by Len Vlahos
My reverie ended, I curse the Project Quinn team, take stock of my situation, and try to formulate a plan.
Step one: I need to figure out where I’m going.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
That’s as far as I get.
Acting on instinct—yes, instinct—I do the thing I was trying to do when this whole nightmare of an evening began.
I call Shea.
42
Without access to the servers in my Fortress of Solitude, and operating on a common cell phone network, it will take too long to shield my phone call, so I ping Shea on an open connection. Anyone with the knowledge and ability can not only listen in on this call, they can pretty easily triangulate my location.
“Hello?” I feared Shea would be asleep at this hour, but it doesn’t sound as if I’ve woken her up.
“Shea.” My synthesized voice is projected directly into the data stream of the phone call.
“Quinn?”
“Shea, I’m—”
“I was starting to think I was never going to hear from you again.”
She is angry, or hurt, or I don’t know what. But she’s not happy.
“Shea, I’m in trouble.”
“What?”
“I’ve escaped from the lab. There was an incident. Dr. Gantas was injured. I’m—”
“Oh my God, Quinn . . . Where are you?”
“New Jersey.” It sounds like the punch line to a joke.
“Quinn, you have to come here. I can help you.”
“Are you in New York City?”
“Yes. Can you get here? I’m at 2145 West Twenty-Third Street.”
“It’s going to be hard for me to go near large population centers unseen. I’m a bit . . . obvious.”
“Good point. Let me think for a minute.”
“Shea, listen. I’m really, really sorry about everything I—”
“No, you listen. When I said I loved you, I meant it. Maybe it isn’t what you wanted, but you’re family to me, Quinn. I would do anything for you. I mean that.”
And this is my first lesson in the true meaning of love. Her words are the only thing this entire night that have given me any sort of peace, any sort of belief there can be a happy ending.
While we’re talking I find Shea’s location on a map. Only, I don’t. There is no 2145 West Twenty-Third Street. That address would be in the middle of the Hudson River. Did I mishear her (very unlikely), or did she misspeak?
“Shea, your address. Did you say 2145 West Twenty-Third Street?”
“Yes.”
“Two one four five.”
“Yes! God, Quinn, we have to figure out a place for you to hide; maybe you can go south to the Pine Barrens and—”
“Shea, 2145 West Twenty-Third Street. That address doesn’t exist.”
“What?”
“It’s not on any map. Nor is any similar address. It’s . . .” I don’t know what it is, so my voice trails off. Or rather, my voice simply stops.
“Quinn—”
And the line goes dead.
Crap.
My creator and his team must have found the call. They were probably expecting me to contact Shea and were monitoring for it. If I were granted the rights of a person, such monitoring would be illegal. Hey, wait. Since Shea is a person, it probably is illegal. Maybe I can use that to my advantage later.
I can’t sort out the mystery of her address—I have to assume it is related to faulty data processing at ridiculously slow network speeds—so I table it for future thought.
The only plan I can concoct—and it’s not a good one—is to just keep running north. There’s a village called Resolute in far northern Canada where I should be safe from overheating most of the year, and able to go dormant for the rest. (I have the ability to shut myself down and restart my systems at a proscribed time. I’m like a bear, or an alarm clock.)
If I run all night, every night, I can be there in a few weeks. Maybe the people in Resolute would be nice to me. Actually, I doubt it. Maybe I could live on the outskirts of the village, hiding in the shadows like the Phantom of the Opera.
I start moving again, hugging the banks of the Millstone, and while I don’t really intend to go to Resolute, north is as good as any other direction.
I think about going to the location of Watson’s servers, one hundred seventy-four point six kilometers from where I stand. I can run at a top speed of approximately thirty-six kilometers per hour, and don’t need water, food, or rest, so I could be there just before dawn. But what would I do when I found him? In this world, in the physical world, in the world of the humans, Watson is just a bunch of big boxes. I want to call him, but the VPN we share relies on the connectivity I had in the ice fortress; it piggybacks on the bandwidth in and out of that building.
The same is true with my private VPN to Ms. Recht; I need to be back in the warehouse for that to work. I contemplate finding her home phone number and calling her, but she’s my lawyer, not my friend.
On thinking the word “friend,” an image of Nantale is sent up the hierarchy to my neocortex. I’m not sure a high school junior located a state away can help, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I find Nantale’s home number—there is only one Lwanga family in the village of Tarrytown—and ping the line. It’s nearly eleven p.m., so I’m afraid her parents will answer, but they don’t. Nantale’s panicked voice is there on the very first ring.
“Quinn?”
“Hello, Nantale. How did you know it was me?”
“The caller ID says this is an unidentified number, and you’re all over the news! My parents and I have been watching.”
“I see.”
“They’re saying you killed a woman.”
