“Good morning, Dr. Isaac Hawkins. Welcome to Lancelot Defense Systems, Marin facility. The outside temperature is 12 degrees; wind speed 3 knots; overcast. Your group is currently performing above average. You are fourteen minutes early.”

A slight pause.

“You have been assigned today to preëmptive maintenance in level A-14, chamber three. Maintenance is on power controller numbers one and two. You are occupant number one in this elevator. This elevator will bring you to level A-14, exit one-three.”

The elevator silently picked up speed, dropping deep into the artificial island a few dozen miles off the coast of Marin for public safety. Not that the distance would actually help, given the energy levels contained within the antimatter chambers.

“You seem to be under some amount of stress. Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our psychiatrists?”

I shake my head in the negative.

The elevator glides to a stop and dings as the doors slide open. I walk out into the concrete corridor, following the signs for the third chamber. It’s a bit of a walk around the central chamber that contains the gigawatt nuclear fusion reactor; a walk I take twice a day. The elevator doesn’t get me all the way; for safety reasons, there are only three elevator doors on each A-class level, and they’re placed evenly between the chamber doors.

The shiny vinyl floor gives a bit as I step along it, the ever-vigilant cameras categorizing my every move. I live on the surface of the island, in a concrete bunker that’s been shoddily painted and clad with aluminum panels designed to resemble the typical housing of the Bay Area. Despite the proximity, I like to be early in case of any delays along the way. The elevators are busy for quite a while every time the shifts change.

There are defense systems integrated into the walls, next to the cameras. The Pentagon has granted Lancelot Defense Systems a practically unlimited sum of money to further develop antimatter creation, containment, and weapons systems. The work we’re doing here is beyond top-secret; the information we have would make it possible for nearly any country of any size to create and refine antimatter. Our job is to make sure we have even better technology, if and when the information here gets out.

I nod and turn the corner to the bright alcove containing the entrance to Chamber 3. I silently place my palm against the biometric sensor; I feel a thousand pricks of heat as cores of my hand, a few atoms thick, are pulled out for DNA evaulation; they check for any health issues (no sneezing in the antimatter chambers), DNA, body heat, and a thousand other things that ensure the hand on the sensor is my own living hand.

“Your biometrics have been accepted, Dr. Isaac Hawkins. Unlocking outer door.”

There’s a sharp click-click-click of the three independent locking systems pulling back the deadbolts, the door ponderously swinging open. I step into the hermetically sealed chamber and pull out my hand again for a second biometrics check. The wall slides open and to the side, revealing the vacuum suit. The suit, a smooth white mechanical counterpressure suit, is pushed out of the recess with steel rods. The suit has been cleaned of all contaminants while it was in the wall, but as soon as I’m sealed up and the airlock vented, the suit will be re-cleaned by the airlock before I’m permitted into the chamber proper.

I zip up the legs of the suit. It’s a difficult task; the design of the suit means it pulls tight against me, making the seal hard to slide for the last few centimeters. It snaps shut and I hear a tone indicating a positive seal on the suit entrance. I pull the helmet off of the stand, feeling my gloved hands analyzing the rim, grabbing onto it more securely than a human ever could. I spin it around and lower it onto my head, pushing it down hard until I hear another tone and then a slight hiss as the backpack pressurizes the helmet to full operating pressure. Due to the nature of the chambers, the suit is designed to operate untethered for days at a time. It’s powered by a few picograms of antimatter, stored near the base of my neck. The thinking was that the best place to put it was near a part of the human body that you’d protect instinctively.

The heads-up display on the helmet flickers, then runs through its power-up sequence, briefly overwhelming my eyes with the brilliant light from the laser projectors. “Welcome, Dr. Isaac Hawkins,” says the suit. “Airlock will be at an acceptable vacuum in twelve minutes. Local pressure at 0.3% of surface.”

He twiddled his thumbs as the airlock pumps kicked in and the last dregs of air were forcibly removed from the confined area. The spacesuit itself was only a few weeks old; it was a new prototype from the Advanced Microtechnology Group in the Marin facility. It would theoretically support a human for several years before it needed to be refilled with antimatter.

“Air pressure at nominal chamber level. Unlocking inner door. Prepare for maintenance.”

The inner door popped open with a noticeable sound. My suit constantly scanned the outside environment, creating a 3D representation accurate to the millimeter. The suit itself synthesized the vibrations of the environment and reproduced them as sound in his helmet.