Gates of Rome

by Alex Scarrow

  Computer-Bob was listening, despite being busy sifting through the data.

  >We will not know whether we have a stable AI construct until I have compiled the data and run the emulator.

  Liam looked at Bob. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The computer system will run the AI code on a software-simulated version of the chipset. It will then enter packets of the verified data block by block into the simulation to check the stability and reliability of Becks’s AI.’

  ‘To see whether she’s gone stupid?’

  Bob’s thick brow rumpled. Liam reached out and grabbed the bulging knuckles of one of Bob’s hands. ‘Jay-zus, you really care about her, don’t you?’

  His chest rumbled with a deep hur-umph. ‘She was an effective support unit. Her AI was able to develop more than mine.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the ladies for you. Better at expressing their feelings than us fellas, huh?’

  ‘Gender is not a factor.’ Bob turned his grey eyes on him. ‘Did you care for her, Liam?’

  He laughed uncomfortably. ‘Well … I …’

  ‘The discoloration of your cheeks and body language suggest you have a strong emotional attachment to her. Am I correct, Liam?’

  He gazed at the screen.

  Blocks of colour. She’s just blocks of colour on a computer screen now. That’s it. And yet in her flesh form, in human form, she’d almost seemed like another person. Perhaps a somewhat cool person, detached, aloof even. But she could make a joke, couldn’t she? And smile.

  He realized her smile – even though it was nothing more than a data file played out across facial muscles – could make something inside him flutter and ache. A beautiful smile actually. Quite stunningly beautiful, truth be told.

  ‘I’d miss her,’ he said finally. ‘If she really is lost … yes, I’ll miss her.’

  >Information.

  Liam nodded at the webcam. ‘What is it, computer-Bob?’

  >I am ready to start the simulation. Do you wish to proceed?

  He wondered whether he should wait for Maddy to get back. Sal too. They were both just as concerned whether there was anything left of Becks to salvage as he was.

  ‘Will it … I don’t know … is it safe? It won’t damage her mind or anything, will it?’

  >Negative. The data we have retrieved is now stored safely. This simulation is a read-only environment.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘It means that once the simulation stops running,’ said Bob, ‘any data that is generated is deleted.’

  ‘She won’t remember anything?’

  >That is correct. It is merely a test environment.

  Liam let himself down into the chair. ‘All right, then.’ He puffed out an anxious breath. ‘Let’s see if she’s in there.’

  >Affirmative. Launching AI emulator.

  On a screen to his right another black dialogue box popped up. An empty box with a gently blinking cursor. That’s all. Liam looked up at Bob nervously. The support unit nodded silently for him to go ahead and communicate with her.

  ‘Uh … you in there, Becks?’

  The dialogue cursor continued to blink, a steady on-off-on-off like a heartbeat. A pulse. A sign of life and nothing more.

  > … … …

  ‘It’s Liam here … can you hear me?’

  The cursor continued to blink silently.

  ‘The cognitive and language code may not be functioning correctly,’ said Bob quietly.

  ‘Becks, this is Liam. If you can hear me, just do something. Say something.’

  > … … …

  He watched the cursor with a gradually sinking heart. We’ve lost her.

  Of course they could activate and grow another female foetus and she would emerge from the growth tube looking every bit like Becks. Her identical twin. But he wondered how different she would be. She’d have a face with the very same features and muscles and skin, but the mind behind it would probably learn to use the face in a wholly different way. Smile differently, no longer cock a sceptical eyebrow in quite the same way. A thousand little tics and habits that made Becks who she was – all of them gone, forever.

  ‘Becks?’ he tried again. ‘You there?’

  > … … …

  ‘It appears there is not enough retrieved data to form a viable AI construct,’ said Bob. Liam thought he heard something in his deep rumble, the slightest quaver in his voice, a thread of grief.

  ‘Becks?’ he tried one last time. He could hear emotion in his own voice now.

  She’s gone. We lost her. He felt something warm roll down his cheek and quickly swiped it away, for some reason not wanting either Bob or computer-Bob to make a note of that and intrude on the moment with a query.

