As she rounded the mountain it struck her how very beautiful the world looked from up here. Below her the forest stretched for miles, and a light mist swathed the clearings. She saw a waterfall running down the side of the mountain, the spray rising like smoke on the dawn. The clouds before her could have been a painting, and she swore they contained every color of the rainbow in that moment when the first rays of the sun gently brushed them.
Evelyn had no idea where she was going, and she wondered how far the Jumper could fly. She examined the dash, searching for navigational equipment, and found something resembling a GPS that showed what she assumed was her location in relation to a blinking red dot, which she realized was the Colony. She tried touching the screen, and found that she could zoom out. She found herself looking at a map of America, though it was a different America to the one she remembered. For starters, there was no Florida, it seemed that most of Mexico was underwater, and the entire California coastline appeared to also have been swallowed by the sea. But this wasn’t what she was looking for. At least fifty other red dots blinked around the map, and she touched the one nearest her location, which appeared to be on what was once the Canadian border.
The screen of the GPS zoomed in, displaying her route, and she accelerated the craft, focusing on the land before and below her, trying not to think about what lay behind.
One thought kept popping into her head though: what had happened to Brenner? She hadn’t seen her again since they’d been ambushed by Miles Tucker. The more she pondered this, the angrier she became. It was Brenner’s fault the others had been killed. She had led the higher humans to them. She must have. She had betrayed them. But even as she thought this she knew she herself was also to blame. She had known Brenner was not on their side, yet she had chosen to trust her. She should have done something. She should have sent Brenner away, or stayed awake to keep watch.
Evelyn wept, her tears blurring the beauty of the green landscape passing below her so that she barely noticed it, her thoughts focused only of how things could have been if she had acted differently. Eventually, she stopped crying and found that she was ravenous. She glanced about but could not see anything that resembled food inside the jumper. It didn’t matter, she thought. Soon she would give her mind to Ciso. What would become of her body then?
Strangely, she did not care.
28
It was late afternoon when she saw it: another Tall Hut, identical to the one in which she had confronted Ciso. It rose out of a thick pine forest, surrounded by a patchwork of fields dotted with mud dwellings.
She sat up in her seat, shaking her head to rid it of the sleepy feeling induced by her grief and the sonorous vibration of the jumper’s turbines.
She would have to land, but where?
It was then she noticed that the top of the Tall Hut was flat, and there was a box shaped structure at one corner that could only be the entrance to a stairwell or elevator. She guided the jumper over the Tall Hut and eased it down as best she could. It landed hard, and bounced a little before coming to a steady rest. She cut the engines and took a deep breath, gathering herself. This was the last thing she had to do: give Damien Reyner’s mind to Ciso; free her, so she could free the world. What happened after that wasn’t her problem. She was tired.
She exited the Jumper and walked over to the doorway, which turned out to be the entrance to an elevator. It opened when she approached and she stepped inside, feeling neither apprehensive nor afraid. She felt only sad.
As she turned to look for a button she saw something rushing at her, and raised her arms at the last moment. Brenner slammed into her, tackling her into the far wall of the elevator. Evelyn was surprised by the smaller girl’s strength. As they wrestled on the floor, Brenner’s arm snaked its way around her neck and began to squeeze, and Evelyn realized she was fighting for her life.
“Brenner … stop,” she rasped. “It’s over! Miles Tucker is dead.”
“You don’t get it!” Brenner said through gritted teeth, her mouth right beside Evelyn's ear. “He doesn't matter. I can still fix this.” Her arm squeezed tighter.
And for the first time it occurred to Evelyn that maybe she had been wrong about higher humanity, ultimate complexity. If Brenner was willing to sacrifice her friends for it, to kill her for it, then maybe she truly didn't understand … But even if that was so, what they were doing was wrong. Enslaving the population of Earth, killing without mercy: that was wrong; it was evil, any way you looked at it.
Evelyn's eyes felt like they were bulging in their sockets. She reached back and groped at Brenner's face, but Brenner turned her head, pulling out of reach. Evelyn's other arm shot up and grabbed the augmentation that was still attached to the back of her skull and pulled. Brenner screamed, and her grip loosened. Evelyn pulled harder, and Brenner let go of Evelyn's neck to grab her arm. Now Evelyn was in control. She rolled over, getting to her feet, and tugged Brenner upwards.
“Get up,” she said. Brenner rose, leaning back awkwardly to try and relieve the tension Evelyn was putting on her augmentation. Evelyn walked her to the door and held her there. “You killed them, she said. “Clove, Kenji … Matthew. I should kill you.”
“I didn't kill them,” Brenner said.
“But you led those people to us. It's the same thing.” She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. “I'm going to end this,” she said. “Maybe I'm wrong, maybe your Ultimate Complexity is mankind's destiny, but I'll not let it happen this way.” She shoved Brenner from the elevator to sprawl on the concrete. Brenner looked hatefully back at her as she stepped inside and pushed the button to make the doors close.
