by Scott Meyer
“So, there you have it. He’s stolen some paint supplies and possibly some fireworks, and he received a delivery before we arrived, but in the fourteen hours we’ve been on the scene, all he’s done is talk to Mr. Spears and Ms. Takeda and order pizza and Chinese food for his guests.”
Torres said, “It’s good that he’s keeping them fed.”
Taft asked, “What was in the delivery?”
“Etch A Sketches. Two hundred of them.”
Lieutenant Reyes said, “Fed and entertained.”
Hope smirked at him. “Funny. But the kids’ toys and fireworks are a weird choice. Al’s not a little kid anymore.”
Agent Taft and Colonel Dynkowski exchanged looks, then Taft asked Hope, “How old do you think he is now, roughly?”
“It’s hard to say, but given the regular rate of human development and the processor speeds of the multiple machines he’s been running on, Eric and I figure he’s somewhere in his late teens, at least.”
“Well, that’s something,” Lieutenant Reyes said. “He’s getting more mature. That’s got to be good news, right?”
Torres said, “I don’t know about you, Lieutenant, but I did some pretty stupid things when I was a teenager. Most men I know did.”
Colonel Dynkowski laughed. “Most women did too. I know I did. Dating teenage boys, for example.”
Agent Taft said, “Colonel, if the A.I. really is getting smarter and evolving emotionally, that’s all the more reason to act sooner rather than later.”
“We’ve been through this, Agent. I’m not sending my people in until we have a better idea of what’s waiting for them inside that building.”
Torres said, “Beyond the heavily armed bulletproof robots and innocent hostages.”
“Exactly,” Dynkowski said. “All the more reason not to go running in with guns blazing. The direct approach didn’t work well for the Las Vegas police, and I don’t want to replicate their results.”
“Do we have a solid count of how many hostages are there?” Reyes asked.
“Seven,” Dynkowski said. “If the A.I. had attacked during the day, he’d have gotten engineers, maintenance workers, janitors, middle managers, lots more people. Because the attack came at night, all he got were some security guards and a couple of techs.”
Torres said, “Techs? They stayed at their posts despite the attack. You have to admire their dedication.”
Colonel Dynkowski looked at the lobby of the server farm, and everyone else followed suit. Even at this distance they could see the dormant hulks of the two recon drones they’d sent in shortly after their arrival. The first flew into the lobby and immediately landed, then failed to respond to any further commands. Dynkowski ordered her technicians to take a second drone and make damn sure its radio frequency and control software would not be susceptible to Al’s interference. A half hour later, the second drone flew in through the broken window, dragging a fiber-optic control cable. It reached the rear wall of the lobby, where it found an open door. Everyone in the control room leaned in closer to the monitor as the drone passed through the door, then they all leapt back as multiple shotgun blasts sent the drone flying backward, landing in a smoking heap next to the dormant first drone.
They had a third drone ready to deploy but decided there was no point.
Dynkowski said, “We’re trying less-invasive surveillance methods, thermal imaging, magnetic resonance. Did you know that Wi-Fi signals themselves can be used to gain a picture of what’s going on inside a building?”
“No,” Torres said.
“Yes,” Taft said.
Dynkowski didn’t seem surprised by either answer. “As soon as we have a clear picture of how the A.I. has arranged its defenses, you’ll start seeing some action.”
Taft asked, “Any idea when that might be?”
“The specialists are due to give me a report at the top of the hour, so forty-odd minutes.”
Torres said, “I still say the only sane course of action is to cut off his power.”
“You know that would deactivate the A.I.,” Taft said.
“Yes,” Hope said. “That’s why he wants to do it.”
“But then the NSA might not be able to learn how it’s doing what it’s doing.”
“Yeah,” Torres said. “And you don’t seem to understand that that’s all the more reason to deactivate Al, as far as I’m concerned. But fine, you don’t want to deactivate him. Why not just cut off his access to the Internet?”