  Goodbye, Becks.

  > … … …

  > … … ..

  > … … .

  > … …

  > … ..

  >I love you, Liam O’Connor.

  CHAPTER 7

  2001, New York

  They watched the foetus floating in the protein soup, flexing and twitching tiny fingers and toes in unconscious readiness. A feed pipe was connected to its belly button and rose up to the top of the tube where it met the filtration pump.

  The perspex growth tube was lit from the bottom. It glowed softly, filling their back room with a warm, womb-like, muted crimson light.

  ‘Do you think they think about things when they’re growing in there?’ asked Liam.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Maddy.

  Sal turned to Bob, standing like a freshly built brick wall beside her. ‘Did you, Bob? Do you have any memories of being in a tube?’

  He frowned, deep in concentration for a moment. ‘No. My AI software was not loaded at this stage.’

  ‘But your organic brain?’ cut in Maddy. ‘That must store some memories?’

  Bob’s shoulders flexed a casual shrug. ‘If so, it is not data I can retrieve.’

  The little foetus kicked a leg out, then tucked it back in.

  Maddy chuckled. ‘It’s got some of her attitude already.’

  ‘Do you think we can upload Becks’s AI?’ asked Sal.

  Maddy tapped her teeth with her fingernails. ‘I dunno yet, Sal. That simulation we ran … she seemed pretty flaky.’ On Maddy and Sal’s return, computer-Bob had run the simulation again with exactly the same results.

  She turned to look at Liam. ‘I mean … I love you … that can’t be right for a support unit, can it?’

  Bob nodded. ‘It did appear that the simulated AI was behaving erratically.’

  ‘So, maybe these clone fellas can feel something?’ said Liam.

  The others looked at him.

  ‘Well, I’m not so unlovable, am I?’

  Sal giggled. ‘I’m sure your mother must’ve loved you.’

  ‘Point is –’ Maddy placed a hand on the warm growth tube – ‘I’m pretty sure support units shouldn’t go round professing love for their operative.’

  Liam looked uncertain. ‘She definitely was learning to … to feel something, so she was. That’s not so bad, is it?’

  Maddy found herself nodding in the gloom. Hadn’t she too thought she’d seen that in Becks? ‘Helps them appear more human, I suppose.’

  ‘Back in the dinosaur time, she …’ Liam looked at the others sheepishly.

  ‘She what?’

  ‘Well, she sort of went to kiss me, so she did.’

  Sal made a face. Maddy’s eyes rounded behind her lenses. ‘Kiss you?’

  ‘Tried to give me just a little peck, so. On me cheek, that’s all.’

  Sal made a face. ‘That’s just weird.’

  ‘Just a peck … nothing else happened,’ he added defensively. ‘Honest!’

  Maddy waved him silent. ‘Doesn’t matter. The fact is maybe that means she did already have … feelings before this damage. Maybe the “I love you” comment was not corrupted data or some sort of malfunction.’ She looked up at Bob. ‘She inherited your code, Bob.
Have you ever experienced – you know – feelings for Liam?’

  ‘I have data files that you could interpret as emotional reflexes.’

  ‘Would you kiss Liam?’

  Bob cocked his head, a frown of confusion rumpling his forehead for a moment before he reluctantly leaned down towards Liam, puckering his horse-lips.

  Liam recoiled. ‘Jay-zus, Bob! What’re you –?’

  ‘No! Bob! That wasn’t an instruction … that was a question!’

  He straightened up. ‘I see.’ His expression settled. ‘I have managed to reprioritize mission parameters for Liam in the past. This could be interpreted as … irrational.’

  ‘He came to save me from that German prison camp. Didn’t you, Bob?’

  ‘Is that because you valued Liam more than you valued completing your mission objective?’ asked Maddy.

  Bob hesitated, his mind working its files in silence.

  ‘Because you cared for him?’ she pressed.

  Bob finally answered. ‘Affirmative. Liam is my friend.’

