Chapter 31 Part 2
Sal wiped the sweat off of his forehead. He had opted for a modular program design. A modular program design was a little like composing a fugue. Every piece worked against but also complemented the other. It required a level of concentration that was difficult to maintain as each line had to be interwoven with the rest of the program. An army of men is composed of individuals, yes, but a good army makes those individuals irrelevant. The unit acts as one. Each step is taken in unison. Each weapon is raised. It is telling that the quickest way to disperse an army is to break its lines. If the lines break, then each person is reminded of their individual existence, and they begin to panic. As they panic, the fighting unit loses the ability to fight. The cohesion of the group disintegrates, and not long after the phrase "Every man for himself" is heard. The utter failure of a fighting unit is best encapsulated by that phrase. Everything a military unit does is designed to ensure that "Every man for himself" is avoided at all costs. By definition, if it is "every man for himself" then one no longer has an army, but something approaching an assemblage of mercenaries.
Sal had never been in an army, but that didn't keep him from programming as though he had been. He was more programming on what amounted to "feel". It was not a matter of logic driving him forward, so much as a vague hint of the outline of the thing he wished to create. Regardless, the pace was exhausting.
At the end of the third week, he felt he had completed his deception. It was, in effect, terrifying to contemplate. Sal felt spent. Such was his state as he hunkered behind his concrete barrier and looked around him to see most of the rest of the citizens of Undertown positioned behind other concrete barriers.
Sal looked over his interface one final time. Everything looked good. He drew a breath in. He caught Prilock's gaze across the way. he signaled with his fist in a downward pumping motion. The shield dropped, and Sal implemented his deception. The result was absolutely terrifying, and unexpected.
