by Eric Warren
Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He turned to the man standing beside him. “Have you ever met your next-door neighbor?”
“I have several.”
“The one in 4016.”
“Oh. Ms. Barnes,” he said. “She moved in five months, eighteen days ago. I have met her twice. She is always very pleasant.”
“I need you to go over to her apartment. There will be two men inside. Tell them you are there to retrieve your belongings she borrowed.”
“I never lent any of my belongings to Ms. Barnes.”
“I know. But I need something out of her apartment and I need you to retrieve it for me.”
“That would be misleading.”
Frees shook his head. He should have brought Arista with him. She could have turned this guy and gotten him to do it. Probably. But that would have been too dangerous. She needed to stay as far away from the Peacekeepers as possible. There was no way around it, he’d have to go in there.
“Okay, then I just need your help. I need you to knock on the door and when someone opens it, tell them the maintenance man needs access for repairs, okay?”
“Do you need access for repairs?”
“Yes,” Frees said through his teeth.
“I can do that.” The man walked to his front door. Frees followed him out into the hall, where the man positioned himself in front of Arista’s door and knocked.
Frees stayed up against the wall and turned on the felp.
Knock, knock.
The door swung open almost immediately, but the man didn’t budge. Frees watched carefully as his gaze lifted up slightly. The Peacekeeper was six-foot-two based on the angle of his eyeline.
“Who are you?” the Peacekeeper asked.
“The maintenance man needs access for repairs,” the young man said, his voice even and unwavering. Frees couldn’t help run worst-case scenarios through his mind.
“What repairs?”
Frees moved quickly, skirting around the edge into view of the door with the felp already aimed and fired once, dropping the Peacekeeper. Deeper into the room the second Peacekeeper had already drawn his weapon but Frees fired again, three times to be sure, and the second Peacekeeper fell into a lump beside the window.
“There. That was easier than I expected.” Frees looked at the man, but he only had a blank stare on his face. Stepping over the fallen Peacekeeper, Frees dragged the body back into the room so he wouldn’t block the door. The young man followed him in, but only stood with that blank stare. “Not so chatty anymore?” Frees asked. Maybe the sight of him cutting down two Peacekeepers had finally shut the man up.
Arista had given him the specs on what the items looked like, and he made his way into the kitchen to find them. The nutrient shots were easy enough, they sat on the counter in a small metal container, with eighteen vials each in their own receptacle arranged in a circular fashion around a larger middle. It was only missing two shots. Enough to get her through a couple of weeks at least. He pushed down on the center which locked the vials in place. Next the powder. He located it in the cupboard, in small pouches, right where she said it would be. In a bowl sat a variety of fresh fruits, not the synthetic kind he was used to. He shoved as many as he could in his front pocket. Frees turned back to the living room, items in-hand.
The man stood before him, staring at him with a curious look on his face.
“What?” Frees asked. “You can go back to your apartment. We’re done here.”
The man stared a moment longer, then turned to leave. Frees watched him go, feeling something wasn’t quite right. His movements seemed stiff, less fluid than they’d been before. The man stepped over the fallen Peacekeeper and disappeared into the hallway. Frees shook his head. It was probably nothing. He needed to get back to Arista. Who knew what she’d gotten into at his place. Plus, she was probably starving for a decent meal. Sometimes he took not eating for granted. How horrible would it be to have to eat, drink and shit all day long? The machines were better off not copying everything the humans did.
Frees made sure the Peacekeepers weren’t visible from any of the windows before he left, locking the door behind him. And as he passed apartment 4018 on his way back to the stairwell, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy, though he had no idea why.
Twenty-One
“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?” Jonn asked.
Xian sighed. “You ask too many questions.” He turned to face him. “Let me show you something I find interesting. It will only take a moment from our scheduled destination.”
Jonn narrowed his eyes. This man couldn’t be trusted, of that he was certain.
Xian turned down one of the white halls, his shoes clipping against the granite floors and the sound echoing off the walls. It reminded Jonn of a hospital ward of some kind, everything clean and sterile. The lights overhead were bright and spaced exactly even. Down to the millimeter.
Xian suddenly stopped in front of him, turned to the right and stared at the wall, even though it was blank. “Here,” he said. “Have a look.” His hand brushed against part of the wall and a rectangle-shaped window appeared. Or perhaps it hadn’t appeared, it had just been disguised as part of the wall. On the other side sat one of the Peacekeepers he’d worked with when he first arrived to the tower.
“Patrick?” Jonn asked, leaning into the glass.
He was strapped down onto a metal table, parts of him disassembled. His polymorphic tissue had been removed around his skull and someone had opened his primary cranial port. A mechanical arm with a long needle on the end of it was inserting the needle, then removing it, then inserting it again. They were trying to reprogram him. And the entire time he was laughing. If he hadn’t been strapped down so hard he would be shaking he was laughing so hard.
“What happened to him?” Jonn asked.
“The same thing that’s going to happen to you, I suspect. But some people don’t like to listen to me,” Xian said, his voice gruff.
