Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

that when the warhead was commanded to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, most of the final stage would disintegrate into meteoric fireball as it streaked towards the intended impact point. The Reich had not been able to develop or weaponize nuclear fission, but it was understood that the radioactive materials cesium and cobalt could be compressed to near criticality, and the resulting explosion would write a “love letter” from Germany to the enemy below that would be impossible to ignore for generations.

The technical hurdle confronting the delivery of Apparatus 33 was the challenge to make it small and yet perform the mental feats of interpretation, reasoning, and recollection of a human pilot. Prototypes that were small and light, were not smart enough to mimic a human pilot. Prototypes smart enough to function as a rocket autopilot, were too heavy and large to fit into the available confines of the warhead.

A system that could think and reason like a human was the last technological breakthrough not yet summited, even by the combined brain power assembled under Die Kuppel; or at the sister facility to the south known in hushed whispers as the Eispalast13. To hasten the development of a working system, Die Kuppel management had decided to form two competing teams. One team was led by Berlin bred and educated Herr Ingenieruin Raynor Zerrissen, who demonstrated ingenuity in compelling vacuum tubes, selenium diodes, and electromagnetic relays to perform complex mathematics. These devices, so believed his circle of scientists, would surely be the ingredients of a machine that could think like a human.

The other team was led by the bioengineer, surgeon, and student of the esteemed Herr Doktor Joseph Mengle, called Herr Doktor Procrustes Todtenhausen, known for his pursuit of understanding human intelligence, reducing it to three essential atomic components: self-control, memory, and self-awareness. He used this rubric to classify the animal kingdom into levels of intelligence, reaching the conclusion that Apparatus 33 need only achieve a capability no more advanced than that of a rather dull Aryan child, or, equivalently, an especially bright Jewish one.

Though admired for his discoveries in animal cognition, Todtenhausen was regarded as a bit of an odd pony, extreme in his fervent hatred of anything not Aryan. His time in the operating theater supported his hobby of taxidermy or vice versa, and in any event, he often crossed the boundaries of decency, even by the new Nazi standards of deviance. His mounted animals were often fashioned in salacious poses, and usually employed vivisections that observers thought were unnecessary and insensitive, but which he always found amusing.

Even if Team Todtenhausen could not produce a practical Apparatus 33 prototype, eccentricities such as these were tolerated everywhere in the Reich realm now, and his pediatric medical credentials supported the polio cover story should the Red Cross ever saunter into the bars and restaurants of Debica. When news that the Allies had landed in Normandy arrived at Die Kuppel, enthusiasm for the cover story compounded. A protective cover for the pediatric ward could do no worse to ward off Allied bombers than Göring’s feckless Luftwaffe. Any means to mitigate the risk of the Soviet gulags would be welcome should Comrade Zhukov appear at their doorstep with Field Marshal Paulus in one hip pocket, and orders to prosecute war criminals in the other.

Zerrissen’s and Todtenhausen faced the same challenge - to package a calculating and sequencing apparatus into a footprint smaller and lighter than an lawn mower engine, consume no more power than was available in a standard lead-acid Volkswagen automobile battery, and yet fit within the angular nooks and random crevices of the conic nosecone where the size and aerodynamic shape of the warhead took priority.

A small mockup of the Amerika Rakete was mounted on a platform at the front of one of the Bunker’s conference rooms, placed there so that everyone with proper credentials to enter the room could visualize what they were all there to accomplish, to take measurements, and discuss design issues. The model had movable engine bells and vanes to confirm that the guidance systems were working correctly. Lights illuminated when commands were received to jettison the spent stages.

Upon the news that Stalingrad had returned to the Soviets, and Paris to the Parisians, the Reich Ministry of Armaments stepped up the urgency to see this bird fly. Demonstrations of the current state of the two prototypes were demanded, with Team Zerrissen going first. Zerrissen’s prototype, the bulk of which was too large to move from its lab, was connected to the demonstrator with cables snaking through the corridors, and to the central component on display in the conference room, which, he explained, performed the actual decision making that would replicate those of a rocket pilot.

Those who might have been convinced that the decision maker was less a rocket pilot than it was a 35 mm film projector could be forgiven, inasmuch as the device was in fact liberated from the projection room of the movie theater reserved for screening the latest films from Goebbels or Riefenstahl for the entertainment of officers and executive visitors.

The lens of the projector had been replaced with a tubular collection of photo receptors that, as Zerrissen explained, would respond to rows of dots exposed into each frame of the 35 mm film as it fed from the top reel to the bottom. These dots, to the delight of witnesses, informed the electronic section of the values that needed to be measured, what responses were needed, when they were needed, and for how long. Setting the projector in motion, the assembly of scientists, including the bemused Todtenhausen, observed servos rotating, valves opening or closing, pressures regulating as needed, vanes and engine bells gimballing, correctly compensated for simulated winds and Coriolis forces, and stages separating correctly as indicated by fuel and inertial sensors. Those who wanted Zerrissen’s projector system to perform as an automatic rocket pilot were not disappointed. Those who needed the apparatus to fit in something the size of the console radio over which