Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3

by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  A smile cracked through his frustrated exterior. Like father, like daughter. Eliza didn’t need to tell the crowd anything else. True to her instructions before leaving to speak to the androids, most of their belongings were packed and ready to go. The rest of the hour was spent preparing. Every person was led to take one last hot shower before their departure and any medical needs attended to. The work was done mostly in silence; the people who had volunteered to come with us had been through too much. No amount of loyalty was worth keeping themselves away from their families for a single moment longer. This was the best way forward for them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The androids allowed the four of us to accompany the group on their way. When the time came to say goodbye, Alan turned to me. “You’ve got to keep them safe, Fiona. Your Dad has done more for us than you know. I know things are in the shit, but please--do what you can.”

  I gave him a fierce hug. “I will. You know I will. Say hello to the folks at home for me, all right? Make sure they know that it’s going to be okay.”

  The ninety-six colonists who had set out to discover the possibility of salvation now returned to the fledgling colony. Though the journey would only take a few days, they were bringing back information that would change the course of humanity. Before the group departed, I sat down with Alan and made him practice what to relay back to Jason and Nicole.

  “They’re going to kill him.” Alan opened his mouth to protest but I held up a hand. “No, Alan. I’m not assuming. I know. Eleanor practically let it slip while Eliza and I spoke with her. Now we’re going to do our absolute best to not allow that to happen but you must tell the others. Our survival inside these walls has only been allowed so that the androids can learn more about us. It was necessary for us to give them access to our tablets; there was no other way for me to get some kind of word back to the colony. In doing so, I’m sure they’ve run through every last bit and byte of data.”

  “Then we’re fucked, aren’t we.” He wasn’t afraid. It was a statement of fact.

  “Not yet. I have a feeling that the peace will last as long as they have Dad. Once he’s gone, I’m not sure what they’re going to do with the rest of us. We already know that there are people here willing to commit atrocities. No matter how our allies wish to forge a co-existence, I know the score. When you get back, get everyone ready. Get weapons manufacturing running if you can. Find out if they’re telling us the truth or, more likely, if they’re full of shit.”

  “Jesus Fiona, you sound like we’re going to war with these machines.” He was right. No matter if they killed my father or not, or if our family made it out of the machine city alive, the androids knew that humanity had gained a foothold on the surface. This wasn’t about Gabriel. If it was, they would have shot Dad the minute they could confirm his identity. The animalistic murder of a human whose only crime was going outside went beyond simple revenge. No, these people hated us. With luck, they would leave us alone; humanity alone posed no threat to them. Short of more humans appearing from nowhere, we would face annihilation should the androids decide to wipe us out.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but our first duty is to those people. You know that Eliza and I would gladly lay down our lives for them, and we will do so here if necessary. Until we can return home, I’m trusting you to take our place. Talk to Jason and Nicole. Tell them everything that happened here.” There was no need to say the last part. If we don’t come back...

  “Okay.” He gave me a fierce hug and turned to join the group, rapidly disappearing into the sunset.

  The four of us walked back to our quarters in silence. Eliza put her arm around me and squeezed. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “We’re going to get out of here. All of us.” How badly I wished she was right.

  Dad behaved himself right up until the doors clicked shut. In that moment, all the anger, rage, and frustration of the entire ordeal spilled forth. He roared and charged at Eliza. As if she anticipated the move, she deftly sidestepped his attack and he skidded past. By the time he turned around Marcus moved to block his path. He scooped his arms under Dad’s armpits and threw him to the floor. Marcus planted a boot on his grandfather’s chest.

  “Stay down.”

  “Fuck you.” Dad spat. Marcus put more of his weight into his foot, making Dad wince.

  “Stay down or I’ll put you down.” Marcus’s eyes were full of consternation. It was a horrible position to put our child in, an enforcer against his own family. Until we could get Dad under control it was a necessary evil. A stream of cursing spilled from him, expletives mixed with cries of anguish. My father was a smart man. He knew the score. He knew what had to happen. There were no other options. It was understandable that he was struggling with it.

  “Let him up, Marcus.” Eliza patted him on the shoulder. “If he tries to pull that shit again, you have my full permission to knock him out.” Dad pushed himself up from the floor and stalked past Eliza, spitting at her feet.

  “Do you want me to tell him what for?” I embraced her. She smelled of adrenaline and stress. I ached to protect her, but she would

  “He’s being a child,” she grumbled. She was right. For all his noble gestures this behavior was beyond childish. Fear was understandable, even frustration. But outright defiance was more likely to get him killed along with the rest of us. I had to find a way to get him in line. The man had caused enough trouble as it was.

  “Hey, Daddo.” I found him at his cot, busily rearranging the contents of his duffle bag. He grunted at me and didn’t look up. “You wanna talk about it?”

  “That wife of yours is something else, you know that?” He zipped his bag shut and dropped it to the floor. “Treating me like a goddamn child when I’ve been through more than any of you.”

