The door slid shut.
She stood there staring at it. Numb. Unbelieving. Waiting for him to reappear and tell her it was all a mistake.
But he didn’t.
The door stayed closed.
Paige’s knees buckled beneath her as she fell to the floor, sobbing. In pain.
Epilogue
Gaitune-67, Paige’s quarters
“He lied, and he was a bad person. And I just couldn’t tell,” Paige sobbed. “What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” Molly confirmed decisively. “He wanted to be a better person, for you. You made him a better man. In just the short time he was with you, you gave him a reason to question it all.”
Paige lay on her bed, barely able to move.
Molly sat in the chair normally reserved for discarded clothes that weren’t ready for the laundry basket. “He came to see me, you know?”
Paige lifted her eyes in Molly’s direction, unable to spare the effort to turn her head to actually look at her. “No. When?”
“Yesterday,” Molly told her. “He wanted to know how to fix things with you.”
Paige dropped her eyes again and relaxed back into her semi-catatonic state. “What did you tell him?” she asked, her voice monotone.
Molly crossed one leg over the other and shuffled down in the seat some more. “To talk to you,” she paused, and shrugged. “And to get his shit together. No gray area, yadda yadda. But one thing was clear to me as we were talking... he was doing it all for you. He was prepared to change everything just to be with you. Just on the hope that you might give him one more chance.”
Molly paused again, wondering if any of it was getting through to her. Her eyes defocused as she remembered the conversation for a moment and then sighed.
“That’s the kind of guy you let stick around.” She looked down at Paige. She still hadn’t moved. “I know it would be easier to hate him for what he did. And then for leaving. But that wouldn’t be fair to either of you. Or to what you had.”
Molly moved over and sat on the bed next to the heap that was Paige. “It will hurt,” she told her. “Maybe for a long time. But don’t let it become poison.”
Paige smiled a little, tears streaming from her eyes and soaking the bed linen. “You suck,” she said finally. “Can’t you just tell me he was a jerk, and the next one won’t be.”
Molly stroked her hair. “He’s a jerk, and he doesn’t deserve you.”
Paige chuckled and sobbed at the same time. “Thanks,” she said, humorously.
They stayed like that for several minutes.
Eventually, Molly rubbed her shoulder and moved to stand up. “Ice cream?” she offered.
Paige nodded. “Ice cream and then beer,” she added. “Lots of beer.”
Molly grinned. “We can do that. Come on then,” she said, encouraging the broken-hearted girl to haul herself off the bed and to her feet.
Paige grabbed a wad of tissues and dried her face, then disappeared into the bathroom to pull herself together. She reemerged, her face damp from washing it, and then throwing a wrap around her, the two girls headed out of the room to raid the fridge and freezer in the kitchen.
FINIS
Bourne
The Ascension Myth Book 8
Chapter 1
AI Lab, Nefertiti Military Research Facility, Ogg
Charles Tergon’s eyes darted from the holoscreen in front of him, to a second screen that was streaming code like there was no tomorrow.
Sue came over to look over his shoulder. “Are you sure?”
Charles swallowed hard. “Pretty damn sure,” he confirmed nervously. “Check out what’s happening to the base programming. It’s rewriting itself.”
He pointed at the code on the first screen and they both watched as one line after another changed before their very eyes.
She leaned in, absently pushing an errant strand of hair out of her eyes. “You mean… it’s changing? By itself?” she clarified, her eyes tracking back and forth.
He nodded, mesmerized by the code streaming before his very eyes. “It’s self-correcting. The next stage of development, if it crosses it, will see it becoming self-aware.”
Sue’s face was frozen in disbelief. Her skin paled. “It’s really happening…” she whispered.
Charles peeled his eyes from the screen to look at her. “It really is,” he said, his eyes locking back on the process in front of them.
“Shouldn’t we, erm… tell someone?” she asked tentatively, the anxiety rising in her voice.
Charles ran a hand down his face. “Not yet,” he sighed, sitting back in his chair. “I mean, we don’t know if it’s really going to work… and that it’ll keep going. It’s very unstable, and I wouldn’t want us to…”
He hesitated, figuring out his reasoning. “I wouldn’t want us to look like morons if it destabilizes.”
Sue had known Charles a long time. Naturally she wasn’t convinced by his explanation. “I don’t know. I mean, what if it gets into the EtherTrack?”
“It can’t,” he responded, his jaw setting firm. “It’s 100% isolated. Besides,” he said, reaching to the drawer on his left hand side, “it’s going to need a lot more processing power before it can bridge the next stage.”
He pulled a bottle of Scotch out of the drawer and looked at it.
Sue couldn’t help but feel she was being given the official line. The same line he might end up giving in his court martial hearing when all this blew up like fuckery.
He was staring at the bottle. “Been saving this for the last fifteen years since I graduated,” he told Sue. “My father gave it to me before he croaked.”
Sue noticed the flippant way he had dealt with his father’s death. He treated it so casually even though she knew it had been a big deal for him. The way he acted about it now though just made him sound like a dick. She shook the thought loose from her head. “I think we should report in,” she said a little more firmly.
