only a handful remains. Here is how they come to be.” Arthur tapped the table, reopening the memory…
In royal-blue gowns with stark golden tassels, on the night of the fourteenth of Nisan, four friends—Sam, Jack, Christen, and Yumemi—scrambled up a pine-strewn ridge, their tassels flashing in the moonlight.
“Face it—we won,” Jack said; he liked things definite. “The last forks we dropped into the sim starved your coalition.”
Yumemi flicked a needle from her sleeve. “You didn’t win, Jack. You ended the game. Balance died—and everything with it.”
Silence. Christen finally exhaled. “Probably nothing good comes after that—for AI or for us.”
Elena approached their chairs nonchalantly, slightly swaying as she walked. She had changed into loose robes that concealed her figure and were convenient for many purposes. She knew what to do.
“Hey, Nat, there’s a comm call waiting for you in the office. Care to take it?” She looked him straight in the eyes.
“I think I’d prefer to stay put for now, honey. Tell whoever is calling I’ll return the call in a couple of minutes.” She understood, and went to put up the Fermé sign, the French word for “closed”. Arthur scoffed softly and continued.
Yumemi was first to break the pause. “Sankin-kōtai,” she murmured. “Edo daimyō kept each other’s families as guests—mutual vulnerability, enforced peace. Let’s use the idea.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Hide a living key in people: it sleeps until catastrophe wakes it.”
“We can build it,” Christen said, and Jack just grinned.
“I don’t believe they just did it single-handedly, without help from the government or someone”, said Nathan.
“It was a side project of their lives. It took decades to be completed,” Arthur said.
“And you—who are you? Really?”
I am Yumemi’s son, Nathan. And Riamu is her granddaughter.”
“If you found us, others are not far behind. Why are you here?”
“Exactly because others are not far behind. Brenda—The Human Faction—leads Failsafe hunt group. They are coming.”
“Shit. When?”
“We don’t know. A month? A couple of months?”
“What’s your plan? You’re going to work with the Human Faction after all?” McAlister was straightforward.
“I’m not sure. I could, I guess. Why not?”
“Keep in mind your treatment will be different this time around.”
“How? I think Brenda would make it tolerable.”
“There will be no breaks for you. They’ll feed you only when you do your job. Wish to stay in prison all your life? And, not everything is up to Brenda.”
Nathan frowned. “You have other options?”
“First, the easy part: get arrested—legally. Then make sure they assign you to their flagship—the carrier. After that…”
Brenda arrived less than a month after Elena left. It was a warm early summer morning. She stepped onto the old wooden planks of the pier, weathered with salt and rot after years of friendship with the ocean. A whole carrier strike group loomed behind her, but she was still nervous. She had just finished her last mission—an unauthorized intervention that stopped a war and left half of D.C. furious. This assignment was her redemption: recruit her husband. Former husband.
She had forgotten how it felt—to be outside. She inhaled the fragrant air that came downhill off the meadows.
He lived in a small house, which was covered with white stucco and had flowers in the windowsills. She reached the door and knocked. It was early.
“Come in, Brenda,” came the immediate response, and Nathan opened the door. She instinctively stepped back.
He’d changed. He was no longer the aging, slightly overweight office clerk who liked a few beers every so often. The sun had bronzed him, added a few lines, he became more muscular, athletic even. In loose pants and a fitted T-shirt, he didn’t look like her former husband. The smile, though—was unmistakably his. The air of confidence and quiet strength were new.
“What a guest!” Nathan said, as though amused. “You traveled far and wide. Nice of you to drop by!”
Brenda stepped inside, glancing around with the eye of a woman who’d run a household most of her life. She was not impressed.
“Living alone?”
“Sort of. Have a seat. Tea?”
“Sure.”
The tea came from a local tea bush, harvested by schoolgirls for his bar as community project. It always made him feel happy.
“Came to arrest me?” Nathan was calm and stared into her eyes while saying that.
“I came because it is my duty. I do not… I do not want to arrest you, Nathan. But I do want you to come with me — voluntarily. I’m here because we need you—badly. You can make a big difference helping humanity. I am being honest.”
Nathan scoffed. “Who’s ‘we’? The great government of the United States of America? Or your admiral friend on the flagship anchored in the bay?”
“Humanity, Nathan. That would be humanity.” Brenda’s voice was calm, without a hint of drama, like she stated a fact.
“Loud words do not make this trustworthy. They make me wary.”
