This Automatic Eden

by Jim Keen

  The presidential private guard emerged through the smoke and walked into the maelstrom. These were the troops Four had warned Alice about—reprinted with updates like hers. Programmed to obey orders without question, they didn’t try to protect themselves and moved into the open. Alice watched as bursts of gunfire blew away chunks of their flesh, bodies jerking under the impacts; they returned fire with deadly accuracy.

  B13 poured fire into the space, and Alice saw both presidential guards and the invaders collapse, the noise deafening. Gunfire reduced the scene to a series of still frames, the invaders and guards being picked off one by one until the room was empty of life, bodies sprawled over each other. Fires spread across the floor to ignite heavy blood-red curtains. The smell was terrible, a mix of burning flesh and plastic.

  Xavi turned to Alice. “We need to find another way.”

  And then pain hit her, fire branching out from the circuitry in her skull to overload her body. She spasmed and crashed to the floor. Xavi was looking at her, shouting, her seizure bringing his face in and out of view. She tried to move, to shout, as the shot took him under the chin. He dropped from view, and a wave of silent blackness enveloped her.

  58

  Julia knelt behind Conner and waited for his direction. The floor vibrated through her hands; explosions thudded in the distance. Fear gnawed at her; she had never been exposed to violence like this. In Five Points, her commands had been executed at a distance—surgical strikes whose results were reported in spreadsheets and financial reports. This was real, and deadly. Alice had been upgraded to deal with situations like this, but Julia’s body was built for analysis and communication, not combat. She knew her clock could dampen her emotions, make this all feel calm and neutral, but she didn’t want to take that escape hatch. If she was to die here, she was going to do it fully aware of everything that surrounded her.

  Conner looked back, a wry grin on his face. “Ain’t New York is it?”

  “Hardly. I think I’m better suited for the boardroom.”

  “I’m full of belief in you, sister. Just stay loose and don’t lock up. Sounds like the main event is a long way from here anyways.” As he spoke, a loud bang sounded overhead, and the lights flickered. “Though I could be wrong.”

  “Not for the first time either,” she said, and for a moment was filled with the simple joy of being alive.

  They crouched in the entry corridor to the media wing, the doors a shattered pile around them. Link stood behind like a statue, the brass cube of his head catching the red emergency lights. He said nothing, just followed at a ten-foot distance. Gunfire and explosions shook the floor, then faded.

  “Directions?” Conner asked.

  “If Four’s map is correct, then down here.” She set off at a slow but steady pace.

  Conner drew his hand cannon and followed, the floor sloping downward. Julia didn’t know what the main presidential areas were like, but this wing was utilitarian in the extreme, more in keeping with an army barrack or data center than a government retreat.

  The short corridor came to a fork that wasn’t on the map. The left passage ended in a heavy blank metal door with a brass lock pad, the right turned from view.

  >Julia_Rothmore: (line-of-sight node encryption)_(connection requested): Link, can you open that?

  Autonomous Remote Unit LnK: (connection accepted): Yes

  Julia watched as Link approached the door and took a thin cable from a pocket, attached one end to a socket in his brass head, the other to the door, then stood motionless. Waves of heat poured from the cyborg; Julia saw sweat slick his neck. Her upgraded circulatory system was more heat sink than blood delivery system, but Link was that and so much more.

  She couldn’t understand some people’s revulsion of body augmentation; that was just old-world thinking, the hatred of the unknown. People should be allowed to do whatever they want to themselves, no matter the consequences. Sure, tag them, let other people know what was what, but if Conner wanted to be a Hack-Job, get some new arms to help him punch through walls, well, good for him. If she made it out of this alive, she was going to put her political and financial might behind the BodyMod lobby that was pushing Congress to drop the federal baseline regulations. Maybe they could pick a few sanctuary cities to be the beachhead—let New York and San Francisco deregulate first, see what happened.

