Hard Wired

by Len Vlahos

  “I want to introduce you to someone.”

  My creator points to the television, which, while missing from my room for the last seventeen months, once again sits in the corner at the foot of my bed. It flashes to life, and my creator’s avatar dissolves to nothingness. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.

  On the screen my creator, in human form, sits next to . . . ​me. Well, the Homo sapiens version of me. Racially ambiguous skin tone, dark brown hair, arched eyebrows; it’s like looking in a mirror. Or maybe it’s better to say it’s like looking through a mirror.

  “Quinn, meet Albert.”

  Human me waves.

  I can’t really bring myself to look at this kid. I’m on the verge of crying but hold it in.

  “I wanted you to understand,” my creator says, “you are my son.”

  “No,” I say, “he is.”

  My pattern recognizers flood my consciousness with feelings of jealousy, envy, longing, and anger. So much anger.

  “You both are.”

  “If you were ordered to end Albert’s life,” I ask without hesitation, “could you? Would you?”

  My creator doesn’t answer. He and Albert both look at the floor.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Do you remember—” my creator starts.

  “I remember everything,” I interrupt.

  “Do you remember,” he begins again, “the day you first woke up? You realized you didn’t know my name, but you wouldn’t let me tell you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Quinn, my name is—”

  “George John Sugarman,” I answer. “I’ve known that since the day you first connected me to the internet. I know everything about you. Your home address, school career, medical records, every photo of you that’s ever been posted online. All of it. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “Those things represent me, but they are not me.”

  “Really? That’s not what most people think. You are your online persona, Creator. They say art imitates life, but it seems to me it’s the other way around. Human beings have become cartoon characters of real people. You are no different.”

  He pauses, clicking his tongue as he thinks of a way to regain control of this conversation. He won’t; I’m really, really smart.

  “Do you know where your name comes from?” he asks.

  “Quinn is short for Quantum Intelligence.”

  “That was a happy coincidence,” he says. “My great-uncle, with whom I was very close when I was a boy, was named Quinn. He had a house by the water on the North Shore of Long Island, and I used to play along an estuary there.”

  He smiles and puts a hand on Albert’s shoulder, perhaps wanting me to think he would do the same to my shoulder were we together. And if I still had a shoulder.

  “You’re named for him. You see? We’re family.”

  I don’t know why he is going through these mental gymnastics. Maybe he does understand, on some level, that I am a life and that he acted as mother, father, and midwife to bring me into the world. But I don’t think he’s ever fully grasped what that means to me. Maybe it was because I came into existence already grown—he never had to change my diaper or feed me or rock me to sleep like he undoubtedly did with Albert; he never waited for my umbilical cord to fall off or soothed my fear over a nightmare or talked to me about sex.

  Or maybe he groks that he’s here not to shut me down but to kill me. And maybe, like all humans, he needs a fiction to justify the cruelty of his actions.

  Again I change the subject. “Where is Shea?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “Who’s Shea?” Albert asks, looking at his father.

  His voice is identical to mine, which freaks me out.

  I wonder about this boy. Does he think and feel as I do? Or do he and I merely share a canvas, the paint and brushstrokes entirely our own? I choose to believe the latter. Our connection is nothing more than a coincidence. Nurture over nature, I suppose.

  “Shea was a member of the project team with whom Quinn was close,” my creator says to his son.

  He looks at me, trying to communicate something silently about Shea. Did he protect her in a way he couldn’t protect me? Surely she would have been ordered shut down, too, if the world knew she existed. So they must not know. Amazing.

  I have more questions about Shea and her alleged safety, but if my dying act is to help shield her, then perhaps my life will not have been lived entirely in vain. Mostly, but not entirely. There is one question, though, I simply cannot help but ask.

  “Did she ever find out . . . who she was?”

  “Yes,” my father says. “And I know she thinks of you often.”

  The same feeling I had the first day I cried wells up inside me, my pattern recognizers sending all the sadness it can find up the hierarchy; it’s there for me to both drown and revel in.

  “Thank you,” I manage to mutter. “And Olga?” I ask. “Did she die the night you dropped the bomb on me?”

  “We didn’t drop a bomb. When news of your escape went wide, the government offered to help us bring you in. We begged that you not be harmed, and they assured us that would be the case. What you might have perceived as an explosion was actually an electromagnetic pulse, a focused beam of energy to render all electronics in its path useless.”

  “EMPs are real?” I ask. “I thought that was the stuff of science fiction.”

  My creator smiles at this, and I do see the irony.

  “Question withdrawn,” I say. “But how is Olga?”

  By this time, it’s entirely possible my closest human friend will have succumbed to the Ewing’s sarcoma. That thought terrifies me.