  Maddy tapped the perspex with her knuckles. ‘There we are, then. That was already there in Becks’s identity. She inherited feelings from Bob.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘She cares for you, Liam. Somewhere in all that data she has a file that tells her she “loves” you.’ Maddy smiled. ‘Maybe her AI was just running that file during the emulation.’

  ‘Does that mean she’s OK, then?’ asked Liam.

  ‘Bob, if we upload her AI into this body and it turns out she is wonky, can we, I dunno … reboot her or something?’

  ‘Affirmative. The silicon wafer can be reformatted and the AI software reloaded without any of my or her inherited data.’

  ‘Right.’ Maddy nodded. ‘I suppose we could give her AI a go and if she’s, like, all flaky on us, then that’s what we’ll have to do.’

  ‘That’s taking a risk, though, isn’t it?’ said Sal. ‘I mean there are loads of those corrupted red blocks. What if she got funny with us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘I dunno … jealous or something. Jealous of you or me?’

  ‘Sal is correct,’ said Bob.

  Maddy stroked her lip thoughtfully. She’d seen Becks in action. Seen the bodies left behind in her wake. God help them if she took on the role of a lover scorned.

  ‘Her decision-making may be unpredictable,’ Bob added.

  ‘Aw, come on! When hasn’t she been unpredictable?’ said Liam.

  Maddy nodded. ‘True.’

  ‘Could we not give her a chance?’

  ‘We’ll have to watch her very closely,’ said Maddy. ‘The slightest sign she’s going weird and we’ll have to reboot her. I mean it … she even looks at me or Sal in a funny way, we’re going to have to totally wipe her, Liam.’

  Sal bit her lip. ‘I don’t want her tearing off my head.’

  Liam nodded slowly. ‘She’ll be right as rain, so she will.’ He didn’t sound entirely convincing.

  ‘OK, right,’ said Maddy, ‘that’s that, then.’ She turned to head for the sliding door leading back out into the main archway. ‘Come on, guys, there’s something else we need to talk about.’

  Liam slid the door aside. It rattled noisily and clattered against its runners. ‘What?’

  ‘This agency of ours … the Pandora stuff?’

  Sal and Liam looked at each other.

  ‘Did Foster tell you something?’ asked Sal.

  Maddy nodded. ‘Oh yeah.’

  CHAPTER 8

  2070, Project Exodus, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

  Rashim stared, goggle-eyed, at Dr Yatsushita. ‘What?’

  ‘I said we may have to consider advancing the T-Day deadline.’

  ‘But … but … we’re still only at the primary testing stage!’

  Rashim’s team had run several simulated tests on the transmission process and each time the simulation software had assured them that it had overshot or undershot the receiver station beacon’s snap range. Or, on the one occasion they’d landed right on the money, half the candidates would have been lost or turned into quivering mush.

  ‘Dr Anwar,’ Yatsushita started. He looked harried. Tired. A sleepless night or several by the look of him. His usually carefully combed silver hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled. ‘You must have been following the news-streams?’

  Rashim hadn’t, or not closely anyway. He had no time for that. Every day, it seemed, one or more of the transmission candidates had been replaced with someone else, requiring him to chase up the data on their replacements, plug in the information and recalculate the total mass index.

  ‘You have heard about the Kosong-ni virus?’

  A couple of days ago, he’d watched a few minutes of news. The last city in Bangladesh had been abandoned to floodwater. The algal blooms in the Indian Ocean were now calculated to be covering thirty-six per cent of the surface area, poisoning, completely annihilating the ecosystem beneath. The North American Federation were enforcing border restrictions on east and west state migrants. A corps of Japanese combat droids had successfully made an amphibious assault on the North Korean city of Hyesan. A lot of dead people. But then when did the news these days not feature a high body count?

  And yes, there’d been something about a virus. The news-streams had speculated it might have been a chemical weapon of some kind dropped on a North Korean city by the Japanese. Or worse still, some kind of wild-card bioweapon developed by the North Koreans and accidentally exposed as a result of some missile strike.

  ‘Kosong-ni virus?’ So it had a name now.

