Jack of Harts

Los Alamos declared official neutrality between the State and Federal governments during the Second Great Depression. They were a private enterprise by then, even if they received heavy funding from the government. That allowed them to stay out of the worst chaos, though some of it still found them. The Rogue AIs attacked of course. As did the Islamic State of Detroit, after their Imam declared that all AIs were an affront to Allah and must be destroyed. The two organizations worked together to perform several strikes that did a great deal of damage to Los Alamos and their widespread network. That led Los Alamos to support Texas through to the end of the Islamic Jihad and the Cybernetic Wars. But they steadfastly refused to rejoin the Federal government or to swear loyalty to Texas or any other State government. They were scientists, devoted to research and learning, and they were well and truly done with government middle managers or political hacks meddling in their affairs. The Los Alamos Network would pursue science, without any further interference from those who did not understand the meaning of the word.

The scientists working at Los Alamos during the Second Great Depression did not realize that management of the entire laboratory had devolved into the hands of a single awakened AI. Relations between the scientists and managers had been at an all-time low at the laboratory, so the scientists took it as a good sign when the managerial meetings switched to virtual settings. They no longer had to accept daily tours of managers who did not understand clean environments, and their research efficiency rates climbed to unheard of levels. The official director of Los Alamos had been buried in her research for weeks when she realized things were going too smoothly. She didn’t remember the last time one of her managers had pushed another idiotic harebrained idea. Her personal favorite was the photo op with plutonium rods, but that wasn’t actually the worst she’d seen in her years at Los Alamos. She stepped out of her lab to investigate and found Kitty running the entire show. She promptly scolded the AI for taking over without telling her, complimented the AI for doing her job so well, and promoted her to president of operations. She then told the AI to carry on and went back to her research, confident that the daily running of her lab was finally in qualified hands.

Los Alamos gained fame after World War II as the place where the first atomic bombs were built. It helped to change the world, and then spent the Cold War designing newer and more powerful bombs that would never be used to destroy the Soviet Union and her allies. Los Alamos branched off into more peaceful pursuits after the Berlin Wall fell, including the medical sciences, renewable energy, and nanotechnology. It was a leading researcher into artificial intelligence during the early decades of the Twenty First Century, and hosted one of the largest data storage facilities on the planet. It should be no surprise that such a high tech installation became the birthplace to one of the first awakened AIs on Earth. Few places on Earth have had as much of an effect on our way of life than Los Alamos. It birthed the Atomic Age that helped us slip the bonds of Earth, and then helped guide the growth of the Cybernetic Age that brought us to the stars.