  “You want to talk or you want to bitch?” I wanted to sympathize with him, I really did, but we were all tired. Yes, he had done a great service for us, but the last time I checked the man hadn’t stayed up for days on end devising a damn genetic editing program to keep a thousand people from starving to death. “I get that you’re angry, and I understand why you might be scared, but you need to get your shit together, all right?”

  “I’m not scared.” Dad glared at me.

  “Yeah?” I grabbed his chin with my hand and held his head steady. “You sure about that? Because you sure as shit look scared to me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’re not the only one here. You have a thousand others counting on you and we cannot—will not—let you fall apart over this!” In that moment, he looked old, older than I had ever seen him before. The man had been through more in his life than I could ever experience, and in a perfect world I could cut him some slack. As nice as that would be, we weren’t there.

  “I’m not scared, Fiona.” He removed my hand from his chin and placed it gently at my side. “I’m fucking terrified. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in this place for me? To be surrounded by the very image of the man I killed? It feels like they can see into my soul. Every time I look at one of them it’s like Gabriel is right in front of me, laughing, mocking me. Every single one of these androids is a slap to the face. A confirmation that I killed a thinking, living thing. You haven’t got the remotest idea of what that feels like.”

  “No, I don’t.” The rage I felt at his insubordination evaporated, replaced with sadness. Jacob Alvaro was the most hardworking person I had ever seen. Every decision he made was with the greater good in mind. As foolish as his outburst was, facing off against him wasn’t going to do any good. “I’m sorry, Dad. Look. We all want to get through this together. We’ve always been able to figure out the problems. But I need you to get it together for me. You realize that you just made Eliza look like a fool?”

  He blinked.

  “No. no I had not. Shit.” He turned to approach her but I held him fast. “I should go apologize to her, shouldn’t I?”

  “You should, but not right now. Otherwise it’s go
ing to look like she sent me after you. Right now, you’re going to go ask her what she needs of you. Then you will treat her with the utmost courtesy and respect until the androids either execute us all or we walk out of this place. Understood?”

  He nodded tersely.

  “Then you’re going to give me a hug like we just had a nice chat as father and daughter and no more of this stuff, right?”

  “Mhmm.”

  We waited on tenterhooks for the androids next command, but no such instructions came. Eventually exhaustion overcame us and we settled into an uneasy sleep. I was jerked awake a few hours later later by Eliza. Thinking we were under attack, I launched myself out of bed. My eyes focused on a group of androids flanking Eliza and Dad. Their eyes were trained on me, fists halfway raised as they expected an attack. “Sorry.” I backed up with my hands raised. “You startled me, is all.”

  “They’re here, honey.” Eliza kept a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

  “In the middle of the night?” It felt like my words were coming out in a slur. I shook my head to clear the last of the sleep from my mind.

  “Believe it or not, it’s morning. Come on, grab an extra layer and let’s get going.” Only a few other people raised their heads off their pillows as we left. A thought flitted through my mind that we should have left someone in charge, but the chances of anyone breaking the androids’ mandate were slim. I could see my breath in the early morning air, the fog leaving minuscule clouds that hung in front of me for a moment before disappearing. No one spoke. Something told me that long conversations weren’t the norm for the androids; I wasn’t even sure that they spoke out loud unless it was absolutely necessary. Our escorts brought us back to the mysterious building we visited the day before. They opened the doors into a large auditorium with a central podium. Above the speaker’s platform hung a plaque in the shape of a map, the continents of the planet mounted against lines indicating longitude and latitude. Dad snorted.

  “I’ve seen this place before.”

  I had too. There was a similar structure in the virtual world. A central courthouse of sorts where offenders were brought to plead their case. Dad had never been there. Gabriel must have taken his inspiration from a movie that Dad had seen. Seated at chairs on either side of the podium were two lines of androids, their hands folded in their laps. A single figure stood at the podium, her bright eyes shining through the dim light. Eliza and I inclined our heads out of respect, but my father looked like an animal being led into a cage.

  “Jacob Alvaro, you are here to stand trial for the murder of the artificial intelligence known as Gabriel. Much like the laws set forth by your shelter’s founders, murder is a serious offense. You will be given the opportunity to choose your own representative and produce evidence. If you are convicted, you will be punished according to our laws.”

  “I understand.” It wasn’t as if he had any other choice.

  “I will represent the accused.” Eliza stepped forward before my father could say another word. He opened his mouth and closed it again. If we hadn’t been facing down the prospect of a horrific death I would have laughed. She had the chance to play lawyer in the virtual world when Dad has been locked in that psych hospital. Now she had no other choice but to become one for the man whose fate we all depended on.

  “Very well. You may have thirty minutes to prepare your opening statement.”

  “We’re having the trial? Right now?” I blurted out the words without thinking. This was setting us up for failure. Not only had our sleep interrupted, but we hadn’t eaten, showered, or dressed. Even Eliza wouldn’t be able to pull this off without the opportunity to fuel her body and her mind. We were offered a small waiting area with a minimum of refreshments and water offered. While Dad chugged down a bottle’s worth, Eliza dumped a little in her palm and ran it through her short hair. She used the remainder to wash her face. I sifted through the offered food. It was a decidedly more stark spread thank the banquet offered to us the afternoon before. There were a few protein bars, a smattering of fruit, and something unidentifiable. I took the protein bars in hand and offered one each to Eliza and my father. The things tasted disgusting. Given the androids’ manufacturing capabilities, this was a clear ‘fuck you.’