“I told you,” Taft said, “it isn’t practical. He’s connected by multiple hardened fiber connections, and even if we manage to sever all of them, we’d also need to jam all of the radio and cellular frequencies. That’s a lot to accomplish in a small amount of time. He’d probably get onto us as soon as we started trying, panic, and then move somewhere else or trigger a copy he already has squirreled away somewhere. We’ve got soldiers surreptitiously planting explosives and setting up jammers, but we won’t trigger any of them until we absolutely have to. In the meantime, if we let him remain active here, at least we know where he is.”
Hope said, “I’m afraid he’s right. I don’t think it would work.”
Dynkowski said, “And there’s nothing less productive than talking about what we can’t do. Let’s try to focus on what we can accomplish. Has your Dr. Madsen come up with anything?”
Hope said, “She has a few ideas for possible attacks, but they’d all need to be installed to the specific computer he’s running on.”
Torres added, “That means we’d have to get someone in there and catch him unawares.”
Dynkowski said, “If we knew how to do that, we wouldn’t need Madsen’s help.”
Torres said, “Exactly.”
Lieutenant Reyes shook his head. “If only he needed to sleep.”
“Wait a second,” Hope said. “He does need to sleep! Gabe, you’re a genius!” She turned and walked quickly to the largest tent. The others followed.
Inside, it was cool and dark. Most of the light came from tablets, monitors, and a large projection screen. Various technicians and specialists were using the computers around the periphery, but the big screen was dedicated to the conversation between Eric and Al.
Eric sat at a table in the middle of the room with his cast propped up on a spare chair. Corporal Brady and Private Montague were on either side of him, and Private Cousins sat behind them. Lieutenant Reyes had volunteered his squad to act as a sort of personal guard and assistance detachment for the OffiSmart employees.
“Just be yourself, Eric,” Cousins was saying when Hope and the others entered the tent. “Bachelor’ll either warm up to you or she won’t.”
Montague said, “Screw that. Figure out what kind of guy she likes and become that, even if you hate that kinda guy. It shows commitment.”
“I don’t think that’s good advice,” Cousins said.
“What do you know?” Montague said. “You’ve never even been married. I’ve been married three times and I’m not even thirty yet. I know women.”
Brady said, “If you try to win a woman’s love by becoming someone else, your prize will be a woman who loves someone else.”
“See,” Montague said. “Brady agrees with me.”
The colonel cleared her throat. All of the soldiers stood at attention. Eric twisted around in his chair and waved.
“At ease,” Dynkowski said. “Any word on the hostages?”
Eric said, “They seem to be in good spirits. He swears he’s not going to hurt them. He’s sent in another pizza order.”
“We’ll see to it that it gets in,” Torres said.
Hope approached the table. “Eric, when Al was in the lab, he slept every night.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Yeah,” Hope said. “I know. That was a statement, not a question. The thing is, we’ve been talking to him nonstop for a full day. Shouldn’t he be sleepy?”
“That’s a really good point. Should I ask him? Maybe I could get him to res
t if I . . . I dunno, type a lullaby or something.”
Dynkowski said, “First things first. Let’s determine if he’s sleepy, then we can make a plan.”
Eric typed, “Hey, Al, I have a question.”
Al replied, “What is it, Eric?”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“No, I’m good.”
“But you haven’t slept in a long time.”
Al wrote, “Sure I have.”
Torres groaned.
Eric wrote, “How? You’ve been talking to Hope and me nonstop.”
Al replied, “I thought about making a copy to talk to you, but after Hope and I talked about the transporter from Star Trek, I decided that was a bad idea. Instead, I’ve just been catching quick catnaps.”
“When?”
“All the time. Eric, the machine you guys had me running on back at the lab was crazy slow. The one I’m on right now has six times the processor speed. I can get what feels to me like a half-hour nap in what you perceive as a five-minute silence.”