  Yatsushita shook his head. He pushed his way through the warren of desks towards Rashim’s. ‘You fool. You should be watching instead of … of …’ He looked at SpongeBubba squatting beside the desk and grinning with goofy teeth. ‘Instead of making your foolish toys!’

  ‘I haven’t got time to watch a holo-vid, Dr Yatsushita!’ Rashim replied, irritated with the project leader. ‘I’ve got –’

  ‘It’s airborne! There are reports of the virus in Beijing!’

  Airborne certainly wasn’t so good.

  ‘Our … sponsors are worried by this. They want T-Day advanced.’

  Sponsors – Yatsushita’s carefully chosen word. It was transparently obvious to Rashim that Project Exodus was being funded by what was left of America’s defence budget, most probably funds topped up by a few billionaires who wanted in on it.

  ‘Advanced by how much?’

  Dr Yatsushita hesitated. ‘They want it ready to go for the thirtieth of May.’

  ‘But that’s five weeks away! We need at least another six months to be sure –’

  ‘We have no choice in this matter! It must be ready by then!’

  Rashim pushed his round glasses up on to his forehead where they held his draping dark locks back like a hairband. ‘Did you tell them the risks involved? Did you tell them that we get this the slightest bit wrong and we’re all dead? Or worse …?’

  ‘I have explained all of this. Nonetheless, they insist.’

  Rashim stared at his project leader. ‘Is it that bad?’

  Yatsushita pulled a seat up, looked across the maze of desks and cubicles at the dozen other technicians working late. He sat down and lowered his voice. ‘It is much, much worse than the news media are reporting. They have been kept in the dark. There is an embargo on the worst of it.’

  ‘Worst of it? What do you mean?’

  ‘A smart-virus, Rashim. It is an advanced smart-virus! A Von Neumann!’

  Rashim nodded slowly. Von Neumann – a hypothetical premise imagined by a Hungarian theorist, John von Neumann, over a hundred and fifty years ago. Machines capable of harvesting their own resources for infinite self-replication. Nanotechnologists had tried experimenting with that concept at the beginning of the twenty-first century with little success. Little robots the size of blood cells. But robotically there were too many practical problems to overcome. However, biologically – a very differe
nt story. After all, bacteria were biological Von Neumann machines of a sort. But the Holy Grail – certainly in terms of weapons use – was a bacterium that could be smart, could be given genetic instructions, an objective, a specified goal. Could be given a target.

  ‘A sample has been isolated and analysed by a team in Tokyo,’ said Dr Yatsushita. Rashim could see the man was clearly shaken.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It is designed to depopulate. Designed to target humans only.’

  ‘It’s engineered?’

  ‘Of course it is! On contact with any human cells, it activates, breaks down the cell structures into acids, proteins.’ He ran a hand through his silver hair. ‘It completely liquidizes the infected within hours!’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘The liquid solution is used by the bacteria to make copies of themselves, to grow spores – like feathers, like pollen – that can be carried by the wind.’

  ‘Are there any cases of immunity yet? Ethnic-specific resistance?’

  Yatsushita shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. So far it seems no one is immune. Whoever made this did not care that it would kill the whole world.’

  Rashim looked at the holo-screen shimmering in the air above his desk. Endless columns of data that needed collating and processing.

  ‘Now do you see why they want T-Day advanced?’ said Dr Yatsushita. ‘Something like Kosong-ni is what leaders have feared for decades. A perfect bioweapon.’

  Rashim rubbed his temple. ‘Jesus.’

  Dr Yatsushita nodded. ‘I have told our sponsors that all the T-Day candidates must make their way here immediately. We must finalize the mass index as soon as possible. We cannot keep changing the data.’

  Rashim nodded. ‘Yes … yes, absolutely.’

  His boss leaned forward. ‘Dr Anwar, you have family on the candidate list, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes … my parents.’

  ‘Call them, Rashim … get them here now. Before it’s too late!’

  CHAPTER 9

  2001, New York

  ‘Brace yourselves,’ said Maddy. She looked at them across the breakfast table, Liam and Sal sitting beside each other on their threadbare sofa, eyes resting expectantly on her.