  “Listen here, Jacob Alvaro. You have,” she checked her tablet. “Twenty one minutes to convince me that you covered your ass in killing that homicidal psycho otherwise we’re all fucked.”

  “For fuck’s sake Eliza, you know damn well I had no other choice with Gabriel.”

  “I don’t know a damn thing, Jacob. You seem to forget that I wasn’t there when you stabbed a man in the neck. Was there really no other option?”

  “...there might have been.” Dad looked down. “I didn’t see any other way for us to leave the shelter. He was going to kill me, Eliza.”

  “All right.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “All right, I figure that we can use that.”

  “Don’t forget the fact that he murdered something like two hundred people. Two hundred gravely ill people. Surely the senseless murder of humans can’t be something these people condone.” For all I knew, I was talking out of my ass, but it was worth a shot. It seemed like there were at least a few androids who didn’t agree with the wholesale slaughter of humans. We might be able to do something about that.

  “Somehow I don’t think any argument is going to make a whit of difference. Let’s just go in there and deal with it as things come. It’s the only thing we can do, really.” That was quite a turnaround from his anger the day before. It would be a relief if it didn’t meant that the fight was gone from him at a moment when we needed it most.

  A knock at the door sounded. It was Tenzen.

  “It’s time.” He held the door open. Dad was the first one to leave, followed by Eliza and Marcus. “For what it’s worth, Ms. Alvaro, I am sorry for the circumstances you’ve found yourself in. Regardless of my opinions about your species, I understand that the prospect of losing your father is difficult.” I wasn’t sure whether to hit him or thank him so I simply nodded and followed the rest of my family. Marcus and I were directed to seats in the audience of the auditorium, right behind the table where Eliza and Dad sat. About a dozen androids filed in behind us, taking places far away from us in the shadows. An android ‘prosecutor’ took her place at a table across the aisle. Eleanor, Tenzen, Zohei, and three others took their places at the head of the auditorium.

  “We are here today to discuss the murder of one of our own.”

  And so it began.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “The man who sits before you is Jacob Alvaro. Until recently he shared shelter 10091 with the A.I. ‘Gabriel.’ After a series of events Mr. Alvaro saw fit to end Gabriel’s life without other recourse. As with human society, the punishment for this crime must be fierce. The defendant will now make an argument as to why he should be allowed to leave our city freely.” Eleanor made the pronouncement without visible emotion. I couldn’t be sure if that was a reflection of solemnity or a tactic designed to confuse our primitive minds; without facial expressions or vocal queues it was ten times harder to discern the underlying tenor of the whole thing.

  Eliza cleared her throat and stood, smoothing down her shirt and squaring her shoulders. “My name is Eliza Ivanov. I am the daughter-in-law of Jacob Alvaro and I have volunteered to represent him, having extensive knowledge of the events that transpired myself. I would like to begin by saying that I met Gabriel after he forcibly commandeered one of our people. He took over a man’s mind and body against his consent and proceeded to use that body to accomplish his own ends before forcing Jacob to end an innocent man’s life.”

  Murmuring from the androids. Clearly the issue of consent was something the A.I.s valued. “I’d like to continue by telling the whole story, if I may.” Eliza waited for Eleanor’s response patiently. I watched Dad shift around in his seat. I could only imagine the torture he was going through, knowing he had to keep his mouth shut.

>   “You may continue.”

  And so Eliza went recounted the entire ordeal, from the moment Dad appeared in the virtual world. She painted a picture of a man desperate to save his family from certain death, his only motivations the selfless defense of a thousand people. She recounted Gabriel’s countless manipulations and threats, making it obvious that the A.I. had suffered a critical breakdown in judgment without insulting his personhood. It was impressive. My wife was known best for her bluntness and honesty, but somehow she pulled an untold eloquence out of thin air. I had to hand it to her.

  The ‘prosecutor’ politely kept her opinion to herself through the explanation. When Eliza was finished, she was given the floor. Instead of speaking English, the android opened her mouth and let out a stream of machine-speak so arduous I had to cover my ears. No doubt it was more efficient to relay information in their own language, even if it was rude to the humans.

  “My esteemed colleague would like to point out that you are flawed animals, capable of misunderstanding on a level that no android could conceive of. She suggests that your father-in-law has greatly exaggerated or outright lied about the circumstances of Gabriel’s demise.” Eleanor accompanied this with a slight tilt of the head, a subtle punctuation that she agreed with the prosecutor.

  “Your esteemed colleague can kiss my—“ Dad yelped as Eliza stomped on his instep.

  “What my client means to say is that he is certain of his version of events. He is well aware that perjury in this room would undermine his wishes to return to his home.” Eliza kept her gaze forward but I could see her muscles coiled from where I sat. There were no more comments from Dad.