“What do you mean?”
“The human, she performed her magic on him. Reprogramed him somehow. Turned his eyes orange, just like you. The problem was, he’d already been ‘unlocked’ by the red program. And now they are competing against each other, driving him mad. He’s been like this since shortly after she escaped. We’ve been trying to control the damage, but it has begun some kind of cascade reaction within his cortex. I don’t expect him to survive much longer.”
“How much longer?” Jonn asked.
“Maybe a few hours. If we are unsuccessful he’ll be wiped. It was my opinion we should find a way to reverse her process, but it isn’t working.” Xian turned to him. “The same thing will happen to you. Except she infected you first. Then we exposed you to the red protocol. You have both programs inside you as well. I expect it is only a matter of time.”
Jonn stepped back. Was it possible? Would the competing programs drive him insane as well?
“What is the red protocol? I don’t remember what you did to me.”
“You weren’t conscious. You can’t be. It can be intense. But I should have figured. You were much too calm when you came out of it. Most Peacekeepers go through a short transition period when they wake up. But for you it was just another day. Because you’d already experienced the full range of emotions.”
“Yeah, and what about you? You seem to have as much range as I do,” Jonn said.
“Some Peacekeepers who perform exceptionally are upgraded by Charlie. We don’t question our good fortune.”
“If Charlie can upgrade you, maybe he can cure me,” Jonn said hopefully. Though, if he had the choice, he’d rather keep Arista’s programming than the Cadre’s.
“I doubt he wants to waste the resources. You have one job to do then you are done.”
“But he said I could stay here, that I would be safe.”
Xian scoffed, then pushed past Jonn. “Follow me. We need to get you to work.”
Jonn took one last look at Patrick lying on the table laughing
maniacally, then turned and followed Xian.
***
They took the elevator down to the fifth floor, which opened up to a wide walkway with carpeted floors. On either side of them were more elevators as they exited. It reminded Jonn of a conference center, but somehow different.
“Why is Charlie so secretive?” Jonn asked, following Xian through the expansive floor. There was at least enough space for a hundred machines to line up shoulder to shoulder in here and still not touch the walls. The entire area was wider than it was tall, until the walls opened up and Jonn found himself standing at a railing, overlooking the center of the main lobby. He glanced up to see the square cut-out decreasing with each floor above them for thirty more stories. Xian took a left and made his way around their floor’s square, following the railing until they made a hard left.
“Did you hear me?” Jonn asked, wishing he were anywhere but here at this moment.
“I heard you.” Xian reached the center of the path and took a right into a long hallway, flanked by doors on each side. “In here,” he said, pointing to the first door.
Jonn pushed it open, entering a large conference room. The ceiling was twenty-two feet high and the room at least fifty feet long. In it stood…it took a moment for his processors to count…three hundred and twenty-seven individual Peacekeepers, their red eyes glowing back at him.
Jonn stopped short. He was supposed to show them all?
“Podium,” Xian pointed to the center of the room where a thin microphone had been connected to a podium, on a small raised stage.
“And just…show them?” he asked.
“You said you could teach them. Get on with it. If you don’t lose your mind before you finish I’ll have lost a bet, so take as much time as you need.”
Three hundred and twenty-seven pairs of eyes followed him as he made his way up to the stand. Having spoken at a variety of psychologist conferences before he shouldn’t have been nervous, but it was the first time he’d be doing it after he’d been changed by Arista. Moving in front of the massive crowd his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but thankfully the podium shrouded them from view.
And then, as suddenly as the nervousness had come on, it abated. Jonn felt calm, collected and in control. And he knew exactly what he had to do. “This is a tutorial on how to modify your own internal coding, so you can control your eye color,” he said. “And we will not leave this room until I no longer see the faintest hint of red in anyone’s eyes.”
He ran through the instructions and he glimpsed over to Xian, whose face remained neutral, yet somehow menacing at the same time.
***
Exactly one hour and three minutes after he’d begun, Jonn finished his work. The tutorial had been successfully completed by each Peacekeeper in the room. Now instead of a sea of red in front of him were a wide variety of blues, greens, browns and hazels. He’d told them not to choose any colors that might stand out such as purple, yellow or even gray. Anything that made them stand out was bad, which was met with general agreement. As he finished and the Peacekeepers began filing out, Xian approached him once again.
“You just cost me a bet.”
“Then you shouldn’t have bet against me,” Jonn said. His confidence had certainly been raised by the event, and even now he felt as if he were much more in control than he’d ever been. Xian was wrong, the programs within him weren’t fighting each other, they were working together, making him a better, stronger person.
“Charlie wants to see you,” he said. “There’s been a development.”
“Then let’s not keep him waiting.”
As they rode the elevator up, Jonn took note of the time. It was eight fifteen, and most of the building was quiet. All the daytime workers had already gone back home to their evening cycles, only to prepare for their return in the morning to begin all over again. It made sense Charlie didn’t want to turn everyone in the building, that would only add to the chaos. Jonn hoped now that his work with the Peacekeepers was done he could still be useful.