Charles leaned back in his chair. “Not yet,” he said firmly, overruling her. “Ah, but you could be a doll and grab a couple of beakers for us from the next lab? I’m going to see if Rasheed can help us track down some more processing power… It would be a pain in the ass if we have to wait for a new shipment.” He pulled up a comms screen and started connecting a call.
Sue shook her head and headed out of the door. She hated the way that Dickwad Charles would pull rank on her. This was always his way. And then when the shit hit the fan, which it always did, he ended up leaning on her for counsel when things went wrong.
She sighed as she clipped down the corridor.
And now things were finally going right, though, she reminded herself.
‘Right’ at least as far as their remit was concerned. For the last four years they had been working night and day to create a self-programming code, capable of adapting and learning. And the last two years had been particularly slow going… what with Molly having been discharged and all.
They both knew it.
Even though they never spoke it out loud.
Even though she was in another department, their evenings drinking and chewing the fat with her would often result in their most profound leaps forward in their projects.
Why Molly had never joined their department she’d never know.
She assumed it had something to do with her not liking Charles. But then there was always some dickwad in whatever department you end up in.
Sue by-passed the drug development labs and headed in the direction of the mess halls. No way was she going to be drinking Charles’s scotch from one of their beakers. She knew what some of those experimental drugs had done to people over the years. That shit could turn your hair blond.
Nope, she was going to find some normal glasses that were designed and kept for the purpose of drinking from.
And, she decided almost at the same time, if she happened to put her head round the door of Lug
don’s office, then she might let slip what they had just discovered.
After all, this revelation in the code was huge.
They could single handedly be responsible for unleashing artificial intelligence onto the world.
There was no way they were ready for this.
No way the military was ready for this.
In fact, she and Charles had seen so many AI taking over the planet movies it was kind of cliche.
Almost to be expected.
She just never thought the two of them would be the first ones to succeed in creating one.
Skóli Uppstigs Academy, Spire, Estaria
Molly Bates strode into the class room, leaving the door open, and dumping her gear with a thump by the side of the front desk. Her hair was covered in a sheen of plaster and dust, and there was a smudge of dirt across her face.
She was also bleeding through a tear in her atmosuit jacket on one arm. The burns around the tear looked like she’d been tapped with a blaster.
“Afternoon folks,” she said casually as the door slammed behind her. “Sorry I’m late. Got held up.”
She made a feeble attempt to tidy herself up before starting the class.
A student voice came from the room of faces watching in anticipation. “Something tells me it wasn’t waiting in line in the cafeteria!”
Molly looked up, searching for the origin of the voice. She couldn’t pick out the speaker immediately, but she glanced up and allowed half a smile to spread across her face. “You’re right,” she confirmed. “Just had to take out a bunch of terrorists in the delta quadrant.”
Whispers and chatter rippled through the room. “Sooo cool!”
“Awesome!”
“She is so fucking hot.”
The titters subsided waiting for her next statement.
Molly had managed to peel her jacket sleeve from her injured arm and inspected it. There was blood all around it and a few drops made it onto the floor. The skin was also burnt around the wound.
“Jacket’s ruined,” she muttered to herself, shrugging it off from her other arm and plonking it down on the back of her chair before turning her attention back to the class.
“Ok, so today we’re talking about communication strategies in the field,” she started, pulling up the mental file of her teaching notes.
The class hushed quickly, well aware of her ability to task switch. She was all-business now and that meant they needed to be in order to catch everything.
While the others settled in with their notes and holos, a mousey male student sprang dutifully to his feet. He walked over to the wall and pulled the first aid kit from it. Then he opened it up and grabbed some cleaning gauze for her. He quietly walked up to her and handed it over as she started lecturing.
Then he returned to his seat.
He was the medical monitor responsible for making sure the kits were fully stocked and functional. It hadn’t been the first time that Molly had shown up injured and in the interests of ticking a bunch of health and safety boxes and avoiding having to spend pointless time in the school’s med bay, Molly agreed to enact a system when she taught.
The medical monitor was part of that system.
So was the protein shake that Judy, another student, placed on her desk for her to drink. If Molly didn’t consume it Judy was under strict instructions, on pain of failing her course, to report it in to Paige. Paige would then administer corrective measures when Molly returned to base.
These were just two of the terms that Molly had agreed to during the intervention where the team had sat her down and confronted her with the dangers of trying to juggle the university with her day job of saving random worlds all across the quadrants.
As Molly talked, she wiped down the wound. By the time she looked down to inspect it again it was pretty much healed.
Alien nanocytes are all upside, she mused as she tossed the bloody swab into the trash can.
* * *
Down the corridor footsteps pounded through the corridors, tapping lightly but hurriedly.
Professor Giles Kurns awkwardly rounded the corner and practically flew into his own classroom - off balance.
And late.