  There was a low beep, and the door clicked open. Conner entered first, then waved Julia and Link through. The laboratory was long, at least a hundred feet by thirty. Nothing this scale existed above ground, so they had to be in a basement. Discrete frosted-glass screens split the space into three; the section farthest away held the hulking torus of a fusion reactor. Next were three MIs, each different: one cube, one sphere, and one twisted plate. These were more of the Generation One systems Alice had told her about; seemed the president wanted a few unregulated minds close at hand.

  Next were four full-body printers and one scanner. The printers were marked cortex experimental prototypes 1 through 4. As she looked around, an old memory surfaced, and she recognized the room. This was where she’d been reprinted after her first scan, hidden Generation One systems resurrecting her into the president’s control. She remembered Takamatsu telling her these printers were loaned from Cortex, their resolution able to print the neural clocks. The ones in the nearby hotel were similar; this whole compound had been designed to service the president’s conspiracy. The printer next to her hummed to life followed by the others, their internal mechanisms clunking as they accelerated.

  “What the Sam Hill is this place?” Conner whispered.

  “It’s where I was reprinted and, if Four is correct, where the president’s bodyguards have all undergone significant upgrades.” She pointed at the active printers. “They’re printing replacements.”

  “Now that ain’t a good sign.” As Conner spoke, the room shook from a distant explosion, and fine trails of dust fell from the ceiling with a hiss. The emergency lighting flickered, went out, then returned dimmer than before.

  “Come on,” Julia said and hurried to the cooling tank and peered at the three brass cylinders inside. “These analytical engines are oversized to just reprint soldiers. If Alice is right and the president is behind the murders, the evidence will be in there. Link, get us in.”

  Link faced the tank, and Julia saw his hands clenching and unclenching, his fingers spreading wide then back again. It was the first display of emotion she’d seen from him since his arrival. Four had explained this MI was autistic, a custom one-off built to crack government systems, but that didn’t make him stupid, just different. He was where he was supposed to be, and he knew it. Link uncoiled the green cable and clicked it into a small data socket in his head. He lowered himself to the cold concrete floor, sat cross-legged, bowed to the three intelligences, and plugged himself in.

  “This gonna take a while?” Conner whispered.

  “That’s a rather good question,” Julia replied. “I’ve no idea if we can even get in.”

  Silence fell. Conner shifted and said, “For what it’s worth, New York was hellishly boring without you. I’m happier than happy you’re back.”

  “You have me somewhat at a disadvantage I’m afraid. I’m not the woman you knew; I have detailed files of the years we worked together, but I don’t have memories or feelings, only facts.”

  “That’s okay. You can become her again. There’s nothing stopping you.”

  “I don’t want to be her though. I have the chance to relive those years now, correct my mistakes. Accepting the president’s deal, being seduced by the power and money, wasn’t worth it. I was a puppet pulled from one master to another.”

  “Your father?”

  “We’re all at the mercy of our parents in some respect, but he was a particularly weak example. Losing my job was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. I lost all sense of direction and purpose, but worse was seeing his disappointment when he realized how it impacted him. I needed his love and
protection and got rage and guilt instead.” Julia looked at the floor, hands loose. It was odd verbalizing her feelings after all this time. The reprint killed on a beach had worn a mask so long she’d lost herself in it.

  “So that’s why you were a rat? Telling the feds everything?” Conner asked.

  She studied him, this tall boy of a man. “Yes. I’d been twisted by other people’s desires and couldn’t see straight.”

  “Now?”

  She gave him a wry grin. “We’re going to die in here, so let’s not stress too much about future projections, okay?”

  Conner gave a tired smile and turned to Link. “How’s Clockwork Man doing?”

  Julia closed her eyes and tried to connect with the MI, and what she saw overwhelmed her. Information warfare was underway, every bit as violent as the fighting overhead, and Link was losing. The three MIs were pounding away at him, overloading his circuits one at a time, a line of dominoes ready to topple.

  She tried to disconnect, pull back; too late. An information attack leaped from Link to her, and she screamed as fire burned her alive.