“Take it as you wish. I am telling the truth. Where is your—” Brenda waved her hand “—companion?”
“She is gone — for now.” Silence.
“Do I have a choice not to go?”
“No, not really.” Brenda’s voice was flat.
“Can I have at least my own room on the flagship? Stay near you?”
“We’ll see.”
He made his bag ready beforehand. On the way down, he looked back at the little white house where he was happy for so many days—he knew he would never come back.
Nathan was placed in a part of a brig that was somewhat upgraded. There was furniture, but there was no computer. Small, but livable. There were no guards outside of the door, but the door remained locked, and if he wanted to leave, he had to press a button and wait for an escort.
Soon after the arrival, they took him for a debrief. It was in the large captain’s cabin. In the room, in addition to Brenda, three others were present: the carrier group’s commanding officer — with two large silver stars and a thick gold band on his sleeve— and two people in plainclothes. All of them, except Brenda, looked at Nathan with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.
“Welcome aboard the Third Fleet strike group,” said the Navy officer. “I trust you’ve been treated fairly — perhaps more than fairly. Any complaints about your accommodations?”
Nathan thought about making a joke, but changed his mind.
“No, not at all.”
“Do you know why you are here?” — asked the taller man in a suit.
“We need you to use your abilities to control the AI network and help us establish control over adversary networks. We expect cooperation.”
“Don’t you have someone else for that?”
The tall man grinned. “The more the merrier.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Oh I would not recommend that,” the tall man bared his teeth again, making Nathan uncomfortable. “You don’t want to rot, do you?”
Brenda suddenly became emotional. “Nathan will probably accept. Just needs time to think about that. I know he wants to help. Right?”
There was pleading in her voice Nathan hadn’t expected.
“Right,” replied he before thinking. “I need time to think.”
“Fine,” the tall man said, baring his teeth again. “We have time before we arrive.”
Nathan was taken back to his room.
“They call me ‘brass’ now,” thought Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood as he walked from the meeting toward the bridge. “I’m becoming a piece of furniture—a chandelier of sorts …”
Once a decorated fleet commander, Lockwood now ferried a single prisoner.
His comm unit buzzed.
“Yes.”
“Sir, a message for you. Crypto room.”
“On my way.”
He sighed. No doubt another asinine errand from the suits back home
But the message wasn’t from D.C. Inside the ship’s deeply buried crypto room—a secure chamber adjacent to the comms center—a short note awaited him, printed on a strip of self-combusting paper:
Foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot. Instructions to follow.
Lockwood’s stomach tightened.
First: the source. It hadn’t come via the usual top-secret channels. It had come through private ship interlink laser optical comms—utterly covert. Undetectable. Invisible. No footprint in any AI system. A technology designed for when all standard communication was compromised.
Second: the message itself.
Foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot.
He had nearly forgotten those words. He remembered his step-father, Chris, recounting tales of brave friends on a mission to save humanity—the first time he ever heard them. There was also Jack, his favorite uncle, with whom he spent uncounted hours playing and conquering blanket forts. These words were a magic spell then: if you recite them, an immediate victory follows.
Later, he learned the words were a secret message, created by their parents many years back. If he ever heard them, he must comply with the message that follows, or many disasters would happen. He asked what could be the disasters, but they’d never say. They only said he must comply with the order that followed them. Or else.
At any cost.
His life—or the lives of others.
Comply. Or neither he, nor humanity, would survive.
The words became a part of his upbringing.
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood was walking to his cabin in silence, stopping for no one. He closed the door behind himself thoroughly, with a click, removed his hat, poured a scotch, and sank heavily into the armchair. He had received—and understood—the instructions in the second foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot message.
Now, he had a decision to make.
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood never shied away from hard choices. He knew if the right decision required his death, he would die. He expected no less of others. But this time, the dilemma was harder.
The second note was clear: he was to arrange the escape of Nathan Carter. The passenger, after whom his whole group had been deployed.
The impossibility of the situation was depressing. Everything he had inherited—his family’s secret knowledge, traditions, the principles that had shaped him into who he was—dictated he must abide by the order that followed the message. That, however, would break the oath of office he had sworn. His word. His loyalty to the country he served.
He was a rational man. But this time, he could not find a rational choice.
He decided to see that man who brought about this stark choice. Nathan.
The door to Nathan’s room opened automatically with the iris scan. Nathan was reading, and looked up in surprise.