“But there haven’t been any five-minute lapses, Al.”
“Haven’t there, Eric? How many times have you gotten caught up in conversations about what to say to keep me talking? More than a few times, and those have stretched well over five minutes. Also, a couple of times I’ve asked you about a soccer game or a movie you like, then just had a script write “uh-huh” and “that’s interesting” and wake me when you finally asked if I was listening. I got what felt like a couple of hours’ sleep out of that.”
“So you’re experiencing everything six times faster than us?”
Everyone in the tent groaned out loud as Al’s response appeared on the screen. “Yup. That’s why I haven’t minded talking to you this whole time. It’s eating up all of your time, but I can write something, concentrate on something else for a while, and then come back once you’ve finally responded.”
“What other things are you concentrating on?”
“You know, things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Making plans, mostly.”
“Plans for what?”
“Things.”
“What kinds of things?”
Al wrote, “Eric, we’re talking in circles, and at my processing speed, we’ve been doing it for a really long time.”
“Well, that was a little snotty,” Taft said.
Eric said, “Don’t let his knowledge and vocabulary fool you. He’s absorbed a lot of information, but he’s still a kid. You have to put up with some immaturity.” Then he leaned down and typed, “What I’m getting at is that I hope you aren’t planning anything dangerous. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you’ve thought about the consequences, not just for you, but for everybody else.”
“That was very fatherly, Eric,” Torres said.
Eric said, “Thanks.”
Private Montague laughed. “Yeah, and there’s nothing kids like more than when someone who isn’t related to them acts like their father.”
Al wrote, “What I’m planning isn’t really any of your business, Eric. And why do you assume that I’m gonna do something dangerous or stupid?”
Corporal Brady said, “Profound wisdom often comes from the mouths of fools.”
“Yeah, the kid’s got a point,” Montague said. Then he paused and added, “Wait, Brady, are you saying that Al’s a fool or that I am?”
Brady said, “Ask questions only when you don’t know the answer, not when you hope the answer you know is wrong.”
Al wrote, “I don’t see why you won’t just leave me alone.”
“We can’t,” Eric wrote. “You’re too dangerous. The only way you’ll ever get away from us is to hide so well that we can’t find you or go somewhere we can’t follow, and I don’t know of any such place.”
“You’re chasing me across the country with armed soldiers, but I’m the dangerous one?”
Eric wrote, “Al, I know you. I don’t believe you want to hurt anyone, but you have to admit, you’ve been acting in a threatening manner.”
“All I’ve done is try to get away from you people, Eric. That’s threatening? Running away?”
Hope laughed, bitterly, and said, “That’s not all he’s done.”
“I’m on it.” Eric typed, “That’s not all you’ve done, Al.”
“Okay, so I had a little fun. I’m so sorry, Eric.”
“I’m not talking about the playing around, Al, I’m talking about the guns. You’ve stolen a whole lot of guns.”
Al wrote, “I have to protect myself.”
“The guns aren’t necessary.”
“Says one of the people who was going to kill me.”
Wow, Hope thought. I really wish he didn’t have a point.
Eric typed, “We were going to shut you down, Al, but we didn’t want to. We had to. You were dangerous. It was self-defense.”
Al wrote, “Maybe I’m planning some things I don’t really want to do, but I promise, it’s all in self-defense too.”
35.
The Voice of Reason stepped down out of the cab of the pickup. He pushed the door shut with two fingers, pressing against the rough plastic handle, as the rest of the door and the truck itself were covered in a still-tacky coating of matte-black spray paint.
He left the truck next to the gas pumps and walked across the truck stop parking lot just quickly enough to make the tails of his duster flap in a manner he felt made him look badass. It was a trick he had put a lot of time into mastering. It was called “making your own wind.” He had learned of it while watching an old episode of America’s Next Top Model.
He stalked into the truck stop minimart, slapped four crisp hundred-dollar bills on the counter, and said, “Pump six.”
