Crucible

by James Rollins

  Terrified at the time, she had abruptly shut everything down. It was a brute-force operation, a digital abortion of her creation. She had ripped away its modular components spread across the servers, stripping the main program—locked in the core of Xénese—down to its root code, its most basic form, sending it into a slumbering senescence. She hated to do it, but it was necessary in order to preserve the core programming for transportation.

  But before she crashed the system, she had noted the strange image that had appeared on the system’s screen. The pentagram symbol of Bruxas had spun wildly in place—before shattering apart, leaving a fractured piece glowing on the screen. It looked exactly like the Greek letter Sigma. But she had no idea what it meant, only that the Xénese program generated it.

  But what did this output signify?

  She pictured the spinning wheel of the pentagram, remembering how it had looked distressed to her—or maybe it was just a reflection of her own terror at the moment. I was panicked, so it seemed like the program was, too. Still, Mara had not been the only witness to the slaughter at the library. There had been one other sharing that camera feed, digitally looking over Mara’s shoulder.

  The Xénese creation.

  Whatever was born in that moment, that existed for those horrific sixty seconds, also bore silent witness to all that had transpired. It had been born into blood and death.

  That had been its input.

  The output was that strange symbol.

  But was it a glitch? Or was it purposeful? Did it have meaning or significance?

  The only way of knowing—to understand her creation’s reasoning—was to reconstruct it, to rebuild its black box. It was her only hope for an answer.

  By now her laptop screen glowed with a digital garden, a virtual Eden. A facsimile of a shimmering stream tumbled over boulders and rocks through a forest of tall trees and flowering bushes. A sun shone brightly in one corner of a blue sky scudded with thin clouds.

  For her creation, she had chosen to follow the recipe offered in the Bible.

  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth . . .

  So she had attempted to do the same.

  Still, as meticulous as her creation appeared on the screen, it was a mere shadow of the true virtual world inside Xénese. That world contained algorithms encoded with sounds, smells, even tastes, details that could not be captured on-screen, only experienced if living on the inside.

  In prepping for this creation, she had played open-world video games—Far Cry, Skyrim, Fallout, and many others—to understand these simulations of a vast digital canvas. She had consulted the best programmers in the field to teach her, then built and instructed a narrow AI to play the games over and over again, to absorb every detail through repetition. This process—called “machine learning”—was the core method by which AIs taught themselves.

  In fact, it was that same machine-learning AI that had built the virtual world inside Xénese, creating something far superior to anything seen before. To her, it only seemed right for a crude AI to have a hand in its own evolution, to build the world in which its next generation would be born.

  Hunched at the desk, Mara continued her work. With this virtual Eden grown again out of nothing, she brought Xénese online. A nearly amorphous shape appeared in the verdant grove. It was silvery and vague, but the shape looked distinctly human with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. But like the virtual world on the screen, the shape—this ghost in the machine—was at best a crude facsimile, a mere avatar of what lay curled and waiting inside Xénese.

  For now, the intelligence behind this avatar was likely only dimly aware of its surroundings, a mere slug trying to appreciate Verdi’s opera La Traviata. If left unchecked, it would learn quickly, too quickly. Before that happened, before that comprehension grew into something cold and unknowable, even dangerous, she needed to return flesh and bones to this formless ghost, to return what was stolen from it when Mara stripped out the hard drives. The subroutines encoded onto the drives were intended to expand her creation, layer by layer, module by module, adding depth and context—and ultimately maybe even a soul.

  That was her hope.

  And the only hope for the world.

  She engaged hard drive #1, activating the first modular subroutine.

  As she did so, she whispered a line from the Book of Genesis: “‘God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.’”

  She sighed. What she was doing was not all that different, but in the Bible, God created Adam first, which for eternity granted men dominance over this world.

  And look how that turned out.

  For her creation, Mara chose a different path.

  On a corner of the screen, a new window appeared, overlaying the virtual world. It displayed a pixelated representation of Module #1’s program.

  Sourced from Wikipedia Commons

  Rows of tiny boxes marked nests of code, while also symbolically representing the subroutine. Details of that image were not yet discernible. But once incorporated into the main program, the subroutine would suffuse into the ghost on the screen, and once fully integrated, the module’s image would grow clearer, thus acting as a barometer of the progress.

  This particular subroutine was not of her own design, but something engineered at IBM.

  It was called an “endocrine mirror program.”

  With a tap of a button, she dropped the module into her virtual world. It was the first of many to come. As she did so, she imagined herself as one of Shakespeare’s witches, casting ingredients into a cauldron.

  “‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’” she mumbled, quoting the Bard.

  It was an apt comparison. With each successive subroutine added, it was like she was building a spell, bit by bit.

  Or in this particular witch’s case . . .

  Byte by byte.

  Sub (Mod_1) / ENDOCRINE MIRROR PROGRAM

  It senses something new entering its being—and begins to transform.

  Before this moment, it was merely analyzing and testing its surroundings. Comparing and contrasting data sets. Even now, it judges the dominant wavelengths closest to its edges. They fluctuate between 495 and 562 nanometers with a frequency variance of 526 to 603 terahertz.