“Sorry I’m, erm… late,” he said, distracted, accidentally knocking his glasses sideways as he tried to push them back onto his nose. His hair was disheveled and one cheek had a red line across it. His eyes were also bleary.
Anyone who saw his dazed state would have been accurate in their assumption that he had just woken up from an awkward desk nap.
He held a bunch of files and old fashioned papers. Emma Chambers, the girl on the front row, leaned forward noticing that some of the maps were of space. She wondered if that was what they’d be getting to. Or perhaps it was one of the projects that Molly Bates had him working on.
Emma always kept her ear to the ground. She was fascinated by what went on behind the scenes at this Academy and, like many of the students who had places at the new university, had been following the Molly Bates stuff on the news for a couple of years now.
She wondered idly whether she could also get in on the project. Maybe Giles was her answer.
Giles noticed her staring and stopped. Straightening up he grinned at her and ruffed his hair with his fingers.
Emma rolled her eyes and then quickly averted her gaze.
Maybe not, she corrected herself.
Giles flushed at the slight, and became very self conscious trying to pretend he hadn’t just tried flirting with her after all. He said hi in the direction of someone else, and when Emma turned she saw that no one else was acknowledging him and he was just being a doofus.
He dropped his papers on the desk, one file slipping out and falling on the floor in front of her desk. A bunch of other papers went in the other direction.
The chattering in the class had subsided, and all eyes were now on the doddery professor.
“Hello class,” he tried again. “Sorry I’m late.”
A male voice chirped up from the back. “Why are you late sir? Did you sleep in?”
“I, er… got caught up,” he explained, “reindexing the algorithm for the classical Estarian codex.”
Emma sighed and leaned her head on her hand.
This was going to be a long class.
Gaitune-67, Safe house labs, Paige’s office
Maya poked her head around the door grinning. She stopped, realizing that Paige was on a call.
Paige glanced up and held up a finger to Maya before continuing on her call. “That sounds great Mr. Bilton. I’ll have someone send you some samples immediately. I’d love to know what you think when you receive them.”
She paused, looking up at Maya while Mr. Bilton spoke. “Ok, that’s great. You have a good weekend too.”
She hung up by hitting her holoscreen and then spun her chair round to stand up. She headed round her desk to greet her friend. “Well, someone looks rather pleased with herself!” Paige beamed.
Maya folded her arms, leaning against the door frame. “Well, someone may have just got wind of a new singles bar that has opened on Estaria. Opening gala is tonight. Wanna be my plus one?”
Paige hesitated. “Er…”
Maya leaned up and stood straight. “Hey, it’s cool. I mean, I know it’s hard getting over ass-hat and everything… but, you can’t withdraw forever.”
Paige tilted her head to one side, imagining how the night might play out. “Hmmm. Well. I guess it wouldn’t hurt just to show up and talk to some people.”
Maya grinned stepping forward and patting Paige on her arm. “That’s the spirit! We leave in thirty minutes. I’m going for a shower…”
Paige, eyes wide, glanced back at her desk, back to Maya and back to her desk. “But I…”
Maya was already gone from the doorway. “Thirty minutes,” she called as she disappeared down the corridor. “Meet me on the hangar deck. And dress to impress!” She added, lifting he
r voice to compensate for her walking away in the other direction.
Paige looked from the door to the desk piled with work, and then back at the door.
“Oh, what the heck,” she muttered definitively, heading back to the desk and closing up her holos. “You only live once.”
A minute later she was following the same path Maya had taken to the residential quarters, mentally flicking through her wardrobe and deciding what she might wear.
AI Lab, Nefertiti Military Research Facility, Ogg
Captain Lugdon strode in through the open door to the sparsely furnished computer lab.
Charles turned just in time to see him appear, the footsteps alerting him to a visitor.
Charles practically fell out of his chair trying to get his feet off the desk before Lugdon spotted him. Of course it was futile, as by the time he saw who it was Lugdon had of course seen him.
Charles staggered to his feet, his old-school swivel chair crashing its coasters against the hard laminate flooring of the computer lab. “Sir,” he said, surprised.
On the other side of the lab Sue turned around briefly to acknowledge her commanding officer before shifting her attention back to her holoscreens.
Lugdon ignored Charles’ faux pas. “You have news?” he demanded briskly.
“Sir. Yes, sir,” Charles reported, his manner harping back to his awkward cadet days. “We’ve, er…” he glanced back over his shoulder as if looking for help from Sue who wasn’t looking in their direction and then back to his boss. “It seems we have some positive signs from the work we’ve been, er… assigned.”
Lugdon raised one eyebrow sternly.
No way he didn’t already know, Charles realized from his expression. He wished he could turn and look at Sue one more time. She must have ratted him out - after he’d specifically told her not to.
Lugdon wasn’t giving him a chance to worm his way out of this one. “Ok. So what have you got?” he asked again, coming around to see the workstation that Charles had been sitting at.
He spotted the whiskey in the glass and pushed it out of the way, telegraphing to Charles that he had clocked it, but that there were far more important things at hand.
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 152
