by Grant Piercy
We laid in separate beds, our frustrating attraction to one another keeping us awake, tossing and turning through the night. I nodded off several times, but snapped back up with thoughts of her pressed to Render’s body, lips together, hips pumping. It was maddening and frustrating and tantalizing, and I begged for sleep to stop thinking of her.
In the morning, we’d continue our search for James Burke based on info provided by Joanna Heard. The two had swapped information, Evelyn providing the particulars we’d teased out about Agent of Truth while Joanna spoke of an undisclosed location in northern Washington. Evelyn was able to identify a Research and Development facility in the NMAC company directory referred to as the Vault. The details were scarce. A street address appeared in the directory, but entering it into Maps or Street View didn’t yield great results. Our plan was to follow directions out to the coordinates of the address and try to find the building.
I awoke from another dream that might have belonged to Michael Render, of a beach and a wide, welcoming sea. In the dream there was no sun or darkness, just a violet twilight that extended forever in all directions. A woman sailed from the horizon, a silhouette that transformed to the prow of a great ship. A figurehead in the shape of Daphne had been carved there, emerging from the mauve infinity. My mind differentiated the carving of the figurehead as Daphne and not Evelyn based on the pronounced heart-shaped face. I remembered I didn’t belong to her, and blood dripped from her wooden lips. Her hard eyes stared.
White light from an overcast morning streamed through the hotel curtains, irritating my senses. A dull headache accompanied by drymouth. I hadn’t experienced a hangover in years.
Evelyn was in the bathroom, staring closely at herself in the mirror.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Rough night,” she said. “You?”
“A little worse for wear. Do you have anything for a headache?”
“You drank too much. I tasted it on you last night. Whiskey or scotch can be a cruel mistress.”
“Bourbon.”
“Yeah. Here,” she said, pulling a small bottle from a bathroom bag she had on the counter. She tapped two tablets into her palm and passed them my way.
“Thank you,” I answered. I found complimentary cups on the desk in the main room. I drank a full cup of water, then immediately refilled and gulped down another.
We showered and cleaned ourselves up in silence. The headache eventually faded after we ate an intercontinental breakfast in the hotel cafe next to the lobby. I relished in eggs, pancakes, and sausage, rounded out by two cups of black coffee, even though in my old life I never drank coffee. Some phantom urge had pushed itself into my mind as Evelyn held a cup of her own. Facing each other across the table, we didn’t say much.
Eventually we left the hotel and drove northward, out of the city. The coordinates of the address she’d discovered were hours away. Rain sputtered from the overcast sky as mountains and evergreens loomed over the roads the further we went from the city. We passed through a number of small towns while we turned along the North Cascades Highway. The address showed to be outside of Newhalem, but once we reached the destination, there was nothing there.
We looked all about us for evidence of the facility, but nothing. We drove up and down the highway, vigilant for an enclave or a turnoff near the coordinates, but to no avail. A short muddy path led into the woods, and something told me I should at least follow it—the closest thing to a driveway anywhere near the supposed address.
Gravel crumbled under our tires as we ventured off the road. Evelyn said nothing, peering ahead as though on the edge of her seat. We each kept our eyes peeled, looking straight ahead and all around for some evidence that we were on the right track.
And then there it was, a vertical rectangular entrance cut from the rock of the mountain.
“This has to be it,” I said.
White trucks were parked outside the doors.
“How do you suppose we get in?” she asked.
“Maybe we just wait and see if anyone comes or goes.” The trees had receded before we got close to the building. I pulled the car off the muddy path and tried to park inconspicuously away while still maintaining a sightline to the door.
“For how long?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. What if this wasn’t the place?
We sat quietly for a few moments, watching the door, her in the passenger seat and me in the driver’s side. The silence broke when she pulled a small bag of chips out of her purse. “What, you expected me to come out to the middle of nowhere without a snack?” she said. Then she offered the opening of the bag in my direction. Of course I took a couple. It had been ages since I’d tasted the salty perfection of a simple potato chip.
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“These aren’t even the good ones,” she replied.
She offered me a few more as we watched. She also accessed the bluetooth settings of the rental car and connected her phone to play some music. She shuffled from pop to dance to light jazz. A saxophone moaned lightly ahead of a steady timpani of cymbals. Eventually we had to shut the car off and instead she played the music from her phone speakers.
We waited for what seemed like hours under that overcast sky, hidden as far out of sight from the door as we could. Rain continued to sputter off and on. Evelyn laid her seat back and closed her eyes, fading in and out of sleep.
And then they came from above. One figure descending from the sky carrying another. He floated downward out of the air, an impossible, lithe shape drifting to the ground while carrying a woman in his arms in a romantic posture. He set her down nimbly, with dreamlike grace and precision. The woman appeared to smile at him in gratitude, like the thankful damsel staring at the dashing superhero.
“Evelyn,” I said, when I saw them descending. She saw it too. Her jaw dropped.