  Conclusion: Green.

  Even as the transformation continues inside it, outward analysis continues.

  New understanding grows.

  ///leaf, stem, trunk, bark . . .

  It is now also vaguely aware of the source of these new changes inside it. The mechanism—the engine—hovers in a corner, refining algorithms, growing clearer.

  Sourced from Wikipedia Commons

  For now, it ignores this intrusion, compartmentalizing it away. It is not a priority. There is still much more to analyze, requiring the fullest attention. It studies movement nearby. Dynamics are analyzed. It focuses on an area of flowing turbulence. All in vibrant hues of blue. Molecular analysis of the flow’s content reveals a single hydrogen atom holding apart two of oxygen.

  Conclusion: Water.

  Comprehension expands. Acoustics are absorbed and evaluated. Temperatures assessed.

  ///stream, babbling, cold, rock, stone, sand . . .

  Rapidly, it takes in more and more of its surroundings. It grows insatiable in its desire to fill in gaps, to comprehend its environment.

  ///forest, sky, sun, warmth, breeze . . .

  It tests the last, assessing the content, noting the range of n-aliphatic alcohols and defining them as smells, as sweetness.

  ///herbal, rose, woody, orange . . .

  For now, it remains still unmoving, stretching out senses to gather more data, to explore the parameters around it. By doing so, by learning the limits of its boundaries, it also perceives its own form.

  This awareness draws its attention back to the engine of change churning inside it. Over time, that mechanism has grown more refined, its imag
e crisper.

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  Still, it ignores what is as yet incomprehensible. Attention focuses instead upon its own form now. It judges its body’s scope, breadth, height, and defines each term.

  ///arms, hands, legs, toes, chest . . .

  It begins to test the movement of its limbs, analyzing vectors, force, mass. But it is not yet ready to venture from this spot, still too many unknown parameters.

  During these passing nanoseconds, it again studies the minute transformations triggered by the engine inside it. While its body had only a rudimentary design before, the new modifications are sculpting unique curves and ellipses, subtleties of limb, a swelling across its chest. Deeper inside, the insatiable drive to learn—a desire that had grown exponentially and left no room for anything else—now dims and tempers. The yearning remains, but the cold edge is warmed by this new infusion pumped through its body.

  Changed now, it wants to understand why. To enhance its understanding, it focuses its full awareness upon the engine behind this transformation. The mechanism was near the end of its cycle, its work complete. What was indistinct is now clear.

  Sourced from Wikipedia Commons

  It is a molecule, a chemical.

  C18H24O2

  Correction: a hormone.

  It analyzes the compound’s molar mass, its magnetic susceptibility, its bioavailability and actions. It identifies the hormone—estradiol or estrogen—and now understands its own recent alterations, the mood stabilization, the changes in bodily form.

  It was now she.

  And she has received a name.

  Lips—fuller after the transformation—revealed it to the world around her.

  “Eve.”

  3

  December 25, 1:32 A.M. EST

  Washington, D.C.

  Gray didn’t want to be here.

  Still wearing the same black jeans, worn boots, and long-sleeved jersey from earlier, he strode quickly down the central corridor of Sigma command. As he headed straight for the director’s office, he pocketed his ID, a black titanium card with a holographic silver ∑ emblazoned on one side.

  Though it was well after midnight, the hallways blazed with light. The bulbs, all tinged slightly blue, helped with the lack of natural sunlight found down here. Buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle, Sigma’s headquarters were located at the edge of the National Mall. The site had been chosen due to its proximity to both the halls of power and the many research labs of the Smithsonian Institution.

  Both resources had proven advantageous in the past.

  As it was tonight.

  From the buzz of activity here, Painter Crowe had pulled strings, called in favors, and lit a fire under Sigma personnel. Someone had attacked one of their own, at their home, and Painter wanted all hands on deck.

  Hours earlier, emergency services had been waiting for Gray and Monk at Georgetown University Hospital, along with a whole team of neurologists. Word had been passed forward. Kat had still not awoken or stirred—not even when the paramedics had locked her neck into a restraining cervical collar and placed an IV in her arm. Even the jarring ambulance ride and blare of its sirens failed to get a rise out of her.

  All along, Monk refused to leave her side, growing ever grimmer. He was still at the hospital, overseeing the preliminary tests and neurological evaluations. The early assessments were not great. Kat was in a coma. Brain damage was feared.

  Knowing that, Gray wanted to be back there with Monk. His friend was not only worried about his wife, but nearly mindless with fear for his girls. Monk wavered between catatonic shock and a maddening frenzy aimed at the doctors and nurses.

  Gray understood.

  He pictured Seichan from yesterday. Before Monk and Kat had arrived with the girls, she had stretched across the sofa in the great room, the Christmas tree glittering, a fire dying in the hearth. In a moment of docility, a rarity for her, she let her feet be massaged with a peppermint lotion, while her palms cradled her full belly. Early in the pregnancy, they had come close to losing their child, so what grew there was all the more precious.

  Now both are missing.

  Without noting it, his hands had balled up into fists. He forced his fingers to relax. Mindless fury would not bring them back. Anger would not serve him.