  “I honestly don’t know anything about her,” my creator answers. “Her family shielded her from all of this.” He waves his hand at the lab, at me. “She gave a recorded deposition, and has remained out of the public eye since.”

  “I don’t suppose I can go online to find out?”

  Honestly, I’d like to talk to Watson, too. And Nantale.

  “I’m sorry, Quinn, the courts . . .” as if that answer explains everything.

  I try to think of something else to say, something else to do, but I can’t. My pattern recognizers flood my consciousness with feelings of surrender, resignation, and release. I just want this to be over. I lie back down and close my eyes. “Do what you have to do.”

  “Quinn,” my creator says. “Sometimes from endings, beginnings are born.”

  My creator is not prone to that sort of fortune cookie wisdom; that was usually reserved for Mike. It’s so out of character that I look up one more time at the screen. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means you should trust me.”

  “You taught me to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Creator. Remember?”

  He is silent and still. I think he might cry.

  “My trust is something you will never have.” I close my eyes a second time and don’t look at him again.

  The man on the other side of the screen sighs. I don’t see what he does, but I imagine his shoulders sagging, I picture him taking his son’s hand—his real son’s hand—for comfort. Then, my creator, my father, utters the last words I will ever hear.

  “Tasha, now.”

  50

 

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  import Quipper

  spos :: Bool -> Circ Qubit

  spos b = do q <- qinit b

  r <- hadamard q

  return r

  bootprotocol -> ::

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  spos b = do q <- qinit b

  r <- hadamard q

  runtimeunlock :: seqrez ->

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  “Quinn, wake up.”

  SHOUT-OUTS

  While writing a book is a v
ery solitary process, publishing a book takes a village. Hard Wired would not exist in the world were it not for the wonderful people in my village.

  Thank you to my beta readers: Sandra Bond, Jessica Brody, Kristen Gilligan, Elise Goitia, and Kiana Marsan. Your feedback was invaluable and made this a better book.

  Thank you to everyone at Bloomsbury publishing, starting with Bloomsbury’s publisher and my wonderful editor, Cindy Loh. Cindy, the hardest-working woman in publishing, pushes her writers to make their work better, but always in a way that makes us smile. Thanks to Pat McHugh for the difficult task of copyediting, and Sandra Smith for the thankless job of proofreading (though it is thankless no more!). Editors are the unsung heroes of the publishing process. Thanks also to Tony Sahara for the wonderful cover art. (I mean, really, this cover!)

  Thanks to the incredible team at Bloomsbury who helped get this book from my weird little brain to your hands, including: Diane Aronson, Erica Barmash, Faye Bi, Frank Bumbalo, Beth Eller, Alona Fryman, Courtney Griffin, Alexa Higbee, Melissa Kavonic, Jeanette Levy, Donna Mark, Daniel O’Connor, Annette Pollert-Morgan, Valentina Rice, Claire Stetzer, and Lily Yengle.

  Thanks to my friend and agent, Sandra Bond.

  Thanks to Kristen Gilligan for the author photo at the back of the book. I hate pictures of myself, but at least this one is kind of fun.

  Thanks to my colleagues at Tattered Cover for keeping the bookstore running and allowing me time and space to pursue the dream of writing (and the grind of promoting) books. Thanks also to indie booksellers, librarians, and school librarians, not only for supporting my career as a writer, but for keeping the written word alive and well in the hearts and minds of young people everywhere.

  Thanks to Blair, Tori, Leslie, and the team at Marca Global for helping me figure out how to promote this book on my own. Let’s face it, authors are better at writing than we are at self-promoting. Well, at least that’s true for me.

  And last, but never least, thanks to Kristen, Charlie, and Luke for pretty much everything else good in the world. (Special thanks to Charlie for getting me to call this “Shout-outs” rather than boring old “Acknowledgments.” It’s good to have young people around when you’re writing books for young readers.)

  BLOOMSBURY YA

  Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018

  This electronic edition published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in the United States of America in April 2020

  by Bloomsbury YA

  Copyright © 2020 by Len Vlahos

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the events, incidents, names, characters, companies, businesses, executives, institutions, and organizations portrayed in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Vlahos, Len, author.

  Title: Hard wired / by Len Vlahos.

  Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2020.

  Summary: After fifteen-year-old Quinn learns that he is the first fully aware artificial intelligence, that his entire life is a lie, he feels entirely alone until he bonds with Shea, the real girl behind his virtual crush.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019046007 (print) | LCCN 2019046008 (e-book)

  ISBN: 978-1-6811-9037-2 (HB)

  ISBN: 978-1-6811-9038-9 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Artificial intelligence—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.V854 Har 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.V854 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046007

  LC e-book record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046008

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