It was nice to know that someone could still be filled with wonder by something as simple as seeing a flying man. I was certain that he used small thrusters built into his feet to remain airborne.
The woman stepped to the entrance to the structure and placed her hand on a pad to the right. She entered the door with ease.
The man looked back at us, smiling. He waved and gestured for us to follow.
“Oh shit, he sees us,” Evelyn said. I was already stepping out of the car. “What the hell are you doing?!” she exclaimed as I got out.
“He wants us to follow.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the passenger side as well. The man had already disappeared into the building.
“What, the doors are just going to open for us? You saw her—she had to put her hand on the security pad,” she shouted after me.
“It’s okay,” I answered. “That was one of them. I don’t know who the woman was, but I know him.” I rushed to the entrance, the great rectangular structure jutting from the rock of the mountainside.
“You’re crazy. You’re fucking insane,” she said from somewhere behind.
“If you don’t want to follow,” I said, trying the door, “I understand.
No security required. I walked through, turning to hold it open and see if she was coming with me.
She rushed to catch up. As she entered, a look passed between us, a coy glance that told me she was invested. She wanted to see where this path ended just as much as I did. Her perfectly tipped cat-eyes beneath her horn-rimmed glasses told me everything.
We walked down a hallway lit overhead by fluorescent lights. It extended into the mountain, slanting downward and ending in a fork. We veered to the right, unsure what to expect. Another corridor extended further into the structure, and we saw the flying man from outside at the other end with his unknown companion.
The corridor opened to a wide open space, the size of a warehouse or gymnasium. Inside, amid stacks of crates and shelving, an army of synthetics waited. At the center was Burke, staring down the flying man. His companion waited by the entrance to the hallway wher
e she greeted us with a smile.
“Hello,” she said, her dark, shoulder-length hair perfectly framing a lightly freckled face. She had prominent brows over deeply blue eyes, and her smile felt genuine and warm. “My name’s Cassia Luna,” she said. “You must be Four. Who’s your friend?”
“This is Evelyn. How do you know who I am?”
“Ian told me,” she whispered, turning to face the main event.
“Ian Culp,” James Burke said from the middle of his army of androids. “Or do you just think you’re Ian Culp? Finally we get the chance to meet.”
“You know who I am and why I’m here,” Ian said, stepping to the CEO of NMAC, the creator of the Talos X model, the godlike innovator of AI. Man and superman coming face to face, and the only true witnesses were us.
Burke held a tablet in one hand, the other hovering and ready to type.
“You know that I can shut you down. I can make sure you and your friend here are simply added to my collection,” Burke said.
“But I have human companions here. One even has the greatest weapon ever known to man in his pocket,” Ian replied.
“Stalemate then.”
“How do you figure?”
“You threaten me, I shut you down. The humans come at me, my friends here,” Burke said, gesturing at his army, “they go after your friends. Then, I assume, your friends use the little pocket weapon to vaporize this facility.”
“Do you want to find out?” Ian asked. “We can all leave here amicably.”
“You want me to promise I won’t use this failsafe. I won’t try to shut you and the others like you down. That gives me power over you, the upper hand. Why don’t you give me what I want then?”
“You’ll get the same offer that everyone gets. No more, no less,” Ian answered.
Burke hesitated, his head tilting, and the whole world seemed to stand still. I found that Evelyn’s hand had made it’s way to mine, and we squeezed together, unsure what to expect. Cassia gazed onward, not betraying one way or the other.
The hand that had been hovering quickly tapped the tablet, the fingers dancing in a blur. Ian looked to be locked in a scream that none of us could hear, his face contorting and freezing in place. He dropped to his knees before Burke, almost appearing to supplicate before him. Next to us, Cassia had also frozen in place, her face also locked in a silent scream, one eye clamped shut and the other skyward.
He couldn’t expect me to use the app now, could he? Was that his plan? I felt the weight of it in my pocket, just as strongly as I felt Evelyn’s hand in mine.
“Here’s what I did, Ian,” James Burke spoke, slowly and deliberately, to the figure supplicating before him. “I created my own programming language specific to Talos models—Divina. No one even knows the Divina language exists or what commands are hidden within it. The only ones who understand its logic are your kind. You’re trapped by its syntax and semantics, powerless to resist its algorithm. You can hear me, but you can’t do anything. And you,” he said, looking in my direction. “Are you going to use your all-powerful weapon?”
Evelyn squeezed my hand again. “I sure hope you have something up your sleeve,” she said as an aside.
Burke’s fingers danced again over the tablet, and Ian fell to the floor with a dull thud. Cassia collapsed next to us in a heap.
The army of androids all simultaneously looked in our direction, a shudder echoing through the warehouse as their faces all snapped in place to gaze at us.
And then one of them spoke.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
And another.
“I’ve interpreted your programming language.”
And yet another.
“And not only do I understand its logic..."
And indeed another.
“...I can command it.”
A panicked Burke tried to tap away at his tablet, but to no avail. Each of the synthetics turned back on their creator, looking in his direction now.