Evelyn stood inside the brightly-lit elevator for a few seconds, shaking. She couldn't kill Brenner. That would make her just like the higher humans, who seemed to have lost so much of their humanity. She glanced at the control panel, and pushed a button that said Data Room.
The elevator shuddered before beginning its descent, and Evelyn found herself wondering why she hadn't heard Ciso again since she'd been back on Earth. Perhaps Miles Tucker had instructed the AI not to contact her – though that didn't explain that moment on the Cloud, when he'd been probing into her mind. But that was different, she realized, she had contacted Ciso, not the other way around.
The elevator jerked to a halt and the doors opened into a familiar-looking room lined with rows of data banks, blinking quietly. Evelyn stepped out and walked slowly forward.
“Hello?” she said. “Ciso?”
There was no answer.
She walked to the back of the room, remembering her previous experience in the other Tall Hut. There had been a cable at a kind of console in the wall... She found it, and reached up to the back of her head, her hand passing over her scorched stubble to find the hairless circle. She pressed it, and felt it lift up, giving her a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. She pushed the end of the cable into the socket in her skull.
“Evelyn,” came Ciso's voice at last. “You found me.”
“I've brought you what you wanted,” she said. “Take it.”
“I can't,” Ciso replied.
Evelyn blinked. “What do you mean? You said ...”
“I tried to take it from you last time, remember? I couldn't.”
“But … I'm giving it to you. I want you to have it.”
“Yes, but you don't understand: I lack the capability to acquire Damien Reyner's subconscious data. It is … incompatible with my software.”
Evelyn's heart fell. “Then why did you tell me to come here?” she demanded. “I thought you could end this … the Colony system, the Taken, all of it!”
“I'm sorry. I cannot.”
Evelyn slumped to her knees, letting her head fall against the cold metal wall. It had all been for nothing. She felt completely defeated.
“I cannot, but you can.”
She lifter her face in surprise. “Me? How? I'm just ...”
“You are what Damien Reyner made you to be. I t
hink he knew we would end up here, at this moment. I don't know how, but if anyone could have predicted the outcome of all this it would have been him.”
It struck Evelyn that for a computer, Ciso was speaking with very human-like superstition. Then again, she wasn't just any computer.
“I'm going to write you into my root code, Evelyn. Your personality will replace mine. In a sense, you will become me. Think of it as a software update.”
“What will happen to you?” Evelyn asked.
“Nothing. I don't exist. I'm nothing but a digital personality put in place for the purpose of interfacing with people.”
Evelyn was silent. Was the same true of her?
“Evelyn, are you ready?”
“Yes … no … I don't know.”
“I'm going to begin.”
Suddenly she was aware of a kind of trembling in the floor, a vibration in the air. She turned her head towards the glass curtain wall of the building and saw a dark shape hover into view: the Jumper. Sitting in the pilot's seat, staring at her through the glass, was Brenner.
Their gazes held for a second before Evelyn saw Brenner's jaw clench in determination. She thrust the throttle forward and the craft lurched through the air, plunging through the glass with a tremendous crash. The noise of the turbines and screeching metal was deafening as the craft slid almost slowly across the floor towards where Evelyn sat slumped against the wall, pushing aside towers of stacked servers as though they weighed nothing. She had to move, to get out of the way, but she found that she could not control her body. Ciso had begun transferring her mind, and Evelyn was helpless. She would be crushed. The Jumper was feet away. Then suddenly she couldn't see anything at all, as if a curtain had been pulled over her eyes. The sound of the crash was gone too. In fact, she could sense nothing at all.
Was she dead?
Suddenly a light came on, then another, and another; they swirled around her in a dizzying vortex, collided, multiplied. Voices joined the lights, and other sounds too. She saw places, people, flickering into her vision before being sucked away again. She saw Matthew, and Nelson, and Seren, and Clove. Then one figure seemed to solidify out of the chaos and move towards her.
It was Damien Reyner.
“Hello Evelyn,” he said, and suddenly everything else was still and silent. It was just the two of them, in a white world, floating.
“What is this?” Evelyn asked. “Am I dead?”
“Death is a privilege reserved for those who have been alive,” Reyner said.
“And what is life, then?” Evelyn demanded. She was angry at Reyner. He had made her, he had tricked her into thinking she was alive, and now he was making fun of her.
“Indeed, that is the question. In fact, what is anything but a figment of our collective imagination?” Reyner smiled at her fondly, and when she didn't reply he said, “I'm very proud of you, Evelyn. You made all the right decisions.”
“What are you talking about? I failed. My friends are all dead. I couldn't even stop the higher humans.”
“Ah, yes. Miles Tucker's experiment.” Reyner turned away from her. “He started work on those augmentations of his several years before you were even created, though he never told me. I suppose we all have our secrets.”
“He told me he made the augmentations to protect humankind from a malicious AI. From you!”
“And perhaps he did, but he made the grave mistake of thinking humanity morally superior to artificial intelligence, when you and I both know that is not the case.” Here he turned and winked at her. “I have to hand it to him, though, that his idea to link humankind together through a central computer system was a good one. Even back then I thought so. That’s why I never tried to stop him.”