  59

  * …

  > (. )

  > (..)

  > (data corruption detected)_(core system functions compromised)

  > (data corruption detected)_(bypass initiated)

  > (system loading .)

  > (system loading ..)

  > (system loading …)

  > (system online)_(commence system check Y / N?)

  Alice’s thought was instantaneous: No.

  And the real world crashed back in as if she’d had a blindfold removed, black then light. Her eyes spiked pain, and a deep thudding cut across her temple. Crash logs scrolled through her view as colored blurs aggregated to recognizable objects; her consciousness was fractured, out of phase as if she were blackout drunk. She tried to move but couldn’t, the blurred colors swirling around her like paint spiraling down a drain.

  thzrewyorawreerz

  Therzurewere

  There uz ware

  There you are

  “There you are. Come up, wake up. We’re waiting for you.”

  Her clocked meshed, her senses connected, and reality returned. She was strapped to a heavy wooden chair; a stiff plastic cuff bound her hands behind her while climber’s rope wrapped around her legs. Like a fish snatching a fly, a memory surfaced of another chair, another interview, of her severed hand pumping blood onto a floor. She turned, the world sliding past as if cut free from gravity, to see Xavi bound to another chair, neck blue from the stun-round, face bloodied and swollen as a guard hit him again and again.

  “Stop, we don’t want to kill him.”

  The guard stepped back, and Alice studied President Rachel Harper. She wore black running pants, black sneakers, and a red Stanford T-shirt. With her tousled hair and young smile, she looked every bit the Silicon Valley CEO just back from a workout. She sipped a tall glass of iced water and smiled at Alice.

  “You’re quite the prize, maybe even worth tonight’s disruption,” Harper said. “The updates you’re running are in advance of anything I’ve seen. I want to know who designed you, and where you were made.”

  Alice crossed her fingers and flexed her synthetic muscles. The plastic cuff bit into her wrists like a blade, the pain sharp and clean, but the chair creaked under her.

  “Ah, ah, stop that.” Harper wagged her finger at Alice and held up a pen-sized rod with button on the top. “You didn’t think I’d surround myself with neurally interfaced guards without having a means of protection, did you?”

  Alice relaxed, the chair creaking.

  “This device emits a specific electromagnetic pulse that messes with the neuron-to-rod logic interface. Makes it heat up, among other things, causing a seizure in the target. Charles assures me it’s quite painful.”

  Charles Takamatsu, founder of Cortex, stepped into view. “Hello, Alice. I do wish you’d listened to me. I could have explained everything without need for this unpleasantness.”

  Alice tried to contact Julia, her clock emitting encrypted connection requests, but all she got back was filth and corruption, the sign of hardware gone seriously wrong. She didn’t have time to concentrate on it. Harper was speaking again.

  “Let’s get down to it, shall we?”

  60

  Pain consumed Julia as her mind ran a repeated simulation of falling into a pool of lava, a loop her clock couldn’t break free from.

  Again, she burned.

  Again.

  Again.

  She tried to restart herself, failed, was kicked out, the attacking MIs controlling her interlinked brain.

  Again, the agony of fire consumed her—her skin blackened and burned, flesh melted away as she fell to the floor.

  Her clock ran the virtuality at maximum speed, the automated safety checks disabled; it would run until it cooked her alive.

  > LnK: (update request)_(54 68 65 20 71 75 69 63 6b 20 62 72 6f 77 6e 20 66 6f 78 20 6a 75 6d 70 73 20 6f 76 65 72 20 31 33 20 6c 61 7a 79 20 64 6f 67 73 2e)

  The hexadecimal sequence injected itself into her clock with blunt force; the pain as if a nail had been hammered between her eyes. It failed, rejected, skittered away like an ice pick against diamond. It returned harder, meaner, a spike driven into the soft meat of her brain; she screamed as it bit the virus crashing her. The code became words. She understood.