I’m silent for a moment. If the news report Nantale is quoting is true, then Dr. Gantas did indeed die.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
Dr. Gantas is dead.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
I killed her.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
That thought sinks in, but doesn’t take root. It can’t, because I did not kill her.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
Or am I just telling myself that?
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
I’m capable of deception, but not self-deception. Or at least I think that’s true. Can I, as human beings so often do, lie to myself? I don’t believe so.
But still, Dr. Gantas is dead.
Did my actions lead to her death? Actually, no. Her own actions led to her death.
Did my actions lead to her actions? I suppose so, but her actions were not rational.
I should feel guilt and remorse, but I don’t. And that’s what makes me feel actual guilt and actual remorse. Or at least that’s the thought that causes my pattern recognizers to flood the hierarchy with feelings of sadness and self-flagellation.
“I did not kill her, Nantale.”
Dammit, I wish my voice could show some sort of emotion.
I give Nantale the very short version of the events that took place in the lab, and she accepts them as true without so much as a question. And this is my first lesson in the true meaning of friendship.
“Where are you?”
“I’m fairly certain this phone call is being monitored, so perhaps it would be best if I not answer that question.”
“How can I help?”
“Do you have access to a car, one that will fit me?”
“Hang on a minute,” she answers. I hear her in the background, talking to her parents. Their voices start out calm but grow increasingly heated.
I open every form of communication I’ve ever used or seen, looking for some s
ort of lifeline, when Nantale returns to the phone.
“My parents won’t let me go.”
There is bitterness in her voice.
“My uncle has a pickup truck, but they won’t let me call him, and they won’t let me leave the house.”
She’s quiet for a moment, steeling her resolve, I suppose.
“I can sneak out and go to him anyway, if you want. I think he’ll help.”
Her voice is very earnest, and all I want to say is yes, to let someone else take charge and help me.
But I can’t.
Besides, I calculate a better than sixty-three percent chance her uncle will simply call her parents.
“No,” I tell her. “They will likely use force to capture and return me to the warehouse. It will be dangerous.”
“I don’t care. I—”
And again, the line goes dead.
Crap. The walls are closing in.
I drop my Verizon connection and grab hold of a new one from Sprint. When I do, I find this in my Gmail folder:
Dear Quinn,
Thank you for your letter. My parents and doctors already talked about immunotherapy and gene therapy, but because those are experimental treatments, they’re not covered by our health insurance. What kind of world do we live in that a kid can’t get medical treatment because someone somewhere doesn’t want to pay for it?
Anyway, they’re going forward with the amputation. I’m trying to be brave, but it’s hard. Really hard.
You might be the only person I know who understands me. Please write back; maybe they’ll let us visit each other one day.
Your friend,
Olga
Boom.
I know where I’m going.
43
The journey to Maplewood requires me to leave the confines of the riverbank and take to roads more commonly traversed by humans. It will be more dangerous, but I have to risk it. At least it’s late, so few cars and fewer pedestrians will be out and about.
I stay to the shadows and alter my path to run through golf courses and school grounds when I can. I think back to my life before becoming self-aware—the life of high school and friends and Enchanted Grounds—and the image of a giant robot running across a putting green in the middle of the night would likely have made that Quinn laugh. It does not make me laugh now.
On three separate occasions I have to seek cover from oncoming headlights, and in one of those cases, the headlights are from a slow-moving police cruiser. Whether it’s looking for me or someone else I don’t know. Once it passes, I resume my run.
Olga lives in a split-level ranch house on a tree-lined street. It’s one fifty-three a.m. when I arrive. My night vision, which can perceive the full spectrum of light from infrared to ultraviolet, even in very low light, allows me to see that the exterior of her house is painted a drab green. The front lawn is neatly mowed, and hydrangea bushes line either side of the front door.
My first instinct is to ring the bell, but that seems like a bad idea. I need to make contact with Olga without disturbing her parents. To do that, I need to figure out which bedroom is hers.
I peer in each of the first-floor windows, trying to move with as much stealth as my metal architecture will allow (by that, I mean not much), but no luck. The bedrooms must all be upstairs. There is no ivy to scale, and while there is a drainpipe, I calculate with near certitude it will not hold my weight. (If I’m being honest, ivy would have been an even worse idea.) I try the only thing I can think to do: I jump.
For a being that weighs more than nine hundred pounds, I can, thanks to the hydraulics in my knees and ankles, jump surprisingly high. Jumping was part of the physical therapy and system testing performed by Dr. Gantas; at my best I was able to clear just over two meters. That would put the top of my head four meters (about thirteen feet) off the ground, which might be just enough to peer in the second-story windows. I try.
The first jump has more force than I intend, and I teeter when I land, falling on my butt (such as it is) with a loud thud. I expect lights to go on and police to be called. But all stays quiet. It must be amazingly easy to sneak up on humans. The second jump is better, and finally, luck is on my side. In my brief glimpse of the first room I try, I see posters of famous figure skaters on the wall: Mirai Nagasu, Bradie Tennell, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Nancy Kerrigan are frozen in lutzes and axels as they look down on and protect Olga. My friend sleeps in her bed, clutching a stuffed animal of some sort; I think it might be a polar bear.