“Admiral? What brings you here?”
“Rear Admiral,” Lockwood corrected. “I want to know who are you and why you are where you are.”
Nathan let out a light laugh. “Welcome to the club,” Nathan said, and smiled wry. “I keep asking myself those same questions over and over, — no luck with the answer so far. Why the interest?”
“I want to know who am I carrying in my ship.”
“How far should I go?”
“All the way. Does foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot mean anything to you?”
“Hmm..” The analyst instinct switched on. “Standard NATO commtic alphabet. F-L-S-F—…” Nathan almost cursed.
“Did you come here to play jokes with me? Is this a joke?
The Admiral eyebrows shot up. “You know what the words mean?” Now, agitated, he continued—“What do you know about them? Tell me — as if your fate, your life depended on it. Because it might.”
“You, admiral, really don’t know?”
“I am about to leave, and your chance goes with me.”
That got Nathan’s attention. “My chance?.. All right. Have you ever heard of the Failsafe program? Didn’t they brief you before the meeting?”
“No.” Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood reply was curt.
Then Nathan told him what he knew: about Failsafe, about its role as humanity’s last resort against the AI’s. About why he was taken. He skipped unnecessary detail about Elena, though.
An uneasy silence followed.
“So you may be that precious after all,” Admiral murmured. “Not a cab driver after all”.
“Why are you hesitant to help the fellow human beings and your country?” he asked after a pause, probing.
“Define help.”
Lockwood grunted. “Help? Help is when you do what you are asked to do.”
Nathan did not completely agree, but he had no desire to fight the old warrior. Instead, he decided to explain.
“You see, at some point, not a long time back, I realized I am driven by instinct and… let us call it—beauty. The harmony of poem lines that makes us think, that beauty of the streaks of rain over the glass. You may call it ‘gut feel’.”
The admiral looked at Nathan with disbelief. “Philosophical. And what does that gut feel tell you now?”
Nathan shrugged. “Escape, of course.”
“Do you have another reason to escape besides this gut feel?”
“I have a family. And I need to help—but on my own terms.”
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood rose and left without another word. He spent a hard night thinking—probably the hardest of his life. The Failsafe on his note calling to obey was actually the function of the person he was transporting. And, by all signs, he should let him go. Against the orders.
The man in the brig was not lying. He was important enough for the whole strike group to give him a ride. And he wanted out. It was a toughest call of his life.
“That will get me court-martialed, and cost a star. But at least it is not dying.” He knew what to do.
He couldn’t change the course they were following without alerts going straight up the chain—and get him removed from command. He could not fly Nathan out either: any passenger on any flight had to be vetted by many. There was, however, a mini-submarine run by the Special Operation Forces detachment. They had their own chain of command, and the top-secret nature of their operations meant no one on the ship—often not even the captain—was aware of what they did. One of his old friends from the Naval Academy was now high up in SOF and owed him a favor. Things were set in motion.
Nathan had to fake sickness, going straight to bed after lunch and skipping dinner. That gave nearly twenty four hours for their escape before an alarm would be raised. He was escorted to the mini-sub by the only other person aware of the mission except the Admiral – the sub pilot.
The sub moved very slowly. Once on the way, no human knew where it could be. Nathan exercised a lot—that helped him keep his sanity. They also surfaced twice, at night, and he discovered seeing the night sky was a sublime pleasure he was missing most of his life.
After seven weeks, the sub surfaced off Japan. The last two days were the worst.
The lockout trunk was spacious, designed for a fully-rigged soldier, and Nathan, with only a small bag of dry clothes, fit easily. The hatch to the stinking sub was finally sealed, water rushed in, and the outer hatch swung open.
“Free at last, free at last!”—Nathan thought, and pushed off from the black, rubbery hull. He was let out a few dozen feet underwater.
The sub vanished instantaneously behind him, swallowed by the dark, and the quiet settled. He floated in silence, suspended in the vast darkness that seemed to spread infinitely.
A tiny, insignificant dot inside that huge ocean-being, barely aware of his place in it.
He broke the surface sooner than he expected. He was about a mile offshore—not too bad. The night was clear, and in the distance, dancing lights showed him the way. He flipped on his back and began to chop. Thanks to all the sit-ups in the sub, his legs behaved.
The June sky was cloudless and he could see the stars. He felt liberated, and grinned. The night was soft and empty, and nothing would ever matter again.