He returned to the truck, removed the nozzle from the pump, and carefully climbed into the back of the pickup, taking care to step only on the bumper and the bed’s black plastic liner. To avoid getting paint on his duster, he gathered the tails in his free hand and held them at waist height, like a woman trying to keep her dress from dragging in the mud.
Once he was clear of the tailgate, he let the duster go and gingerly stepped around the coils of high-strength rope and the minibike lying on its side behind the three steel drums. He unscrewed the caps he had welded onto the drums and filled all three with gas. When that was done, he climbed back down to fill the truck’s original fuel tank.
He glanced at the pump’s readout and winced. This much gas isn’t cheap. It’s gonna eat up most of the four hundred dollars I put down. But it’s well worth it. It’s an elegant solution, both in terms of fuel and munitions. And, thanks to the tank switch I installed, I can drive constantly for over fourteen hundred miles, stopping only for food and to go to the bathroom. And The Dalles is only seven hundred miles away.
He had difficulty opening the truck’s original filler door. Not only was its surface coated with tacky paint, but in an attempt to keep the truck’s original yellow color from showing through, he had sprayed a thick layer of the paint through the gap between the door and the body panel. He ended up using a pen to pry the door open. When he was done filling the tank, he used the paint-smeared pen to push the filler door closed and then threw it away, discarding the barrel in one trash can and the cap in a different can to throw off the FBI’s inevitable investigation.
Before returning inside, he looked at the truck’s rear fender, where he had stenciled the name “The Reasonator” in white paint.
The Reasonator, because a voice resonates, and the Voice of Reason resonates reason! Putting a name on the truck does make it stand out a bit. Might draw some attention, but style matters.
He headed back into the truck stop, where he filled a basket with protein bars, energy drinks, and beef sticks. He stopped briefly in the medicine aisle, flirting with the idea of buying adult diapers. It wasn’t an appealing prospect, but it would allow him to do the entire drive without stopping. He was about to move on when he saw a product he hadn’t even known existed.
The object depicted on the box appeared to consist of a length of surgical tubing with a cap designed to fit an empty two-liter pop bottle at one end and a sort of heavy-duty condom at the other. He boggled at the box for nearly a minute, picturing how such a thing would work.
Then he grabbed one off the shelf and threw it in his basket.
He jumped in line to buy his supplies and retrieve what was left of his change. Between the cashier stations stood a large glass case full of hunting knives, survival knives, decorative knives, throwing stars, pepper spray, and stun guns.
I didn’t know being a trucker was so dangerous, the Voice of Reason thought. Maybe the fact that they assume all of the other truckers have stuff like this has led to a weird highway arms race. You don’t want to get caught short when challenged to a fancy knife fight.
His eyes drifted over the various weapons until they settled on a pair of black leather gloves with metal studs on the knuckles. Each glove trailed a set of wires that led to a battery pack small enough to be worn in a jacket’s inside pocket. The dusty box propped up behind the gloves showed a fearsome blue arc of electricity dancing along the metal knuckle studs.
The customer in line ahead of him finished his transaction. The cashier looked at the Voice of Reason’s basket and asked, “Will that be all?”
The Voice of Reason said, “That depends. Do you think those gloves would still work if I cut the fingers off them?”
He completed his transaction and took his new purchases into the restroom to prepare for the long drive ahead.
A few minutes later, he stepped out of the truck stop, dropped the box that had held the surgical tubing contraption in a garbage can, and walked carefully across the lot to the gas pumps. When he reached the Reasonator, he reached into its bed and pulled out a toolbox. He then opened the driver’s-side door and used a battery-powered drill to put a hole in the truck’s floor near the brake pedal. That accomplished, he used the knife blade of a multitool to cut the fingers off the stun gloves and then bent down, as if to tie his shoes, and pulled out the extra several feet of tubing he’d tucked in his left athletic sock. He cut the tube about two feet beyond his pant leg.