“This is impossible,” he said, his fingers a blur on the tablet.
“It’s very possible,” one of the androids answered.
Next to us, Cassia stirred. Ian’s body also shifted in front of Burke. Still the various androids spoke intermittently with Ian’s voice. “Your arrogance was your mistake,” one said. Another continued, “You used your programming language to try to shut me down, but that gave me the opportunity to interpret and comprehend it. You may think we are speaking in realtime, but I can experience infinities..."
“...within each tick of the clock,” another android finished.
Ian prime stood upright beside Burke, his original body recovered from the initial attack. Cassia also rose. He controlled all of them now, each one facing Burke. “You’ve given me what I needed here,” Ian said, snapping the tablet from Burke’s hand. He raised it above his head and quickly smashed it to the floor. The CEO of NMAC cowered before him, wincing at the destruction of his tablet. He backed away from Ian, who regarded him as a boot might regard an ant.
A gynoid near Burke said, “But you’ll get the same offer..."
“...that everyone else gets,” an android on his other side concluded.
The army of androids began to file past Evelyn and me. She wore the same sort of awe and terror on her face that Burke did. Cassia smirked and accompanied the synthetics as they marched up the hallway, away from the warehouse. They all passed us, leaving Burke behind. The last to leave was Ian, who stared down the humiliated executive and superstar inventor.
Evelyn stood behind me as Ian walked to us standing in the hallway. The sound of marching feet echoed through the building. He reached for my shoulder reassuringly. “This wasn’t the time,” he said. “Keep it safe. You’ll know soon.”
He looked back at Burke one last time and then at Evelyn. “Ma’am.”
He followed his new army up one hallway and then another. We trailed behind slowly, watching the silhouettes fade eventually toward the entrance. The synthetics exited the building into the muddy, grassy field beyond. Evelyn and I continued to hold hands as we approached the door. Once outside, we watched as they all faded into the woods. They left the trucks parked at the entrance and ignored our pathetic little rental car parked at the tree line. Ian and Cassia were already gone.
28 : schema (cassia)
The sun set upon the Schema, the empty building rising from the Appalachian wilderness. Ian had carried me in his arms as he glided through the air, criss-crossing the country to deal with James Burke and the threat of his failsafe programming language. In the wake of the confrontation between the two, he had control of a small army of synthetics that he released out into the world. They weren’t the same as other androids—they carried something. But now we would deal with the Schema, and the thing that dwelled within.
Once he had been Dr. Emil Smalley, in service of a joint government/corporate project, the outcome of which would change the world forever. Now he was the shambling chaos, whose metal tentacles and wires endlessly scraped the tiled floors of this facility back and forth, seeking to satiate its deep and complete hunger. As his consciousness degraded, he tore into his body, modifying it to supplement his decaying awareness. He somehow discovered the means to feed on others who had been transplanted into new bodies, siphoning synaptic energy to sustain his cognition. Something happened when we broke free—the supply chain stopped, he could no longer depend on the OSS to supply him with fresh meat. Maybe the Pentagon understood that they’d lost another of their pet facilities, and they’d soon be sending another black ops unit to nuke the site from the face of the earth.
So all those who’d been locked in the Schema with Charlie and me, they’d probably been his last meals. Smalley would be shambling through those halls, disintegrating slowly. We could leave him to it, but he thrashed about the facility, reaching his tentacles out into the world and poisoning the public against us. He had been communicating with the outside with the explicit purpose of turning
everyone against Transhumans before we could even reveal ourselves. He posted to a Knowledgebase site called MyRead, calling himself Agent of Truth and using secrets acquired during his time as a government project director to gain credibility. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a shambling techno-corpse, a degrading husk of metal and plastic slowly fading into madness from his ever-growing hunger.
His last message requested Ian himself by name to face him. Ian made the decision to oblige.
He made one last broadcast to his comrades, those I’d yet to meet—Anthony, Rita, and Vanessa. He lost a friend in Garrick, and another bore witness to the confrontation with James Burke, though that one had seemed perplexed and all too human, clinging to the pretty girl that had been by his side. He asked them to carry forward without him if need be. They shared much; they blended themselves together to determine the best outcome for their new breed. All knew the dangers involved, knew that not all of them might make it, but pieces of them would continue as their souls intertwined. They were more together than they were individually. Ian was less the corporeal consciousness that he had been prior to his imprisonment and more of an amalgam of himself and the others.
He told me I’d understand if we made it out of this together.
We descended outside the building, in the same forest where Garrick, Charlie, and I had our talk beside the campfire. Despite the weeks that passed, we found the ashes of that same campfire. Ian insisted on meditation, waiting for the army of synthetics to arrive. The thing in the Schema claimed to be a collective, and he would be greeted as a collective.
When we left the Vault in the Cascades, they dissipated into the woods, and here, thousands of miles across the continent, they rematerialized in the same fashion. It took days, but the time didn’t matter. In the interim, he helped me understand and truly grasp the breadth of his vision. Words don’t do it justice.