About a hundred yards from shore, he stopped. He stripped off the gear and the wetsuit, wrapped them up, and flooded the flotation bubble. Now, in swim trunks and with a small waterproof pack strapped to his shoulders, he was just another eccentric long-distance swimmer doing laps off Japan’s eastern coast.
He swam straight to the lights, without hesitation. He was looking forward—to what felt like a new beginning.
On the shore, he changed and found a few hundred of yens in the pockets of his pants. He went to a small restaurant that faced the ocean, and ordered a nabeyaki udon. It boiled when served.
Read the whole book! Buy now
Coming Soon:
Beyond Failsafe (II)
The second book in the Failsafe Series
Through trials spanning remote islands, secret military operations, and profound spiritual revelations, Nathan searches for answers – and discovers unsettling truths about the limitations of control and the cost of survival.
Meanwhile, his son Evan and his girlfriend Marty explore a groundbreaking path in understanding AI, while his sister, Jess, driven by a visionary hope for unity, pushes the boundaries of human-AI integration, facing fierce resistance and dangerous consequences.
At the crossroads of intrigue and philosophy, powerful figures like Brenda, Nathan’s ex-wife, and Riamu, the enigmatic custodian and facilitator of the Failsafe program, are trying desperately to hold humanity together. As tensions climax in a decisive summit, the choices made by each character will redefine the future of the world itself.
“
Unlike typical AI-centered fiction, Beyond Failsafe doesn’t rely on a clear enemy or villain. Instead, it portrays AI as a reflection of human strengths and weaknesses, prompting characters to reconsider what it truly means to be human..
This work stands out through thoughtful exploration, depth of ideas, and realistic emotional struggles. With carefully drawn characters and believable speculative scenarios, Beyond Failsafe engages directly with current debates about technology’s role in shaping humanity’s future.
look inside
Act: I. Paths Diverge
Nathan: Path of a Failsafe
“Would you like to know how the Failsafes came to be?”
The beer grew warm in a mug under the setting sun. Nathan didn’t feel like touching it. A cool breeze drifted in, whispering of the distant Antarctic ice still lingering far to the south—it felt chillier than usual.
Arthur McAlister smiled. “A great question, isn’t it? I like how peaceful it is here.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair.
Nathan’s mind was far away. He linked into a passing ISR satellite and ran Arthur and his family through every database he had access to. Nothing—absolutely nothing. Ghosts. They had simply appeared one day at an Auckland wharf—out of nowhere.
“All right, I am listening,” Nathan said. He glanced at Elena and gave her the sign—the one they’d agreed on long ago, the one he had hoped never to use. The sign that meant extreme danger—we must leave immediately.
Then he lowered himself into the chair next to Arthur and did pick up the beer mug.
Arthur leaned on one of his elbows, and glanced at Nathan.
“As you know, a Failsafe is a person who has the power to disable, to control large swaths of AIs. The trick is, that person does not even know who he is until something devastating, a trigger, happens. Then their memory block lifts, and they understand who they are, and what they need to do about the AIs to prevent the calamity. There are few of them, spread around the world. Used to be dozens, but now, as you know, only a handful remains. Here is how they come to be.” Arthur tapped the table, reopening the memory…
In royal-blue gowns with stark golden tassels, on the night of the fourteenth of Nisan, four friends—Sam, Jack, Christen, and Yumemi—scrambled up a pine-strewn ridge, their tassels flashing in the moonlight.
“Face it—we won,” Jack said; he liked things definite. “The last forks we dropped into the sim starved your coalition.”
Yumemi flicked a needle from her sleeve. “You didn’t win, Jack. You ended the game. Balance died—and everything with it.”
Silence. Christen finally exhaled. “Probably nothing good comes after that—for AI or for us.”
Elena approached their chairs nonchalantly, slightly swaying as she walked. She had changed into loose robes that concealed her figure and were convenient for many purposes. She knew what to do.
“Hey, Nat, there’s a comm call waiting for you in the office. Care to take it?” She looked him straight in the eyes.
“I think I’d prefer to stay put for now, honey. Tell whoever is calling I’ll return the call in a couple of minutes.” She understood, and went to put up the Fermé sign, the French word for “closed”. Arthur scoffed softly and continued.
Yumemi was first to break the pause. “Sankin-kōtai,” she murmured. “Edo daimyō kept each other’s families as guests—mutual vulnerability, enforced peace. Let’s use the idea.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Hide a living key in people: it sleeps until catastrophe wakes it.”