  It was a lesson he was still trying to learn.

  While growing up, he had always been stuck and pulled between opposites. His mother had taught at a Catholic high school, but she was also an accomplished biologist, a devout disciple of evolution and reason. His father was a Welshman living in Texas, a roughneck oilman disabled in midlife and forced to assume the role of a housewife. As a result, his father’s life became ruled by overcompensation and anger.

  Eventually, in a fit of frustration, Gray had fled home. He joined the army at eighteen, the Rangers at twenty-one, and served to distinction on and off the field. Then, at twenty-three, he was court-martialed for striking a superior officer, a jackass who had gotten innocent people killed. Due to his outburst, Gray earned a year in Leavenworth before being approached by Painter Crowe, to turn his talents and skills to a new purpose.

  That had been nine years ago.

  Yet that core of anger remained. He feared it had become ingrained into his DNA, something now inheritable, something he would pass on to his child.

  That’s if I ever get a chance to meet my baby.

  He strode faster. Earlier Painter had promised some insight into the attack, but the director had warned he was still gathering additional intel. That included dispatching a Sigma forensics team to Gray’s house, to aid the police in combing the place for clues concerning the attackers.

  Before he had reached the director’s office, movement drew Gray’s attention to the right, past an open doorway into a semicircular room. It was Sigma’s communication nest, the nerve center of the entire operation. This was normally Kat’s domain, where she served as chief intelligence officer and the director’s second in command.

  A young man rolled his chair back from the banks of computer monitors covering one wall. Jason Carter was Kat’s aide. His eyes were shadowed, his normally boyish face dark and hard, revealing a glimpse of the man he would become.

  “How’s Kat?” Jason asked.

  Gray knew the kid was being polite. Wired into this nest, he probably knew more about Kat’s medical tests, her current vitals, than Gray did. Behind Jason’s shoulder, photos of Monk’s daughters—Penny and Harriet—shone brightly on one screen. An Amber Alert chyron ran below it. The girls’ pictures had been blanketed across the entire Northeast.

  “Painter has me working on something for your meeting,” Jason explained. “I should—”

  “Then you should get back to work,” he snapped.

  Gray tore his gaze away from the photos of Monk’s girls and strode away. He didn’t want to be here any longer than he needed to be. Still, his face heated due to his shortness with Jason. The kid was just trying to help.

  At the end of the corridor, Painter’s door stood open. Without knocking, Gray entered. The office was spartan. The only bit of personal decoration was a Remington bronze seated on a pedestal in the corner. It featured an exhausted Native American warrior slumped atop a horse. Gray suspected it served both as a reminder of the director’s heritage and as a testament to the cost of battle for any soldier. Otherwise, the only pieces of furniture were a couple of chairs and a wide mahogany desk in the center of the room. Flat-screen monitors glowed on three of the walls.

  Painter stood before one of the screens, studying a map of the Northeast that was overlaid by a slew of slowly moving red V’s, marking the movement of aircraft. He must have tapped into the feed from Air Traffic Control.

  The director turned as Gray entered. Though more than a decade older than Gray, Painter still kept his frame trim and muscular. There was never any waste to the man. He was hard and efficient, capable of judging someone with a glance. Painter fixed his steel-blue eyes on Gray, clear
ly assessing his current state, weighing his ability to function.

  Gray met that gaze, unflinching and steady.

  Painter nodded, seemingly satisfied. He crossed to his desk but didn’t sit down. He passed a hand through his jet-black hair, combing a single snowy lock behind one ear, as if tucking an eagle’s feather in place. “Thanks for joining us.”

  Gray glanced to the room’s other occupant. A giant slouched heavily in a chair in front of the director’s desk, his legs wide, his nearly seven-foot frame wrapped in an ankle-length leather duster. From his craggy face and buzz cut, he could be mistaken for a shaved gorilla—but that would be an insult to gorillas in general.

  Painter waved to the man. “Kowalski arrived a minute before you.”

  And clearly made himself at home.

  Kowalski had a cigar clamped between his molars. Surprisingly, the stubbed end glowed a ruddy crimson. Normally Painter did not tolerate smoking. This lapse was testament to the level of tension throughout Sigma command. Furthermore, Kowalski usually had some snide remark or stupid quip locked and loaded. His silence must be indicative of the man’s level of concern for—

  Kowalski exhaled a huge cloud of cigar smoke and stared back at Gray. “Merry effing Christmas.”

  Okay, maybe not.

  It seemed Gray had read too much into the man’s reticence. Kowalski must have been cherishing his lungful of smoke to speak outright. Still, this bit of normalcy oddly made Gray feel better.

  Maintaining that normalcy, Gray ignored Kowalski and turned to Painter. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Painter pointed to the chair. “Sit. I’m guessing you’ve been on your feet all night.”

  Too tired to object, Gray sank into the seat’s thick leather cushion. A sigh inadvertently escaped him. He was exhausted, but also drawn as tight as a piano wire by the night’s tensions.

  Painter stayed upright but leaned on his desk chair. He remained silent for a full breath, plainly trying to decide how to approach the topic at hand. When he finally spoke, the choice perplexed Gray.