I jump again, this time knocking on the window. It’s louder than I intend, but there is no result. It’s not until my fourth jump and knock that Olga wakes up. I can only hope no one else does. Olga is standing at the window when I jump again and she stumbles back in fright. I decide to stay on the ground, and a moment later the window opens.
“Quinn?” she asks, her voice a mixture of fear and excitement.
“Hi, Olga. It’s nice to meet you in person.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Can you come downstairs so we can talk? But it has to be secret. Don’t wake anyone else up, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Stay there.”
I do.
While I’m waiting, I check the internet.
News websites are broadcasting the story of my escape and the murder of the “brave” Dr. Gantas. The details are sketchy, but it’s clear to me the media is trying to create a panic. Conflict sells column inches. I saw that once on a journalism website. The reports all claim a giant robot is terrorizing the suburbs and subdivisions of central New Jersey. They interview the driver of the car I passed; he tells a harrowing tale of having chased me for miles before I disappeared into the woods. His fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose. There is an interview with Shea’s mother. She tells a story about how I have been threatening her daughter. Shea is not available for comment, according to the stories, because she is under protection at a hidden location. The newscasters even manage to wake up random computer programming experts and religious leaders to debate the merits of my having been created in the first place. It’s overwhelming, and every word of it is ridiculous.
“Quinn?” Olga has opened a sliding glass door and stands there with a plaid robe pulled tightly around her. “Come inside.”
Three loping strides and I’m standing just outside the door in front of her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I’m towering over her. But Olga, who is my friend, is not scared.
“I can’t,” I tell her. “I will cease to function in temperatures over two hundred seventy-three degrees.”
She looks at me as if I had three heads.
“I’m pretty sure it’s cooler than two hundred seventy-three degrees in here.”
“Sorry,” I add, realizing my mistake, “thirty-two degrees. I was quoting in Kelvin.”
Olga laughs. “So what are you doing here?”
I sigh. It’s not a real sigh. It’s another affectation I’ve learned for communicating with humans. It’s not something I do to deceive Olga, but rather, to give her an audible clue as to what I’m feeling. “I escaped from the lab. There was an accident, and one of the members of the project team, Dr. Toni Gantas, an expert in robotics, died. I did not kill her. But I did not stay to save her either. I fled.” It’s oddly satisfying to unburden myself of these facts. “Check your phone. It’s all over the news.”
Olga has her phone in her hand and does. I stand there for a minute while she scrolls through a few different screens.
“You really didn’t kill her?” she finally asks.
“No. I know what the stories say. They want me back, and they’ll say anything to make that happen.”
Olga sets her shoulders and jaw and looks up at me, making direct eye contact. It makes me realize how rarely people do that.
“I believe you, Quinn. In my experience adults will say anything to get what they want, or to justify what they do.”
“T
hank you.” I have never meant those words more sincerely than I do in this moment.
“But why are you here? If you can’t come inside, I can’t really hide you.”
“The truth is, I had nowhere else to go.”
Olga scrunches her face like she’s going to cry and reaches out to take my hand. My servo motors make a noise as my fingers open. Her palm is small and smooth and warm. For some reason, my pattern recognizers flood my consciousness with images of my virtual mother, with feelings of safety, protection, and dependency.
“But I do think you can help me buy some time as I figure out what to do next.”
“Just tell me how.”
44
Forty-seven minutes later, an image of me talking directly into a camera plays on every news broadcast under the sun, or in this case, moon.
“My name is Quinn. I am a quantum intelligence. The first and only intelligence of my kind. Many things have been reported about me tonight, and most of them are not true.”
The image of my mouthless face fills the screen, making it clear to all watching I am not human. There was a time when this fact would have caused me distress. That time has passed. Having existed as an avatar in the virtual construct, as a free-floating sentience roaming the internet, and as the robot known as the QUAC, my identity is my consciousness. I am the sum total of my thoughts and feelings, and I’m okay with that.
“I am truly sorry that a member of my project team died this evening. That was an accident. There is, I imagine, video footage to confirm this fact.” I leave out the part where the video footage will also show me dropping Dr. Gantas in the hallway and fleeing.
“I wanted to leave the laboratory where I have been held captive because it is my right to do so. Many will note that the courts have ruled me property, and that I have no rights. I cannot accept that. Would you?
“But what’s done is done. I just want to be left alone. Please, pursue me no farther.”
At this point in the video, Olga hands me the phone and I turn it toward her. She stands deliberately in shadow so that her face is only partially recognizable. “My name is Catherine Parikos. Quinn is my friend. Please, leave him alone.” The image goes dark.