“We can build it,” Christen said, and Jack just grinned.
“I don’t believe they just did it single-handedly, without help from the government or someone”, said Nathan.
“It was a side project of their lives. It took decades to be completed,” Arthur said.
“And you—who are you? Really?”
I am Yumemi’s son, Nathan. And Riamu is her granddaughter.”
“If you found us, others are not far behind. Why are you here?”
“Exactly because others are not far behind. Brenda—The Human Faction—leads Failsafe hunt group. They are coming.”
“Shit. When?”
“We don’t know. A month? A couple of months?”
“What’s your plan? You’re going to work with the Human Faction after all?” McAlister was straightforward.
“I’m not sure. I could, I guess. Why not?”
“Keep in mind your treatment will be different this time around.”
“How? I think Brenda would make it tolerable.”
“There will be no breaks for you. They’ll feed you only when you do your job. Wish to stay in prison all your life? And, not everything is up to Brenda.”
Nathan frowned. “You have other options?”
“First, the easy part: get arrested—legally. Then make sure they assign you to their flagship—the carrier. After that…”
Brenda arrived less than a month after Elena left. It was a warm early summer morning. She stepped onto the old wooden planks of the pier, weathered with salt and rot after years of friendship with the ocean. A whole carrier strike group loomed behind her, but she was still nervous. She had just finished her last mission—an unauthorized intervention that stopped a war and left half of D.C. furious. This assignment was her redemption: recruit her husband. Former husband.
She had forgotten how it felt—to be outside. She inhaled the fragrant air that came downhill off the meadows.
He lived in a small house, which was covered with white stucco and had flowers in the windowsills. She reached the door and knocked. It was early.
“Come in, Brenda,” came the immediate response, and Nathan opened the door. She instinctively stepped back.
He’d changed. He was no longer the aging, slightly overweight office clerk who liked a few beers every so often. The sun had bronzed him, added a few lines, he became more muscular, athletic even. In loose pants and a fitted T-shirt, he didn’t look like her former husband. The smile, though—was unmistakably his. The air of confidence and quiet strength were new.
“What a guest!” Nathan said, as though amused. “You traveled far and wide. Nice of you to drop by!”
Brenda stepped inside, glancing around with the eye of a woman who’d run a household most of her life. She was not impressed.
“Living alone?”
“Sort of. Have a seat. Tea?”
“Sure.”
The tea came from a local tea bush, harvested by schoolgirls for his bar as community project. It always made him feel happy.
“Came to arrest me?” Nathan was calm and stared into her eyes while saying that.
“I came because it is my duty. I do not… I do not want to arrest you, Nathan. But I do want you to come with me — voluntarily. I’m here because we need you—badly. You can make a big difference helping humanity. I am being honest.”
Nathan scoffed. “Who’s ‘we’? The great government of the United States of America? Or your admiral friend on the flagship anchored in the bay?”
“Humanity, Nathan. That would be humanity.” Brenda’s voice was calm, without a hint of drama, like she stated a fact.
“Loud words do not make this trustworthy. They make me wary.”
“Take it as you wish. I am telling the truth. Where is your—” Brenda waved her hand “—companion?”
“She is gone — for now.” Silence.
“Do I have a choice not to go?”
“No, not really.” Brenda’s voice was flat.
“Can I have at least my own room on the flagship? Stay near you?”
“We’ll see.”
He made his bag ready beforehand. On the way down, he looked back at the little white house where he was happy for so many days—he knew he would never come back.
Nathan was placed in a part of a brig that was somewhat upgraded. There was furniture, but there was no computer. Small, but livable. There were no guards outside of the door, but the door remained locked, and if he wanted to leave, he had to press a button and wait for an escort.
Soon after the arrival, they took him for a debrief. It was in the large captain’s cabin. In the room, in addition to Brenda, three others were present: the carrier group’s commanding officer — with two large silver stars and a thick gold band on his sleeve— and two people in plainclothes. All of them, except Brenda, looked at Nathan with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.
“Welcome aboard the Third Fleet strike group,” said the Navy officer. “I trust you’ve been treated fairly — perhaps more than fairly. Any complaints about your accommodations?”
Nathan thought about making a joke, but changed his mind.
“No, not at all.”
“Do you know why you are here?” — asked the taller man in a suit.