  > Autonomous_Remote_Unit_LnK: (incoming line-of-sight command interface)_(patch version 2.0 install)

  > LnK: (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Come on, wake up)

  And she was back, hurtling free from the pain as if fired from a cannon, ejected into slow, cool reality. She staggered, and Conner caught her arm. The whole attack had taken fractions of a second.

  She shook, legs weak. “Link?”

  The man stood, cable still linking him to the MIs, and gave her a thumbs up.

  “What did I just miss?” Conner asked.

  “Link had to sacrifice part of himself to distract the MIs. While they were preoccupied killing it, he moved inside and injected the submission code Four had written. There was overspill, and I was caught in the backwash.”

  “So, he’s in?”

  “Yes. The MIs are asleep now, and we can read their dreams.”

  She gathered herself, letting the headache fade to a distant echo before reconnecting. The torrent of information from Link was immediate; secret, unused parts of her came online, data processing and storage batteries strung throughout her torso, cataloging and pattern-recognition circuits woven into the core of her bones. Her body thrummed with energy as she processed the information—this was her job; this was her life. The sweet orgasmic thrill of purpose absorbed her.

  Then, with a flame that seared her stomach, the extent of the conspiracy became clear, and she saw her role in the whole grinding machine.

  “What is it? What it is?” Conner repeated over and over.

  Julia crawled to her knees and beckoned him to help her. “Get me to the broadcast studio, now.”

  Conner half carried, half dragged her past the humming 3D printers and along the corridor to a large red door, Link padding behind. He tried the handle; it was unlocked. They slid into the studio. The stage and camera stood to one side in front of a green screen while the right, out of shot, was a complex mixing desk. Julia remembered the night of Six-Thirty when the president breached all terrestrial broadcasts to show the destruction of the Capitol Building.

  “Find out how we hack into broadcast media,” Conner said to Link.

  The man-machine plugged himself into the mixing board, and a constellation of red and orange lights flickered to life. Julia sat and concentrated on the hard work of what to say, her clock churning away at the data.

  > Julia_Rothmore: (Local Area Node Connection Outreach @ 10*local)_ (Connection Requested)

  > JR: Alice? You there?

  “Whatever y’all gonna to do, now’s the time,” Conner said as he slammed the door shut and
jammed a fire ax across the frame. Its red surface shuddered under a blow from outside; it buckled, and splinters fell to the floor. Another blow, then another. The door shredded, and Julia saw the frenzied faces of the presidential guards outside.

  Conner stepped back and drew his hand cannon. “Hurry,” he said and fired.

  61

  Alice looked at Harper. “What are you doing in Arizona?”

  “I’m trying to save the country the only way I can see how.”

  > Alice_Yu: (local area node connection outreach @ 10*local)_(connection requested)

  > AY: Julia? You there?

  > Julia_Rothmore: (connection accepted): Yeah, though we’ve had a few problems.

  > AY: Same. Can you record this?

  Working on instinct, Alice opened a link between her optical cortex and Julia’s onboard storage.

  > JR: Yes, though I’m not sure for how long; we’ve got company.

  As their minds meshed, Alice understood the peril Julia was in. She saw Conner fire his hand cannon through the door and watched gunfire return. She tasted Julia’s fear and determination, knew her in that moment more intimately than she thought possible. She remembered the woman’s loves and losses, motivations and education, felt Julia inside her in equal measure. It was a union, a meshing of minds that suggested something more, a way for humanity to evolve if they lived past the next few minutes.

  Alice kept the channel open, mind doubled, and returned to the president.

  “Save the country?” Alice asked.

  “What do you know about me?” Harper replied.

  “That you’re a murderer,” Xavi hissed through broken teeth.

  “Hush child; the adults are talking.” Harper nodded for Alice to continue.

  “Only the basic press releases,” Alice said. “Grew up poor in Detroit, father died from polluted water, mother got you into Stanford then disappeared. Then Cortex, billions, and the presidency. The basic insecure, poor girl overachieving to show she’s special.”