Sunlight streams through the blinds as the clock reads 12:56. The room is quiet, but if you listen hard enough you can hear a single heart beat. As you listen, concentrating on the thump thump, thump thump you suddenly become aware of the sound of a helicopter nearby. 3 Armed men dressed in military fatigues slide down a fast-rope to the street outside and quickly enter the house, pulling the 19 year old man out of his bed and out into a van below.

The Adventures of Dirk Stanton began July 25th, 2004 when he was pulled from his bed at 12:56 AM by a bunch of military guys. In Dirk’s time that was less than a year ago. But on world time it had been 15 years since he was first taken. Life was different now in 2019. Nanotechnology has become so widespread that schools no longer exist in some of the more technologically advanced countries, because nanotechnology has enabled the downloading of information directly to the brain, without the need for teaching. Schools are now known as practice centers, where people can go to practice the things that have been downloaded into them.

In 2010 an effort was made to partially terraform Mars to be habitable by life. Some scientists came up with the idea that by detonating Nuclear Weapons at the Mars Polar Ice Caps (where large stores of CO2 were located) would create the same type of Greenhouse effect on Mars as we have here on Earth. The experiment was a success of sorts. Mars will be habitable in 100 years or so, but until then no living thing can get near the surface of the highly radioactive Mars.

Veronica learned of Dirk’s fate from a friend in the government. Once nanotechnology had become so widespread, history books wanted to know about the first test subjects. The government was compelled to release this information through the Freedom of Information Act which was passed in the 20th century. Veronica was specializing in nanotechnology at the time and had worked with subjects similar to Dirk, though many years after his apparent death. It took her 2 years to develop a recovery treatment and to actually find out where Dirk had been buried.

Upon revival some of Dirk’s nanobots were upgraded so that he could ‘learn’ through downloaded information. A side effect for most people was that whatever information was downloaded had to be downloaded multiple times in order for it to ’stick’. Dirk did not have this problem. Anything he ‘learned’ immediately stuck and was usable by him.

One thing that remained unchanged from Dirk’s more adventurous days was that he was still not entirely free. He could roam the compounds as he pleased, but he could not leave the compound he was in. The Current Events Dirk received were all very closely monitored and usually quite old (the Mars Terraforming news being an example of his ‘current’ events).

Dirk constantly demanded to know what was going on…

Until one day he found out…

…to be continued…

You may all have been wondering…
Where the F’ has Martz been?
Oh… i’ve been here… problem is I went over my bandwidth for the month and everytime someone viewed my site… i got an email that said:
The domain mattmartz.com has reached 80% of its bandwidth limit.
Please contact the system admin as soon as possible.
Very freaking annoying because I got multiple emails a day (which wasn’t necessarily bad… at least people were viewing my site. So yeah, that’s the only reason I haven’t been updating recently… sorry…

My 4th semester at VT has begun and it’s off to a roaring start. Right now I’m taking a break between classes to update my blog (I have to leave in 15 minutes). My schedule Mondays and Wednesdays is pretty harsh. Mondays I have 5 classes… all before 2:15 so basically i have class at: 8, 9, 10, (hour for lunch), 12 and 1 5 straight classes… nasty.
My 1220 class usually ends by 1230 though… that professor is crazy… he goes over the homework real quick, and then a quick quiz maybe, and then we’re dismissed. Insane. I’m counting on that early dismissal today cause I have to eat lunch between that class and my Naval Architecture one (the one i have at 1:25). That way I can survive waiting til 7 PM for dinner so that I can have it with Holls.

O.R.A.C.L.E. is freaking amazing. There are no questions about that, none at all. I’d show you what it’s all about it’s going through some tweaks… but for those that are really curious: http://www.rlc17.org.vt.edu/guest/
login with the vt pid: guest (case sensitive)
and password: guest
and this is what Adam and I had about 1 and a half versions ago. The site is officially launching to the class next Monday (Feb 7th for those keeping track). It’s going to be great. The project is going so well, that Adam and I have begun to plan for the future, but I can’t really talk about that in here (i think… ask and i’ll tell you in person maybe)

I’m really glad that Adam and I had the opportunity to work on this project together. It’s kinda like senior year in high school with the science project…
//I was gonna say somethin about highly disliking the CSA class here, but i withdrew that comment//

I updated it… and I have the storyline figured out for quite a while… read it from the beginning and catch up, then post some comments on here about it (and you can rate the stories for ones that were more interesting than others… it’ll help me later when writing them, so at the least please rate them… thanks, i appreciate it)

I gotta get ready for class… i’ll post again later cause the month is pretty much over (i stopped getting the bandwidth things i think)

After Dirk was buried he had no sense of time… no sense of conciousness… no sense of reality. At times he believed he was talking with people only to realize where he actually was, 6 feet under. He had no hope of communicating with the outside… to tell anyone that he was alive and that the surgery was a success. Drifting in and out of conciousness was a blur and he had no idea how many times nor how often he did it. There were no distinctions between the two…

…until one day, Dirk drifted back into conciousness only to be blinded by a light. It was shining back and forth in his eyes. He still couldn’t move, but it was the most glorious light he had ever seen. Was this THE light? Had his brain finally given up and allowed him to die?

No.

Everything was moving very quickly around him, but it started to slow… and as things sped up, he began to feel!

“Doctor, I have a pulse” a nurse told the doctor excitedly.

The doctor was a beautiful woman about 30 years old.

“Dirk, can you understand me?”

With much difficulty Dirk managed to make a noise, although it was almost inaudible but the doctor had heard it.

“Great Dirk, you’re going to be just fine. When you’re ready, I can tell you what happened.”

Dirk tried as hard as he could and managed to say ‘Ready.’

“Your surgery to correct your spinal damage was successful, but a problem arose when they tried reviving you after it. They sent a ‘wake up’ signal to your t-k-s but it failed to respond. They didn’t understand why, and couldn’t find any signs of life, so they assumed you were dead and buried you. When reports of you were declassified, I noticed that it was actually a failure of the original t-k-s model and that you were actually alive. Instead of there needing to be a ‘wake up’ signal to be sent, you actually had to be revived through different means, that my team and I discovered. Upon finding this out, we immediately sought out to dig you up and bring you back into the world.”

It had become easier for Dirk to speak and he asked, ‘Why worry about me?’

“No one should ever have to go through what you went through. I swore to myself that if there was a way to bring you back, I would do it.”

‘Why do you care?’

“You saved my life Dirk, it was the least I could do.”

‘What??’

“Dirk, it’s me… Veronica…”

…to be continued…