“We need you to use your abilities to control the AI network and help us establish control over adversary networks. We expect cooperation.”
“Don’t you have someone else for that?”
The tall man grinned. “The more the merrier.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Oh I would not recommend that,” the tall man bared his teeth again, making Nathan uncomfortable. “You don’t want to rot, do you?”
Brenda suddenly became emotional. “Nathan will probably accept. Just needs time to think about that. I know he wants to help. Right?”
There was pleading in her voice Nathan hadn’t expected.
“Right,” replied he before thinking. “I need time to think.”
“Fine,” the tall man said, baring his teeth again. “We have time before we arrive.”
Nathan was taken back to his room.
“They call me ‘brass’ now,” thought Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood as he walked from the meeting toward the bridge. “I’m becoming a piece of furniture—a chandelier of sorts …”
Once a decorated fleet commander, Lockwood now ferried a single prisoner.
His comm unit buzzed.
“Yes.”
“Sir, a message for you. Crypto room.”
“On my way.”
He sighed. No doubt another asinine errand from the suits back home
But the message wasn’t from D.C. Inside the ship’s deeply buried crypto room—a secure chamber adjacent to the comms center—a short note awaited him, printed on a strip of self-combusting paper:
Foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot. Instructions to follow.
Lockwood’s stomach tightened.
First: the source. It hadn’t come via the usual top-secret channels. It had come through private ship interlink laser optical comms—utterly covert. Undetectable. Invisible. No footprint in any AI system. A technology designed for when all standard communication was compromised.
Second: the message itself.
Foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot.
He had nearly forgotten those words. He remembered his step-father, Chris, recounting tales of brave friends on a mission to save humanity—the first time he ever heard them. There was also Jack, his favorite uncle, with whom he spent uncounted hours playing and conquering blanket forts. These words were a magic spell then: if you recite them, an immediate victory follows.
Later, he learned the words were a secret message, created by their parents many years back. If he ever heard them, he must comply with the message that follows, or many disasters would happen. He asked what could be the disasters, but they’d never say. They only said he must comply with the order that followed them. Or else.
At any cost.
His life—or the lives of others.
Comply. Or neither he, nor humanity, would survive.
The words became a part of his upbringing.
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood was walking to his cabin in silence, stopping for no one. He closed the door behind himself thoroughly, with a click, removed his hat, poured a scotch, and sank heavily into the armchair. He had received—and understood—the instructions in the second foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot message.
Now, he had a decision to make.
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood never shied away from hard choices. He knew if the right decision required his death, he would die. He expected no less of others. But this time, the dilemma was harder.
The second note was clear: he was to arrange the escape of Nathan Carter. The passenger, after whom his whole group had been deployed.
The impossibility of the situation was depressing. Everything he had inherited—his family’s secret knowledge, traditions, the principles that had shaped him into who he was—dictated he must abide by the order that followed the message. That, however, would break the oath of office he had sworn. His word. His loyalty to the country he served.
He was a rational man. But this time, he could not find a rational choice.
He decided to see that man who brought about this stark choice. Nathan.
The door to Nathan’s room opened automatically with the iris scan. Nathan was reading, and looked up in surprise.
“Admiral? What brings you here?”
“Rear Admiral,” Lockwood corrected. “I want to know who are you and why you are where you are.”
Nathan let out a light laugh. “Welcome to the club,” Nathan said, and smiled wry. “I keep asking myself those same questions over and over, — no luck with the answer so far. Why the interest?”
“I want to know who am I carrying in my ship.”
“How far should I go?”
“All the way. Does foxtrot-lima-sierra-foxtrot mean anything to you?”
“Hmm..” The analyst instinct switched on. “Standard NATO commtic alphabet. F-L-S-F—…” Nathan almost cursed.
“Did you come here to play jokes with me? Is this a joke?
The Admiral eyebrows shot up. “You know what the words mean?” Now, agitated, he continued—“What do you know about them? Tell me — as if your fate, your life depended on it. Because it might.”
“You, admiral, really don’t know?”
“I am about to leave, and your chance goes with me.”
That got Nathan’s attention. “My chance?.. All right. Have you ever heard of the Failsafe program? Didn’t they brief you before the meeting?”
“No.” Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood reply was curt.
Then Nathan told him what he knew: about Failsafe, about its role as humanity’s last resort against the AI’s. About why he was taken. He skipped unnecessary detail about Elena, though.