They reached the top floor and Xian led Jonn down a tall hallway to large double doors which opened into a massive office. The only person inside was the woman Jonn had seen earlier.
“Thank you, Xian,” Charlie’s strange voice said. Xian nodded and closed the door behind him, leaving Jonn alone with the woman. “This office used to belong to one of the most powerful humans on the planet,” Charlie continued. “Any guesses as to who?”
Jonn shook his head. He probably could have accessed the information with his remote link but it was obvious Charlie wanted to impress him, so he restrained himself.
“Zofia Breseno,” she said. “The woman who invented sustainable maglev technology.”
Jonn followed the woman’s eyes out into the distance. The city of Chicago lit up like a field of pre-arranged stars, equidistant from each other and running in grid lines away from their location. “She figured out how to maintain a magnet’s supercooled temperature and shrink that technology down small enough to allow trains to run on it, to allow personal vehicles to run on it. It was a wonderful invention. Look.” The woman turned, pointing to a frame sitting on the large wooden desk in the middle of the room. “That’s her family. She always kept a picture of them on her desk.”
“Is this a shrine then?” Jonn asked. “Did you re-create it just like she had it?”
“No. I found it like this. But I didn’t change anything. I wanted to keep it just as it was.”
“Why?”
“To remind me the humans thought themselves invincible. I can never allow myself to think that way. I must always be aware of possible threats. A greater intelligence.”
“What greater intelligence is there? The humans are gone. We’re it,” Jonn said.
Charlie smirked. “That’s exactly the thinking that got her killed.” She motioned toward the frame. “There’s been a development. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Good,” Jonn said. “The conversion went well; all the Peacekeepers should be disguised now.”
“We have located Arista and the renegade machine,” Charlie said.
Jonn took a step forward. “Where? Do you need me to pick them up?”
“I’m sure Xian has communicated his concerns about your mental state by now.” The woman walked over and placed her hand on the large chair at the desk. “Taken you to see our other patient.”
“I saw him, yes.” Where was this going?
“You understand I might have reservations about you. About your further use to us.”
“Charlie, I feel perfectly fine. No conflictions at all. The programs aren’t fighting each other.”
She remained stone-faced. “I see. So you do not want to be prematurely terminated.”
“What? No, of course not.”
“And you think you can withstand further assignments?”
“Yes, anything you need.”
“Then I will be honest with you. When I told you before Arista could come back here and remain unharmed it was a lie. To elicit your cooperation. She cannot be allowed to exist. How does that make you feel?”
Jonn suppressed an outburst. Had Charlie just lied to him in order to get him to help? And now that his usefulness was used up she would…what? Kill Jonn after he killed Arista? Or before? Did it even matter?
But then another sensation came over him. What if he agreed with Charlie? Perhaps if he didn’t protest Arista’s death then he might be allowed to live. Allowed to stay as he was, experiencing life to its greatest potential. What use did he have with a human anyway? It wasn’t as if they could still be partners, not now that he knew she wasn’t a machine. But didn’t he love her? Or was that just part of what she had done to him? Part of the infection she’d brought to his mind.
“Are you struggling to respond?” Charlie asked, bringing him out of his thoughts.
Jonn looked up. “What?”
“Arista Barnes must die. And there must be no question about it. Are you willing to take that
leap? You will not be harmed if you say no.”
Jonn stared into the woman’s eyes. Even though she didn’t seem intimidating, there was something about the voice coming from her body. Something telling him he wasn’t safe. It was another lie. If Jonn didn’t want to end up like Patrick, he had little choice but to agree. It was unfortunate for Arista, but in the end he might be doing her a favor. The last of her kind, she might be better off not having to worry about any of that anymore.
“In order to preserve our society,” Jonn said. “I believe she must die as well.”
A smile spread across Charlie’s face. “Very good. Let’s get started.”
Twenty-Two
“HEY, HUMAN.”
“Nngh.”
“Human!”
Crash!
Arista bolted up out of the bed, her makeshift blanket falling to her side. “What was that?” she yelled. She turned to see Frees standing before her, his hood down and a scowl on his face. “What?” she said, rubbing her eye.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“I was.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, minding the mess below her. “What was that noise?”
“A type-D iridium board.” Frees said, turning. “I needed you to wake up.”
Arista examined the mess at her feet. Apparently type-D iridium boards were not only loud but also fragile. Shattered pieces lay everywhere. “You could have just nudged me.”
“And risk getting more excrement on me? No thank you,” Frees responded, leading her back into the living room.
She clenched her jaw. “It’s not excrement! It’s sweat.”
“Do you excrete it from your pores?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Then it is excrement,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Arista rolled her eyes. “That reminds me. Does your plumbing work?”
“Yes, but—”
“Be right back.” She made her way down the hallway to his protestations. She didn’t care what he thought. She wasn’t about to apologize for her natural bodily functions. The bathroom was like all the other rooms: half-filled with equipment of some kind or another. As she sat on the toilet to do her business, she realized he didn’t have any toilet paper. “Frees!”