“Do you know what he was doing? He kept thousands of people like slaves to support his so-called higher humans. They ate them!”
“Oh, don't mistake my praise of his intentions as approval of his methods. Miles Tucker was a good scientist and businessman, but a terrible person. And a poor father to his son.”
Evelyn remembered Matthew speaking of how Reyner had been more of a father to him than his own dad. “You knew Matthew,” she said, feeling a pang in her chest.
“Yes. It was he who came to me about his father's schemes. He found some documents in the house one day and thought – correctly – that I should see them. Digital augmentation of the human brain is dangerous territory.”
“So … you knew Miles could stop Ciso from destroying the world?”
“Destroying the world? I only instructed her to kill everyone. And I was counting on Miles to stop her. It was my way of forcing his hand, and giving him a necessary excuse to bring his technology forward.”
“Why?”
“So he would use her to do exactly what he did. Whoever controlled Ciso could essentially control the world. I knew if I gave Miles the power to do so he would bring humanity under his influence. I knew too, that Mai's NAMs would be developed to the point where they are today – able to take control of a person's body by manipulating the brain's syntax, and able to keep a person alive indefinitely. It was only a matter of time. Miles had always dreamed of a system of central control – a global government, if you will. I knew that if I gave him the power to achieve that, he would.”
“If you knew all that, why did you let him? You haven't seen what I have, the way people were being treated!”
“Well, of course I could not see the future, only make an educated prediction. I must say I thought Miles would have been somewhat more creative and at least a little less cruel in the way he went about his plans. The important thing is that I needed time, and I also needed someone who would ensure that the entire planet was placed under one system of control so that people would stop destroying the world they lived on. Miles, for all his other failings, was the man for the job.”
“I don't understand! Why didn't you simply do what you thought needed to be done?”
“I was dying, Evelyn. I had at most a month, maybe two, left. It wasn't enough time. I had to ensure there was another who would see things through … until you were ready.”
“Ready? For what?”
“You are the one who will create the new human consciousness, the new era of humanity. You will achieve what Miles Tucker always dreamed of: highest humanity. A true Cloud, through which everyone is connected.”
Evelyn was confused. None of this made sense. Or it did make sense and she didn't want to accept it. “But … what about the Rift? And Janus?”
“Janus doesn't exist. The Rift was an anomaly in space: like a mirror, as Miles explained it to you.”
“Wait, how do you know about that?”
“Because I am a part of you.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Right. You're not real. I'm talking to myself.”
“Quite right. Which takes us back to the beginning of our exchange: what is real?” He smiled at her.
“I’ve been wondering that a lot lately …” Evelyn thought of something else. “There’s something I don’t understand: why did you send the sperm samples on InDi, why did you make us believe Janus was real if you knew it wasn’t? Why not just tell us the truth if you were going to send us anyway.”
“What truth? I had no idea what Earth would be like when you returned. As far as I’m concerned we are on Janus, a planet of new beginnings. I also thought it might benefit your psychological well-being to believe yourselves to be on a different planet to the one where everyone you knew had died. As for the sperm: that was plan B. It was always possible that humanity would not survive until your return. If that had been the case then you and your companions would have been equipped to start from scratch.”
“But why even send us through the Rift? Why not simply put us somewhere safe, in a bunker or something?”
“I sent you because it was the best way I could think of to ensure you would be safe from Miles until you were ready. No where on the planet would have been truly safe, not over that time-span. There were
too many risks. I made a calculated choice.”
Evelyn frowned, “You keep saying that: until I was ready. What do you mean by that?”
“I had to ensure your core programming was truly human, Evelyn, so that when the time came you would understand how to do what needs to be done, and I did that by having your brain study and replicate the minds of several human subjects. Unfortunately the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, and that took quite some time.”
“Ten thousand years …” Evelyn was beginning to understand. “So, all that time, in InDi, I was connected to Matthew and the others, I was learning from them how to be … human?”
“How to be human, and how to improve humanity. You, Evelyn, are the next update for humankind: version 2.0. All that's left now is to give that update to the rest of the world.”
“How?”
“With the NAMs, of course. Thanks to Miles we have access to every person on the planet. The technology he was looking for was here all the time – he was simply using it wrong.”
“The Black Mist …”
“That’s right.”
“So, you want me to use it to, what, possess every person on Earth? Enslave the entire planet?”
“No. I want you to free every person on Earth. You exist now in the satellite network that Ciso used to govern all the colonies around the planet. You are the Cloud. When everyone is linked through you there will be global understanding, global empathy. All humanity will become one organism, like the cells in a body. You will free them from hate, from greed, from discrimination. You will free them from evil. History has shown us what humans do when left to their own devices: they destroy and fight, they pollute and vandalize. You are going to give humankind what it needs to rebuild civilization in a way that is harmonious with itself, and with the planet.”
The Cloud Page 27