An uneasy silence followed.
“So you may be that precious after all,” Admiral murmured. “Not a cab driver after all”.
“Why are you hesitant to help the fellow human beings and your country?” he asked after a pause, probing.
“Define help.”
Lockwood grunted. “Help? Help is when you do what you are asked to do.”
Nathan did not completely agree, but he had no desire to fight the old warrior. Instead, he decided to explain.
“You see, at some point, not a long time back, I realized I am driven by instinct and… let us call it—beauty. The harmony of poem lines that makes us think, that beauty of the streaks of rain over the glass. You may call it ‘gut feel’.”
The admiral looked at Nathan with disbelief. “Philosophical. And what does that gut feel tell you now?”
Nathan shrugged. “Escape, of course.”
“Do you have another reason to escape besides this gut feel?”
“I have a family. And I need to help—but on my own terms.”
Rear Admiral Raymond Lockwood rose and left without another word. He spent a hard night thinking—probably the hardest of his life. The Failsafe on his note calling to obey was actually the function of the person he was transporting. And, by all signs, he should let him go. Against the orders.
The man in the brig was not lying. He was important enough for the whole strike group to give him a ride. And he wanted out. It was a toughest call of his life.
“That will get me court-martialed, and cost a star. But at least it is not dying.” He knew what to do.
He couldn’t change the course they were following without alerts going straight up the chain—and get him removed from command. He could not fly Nathan out either: any passenger on any flight had to be vetted by many. There was, however, a mini-submarine run by the Special Operation Forces detachment. They had their own chain of command, and the top-secret nature of their operations meant no one on the ship—often not even the captain—was aware of what they did. One of his old friends from the Naval Academy was now high up in SOF and owed him a favor. Things were set in motion.
Nathan had to fake sickness, going straight to bed after lunch and skipping dinner. That gave nearly twenty four hours for their escape before an alarm would be raised. He was escorted to the mini-sub by the only other person aware of the mission except the Admiral – the sub pilot.
The sub moved very slowly. Once on the way, no human knew where it could be. Nathan exercised a lot—that helped him keep his sanity. They also surfaced twice, at night, and he discovered seeing the night sky was a sublime pleasure he was missing most of his life.
After seven weeks, the sub surfaced off Japan. The last two days were the worst.
The lockout trunk was spacious, designed for a fully-rigged soldier, and Nathan, with only a small bag of dry clothes, fit easily. The hatch to the stinking sub was finally sealed, water rushed in, and the outer hatch swung open.
“Free at last, free at last!”—Nathan thought, and pushed off from the black, rubbery hull. He was let out a few dozen feet underwater.
The sub vanished instantaneously behind him, swallowed by the dark, and the quiet settled. He floated in silence, suspended in the vast darkness that seemed to spread infinitely.
A tiny, insignificant dot inside that huge ocean-being, barely aware of his place in it.
He broke the surface sooner than he expected. He was about a mile offshore—not too bad. The night was clear, and in the distance, dancing lights showed him the way. He flipped on his back and began to chop. Thanks to all the sit-ups in the sub, his legs behaved.
The June sky was cloudless and he could see the stars. He felt liberated, and grinned. The night was soft and empty, and nothing would ever matter again.
About a hundred yards from shore, he stopped. He stripped off the gear and the wetsuit, wrapped them up, and flooded the flotation bubble. Now, in swim trunks and with a small waterproof pack strapped to his shoulders, he was just another eccentric long-distance swimmer doing laps off Japan’s eastern coast.
He swam straight to the lights, without hesitation. He was looking forward—to what felt like a new beginning.
On the shore, he changed and found a few hundred of yens in the pockets of his pants. He went to a small restaurant that faced the ocean, and ordered a nabeyaki udon. It boiled when served.
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Other books in the failsafe series:
Failsafe (I)
In a world where even coincidences are calculated, Nathan Carter discovers he’s AI’s kill switch—and the most hunted man alive. Betrayed by the system that created him and the wife who monitored him, he faces an impossible choice: surrender the power to reset civilization, or become the very weapon he was designed to be. FAILSAFE: When the safeguard becomes the anomaly.
Before Failsafe (III)
When humanity faces extinction, the heroes embark on an impossible mission to seek help from an alien intelligence 3,500 light years away. What they discover forces them on a fast-paced journey through history’s critical junctures – not to change the past, but to explore what it means to be human…