by A. G. Riddle
The Citium Security operatives exchanged glances, but no one moved.
Slowly, Lin paced closer to Yuri and Conner.
Desmond opened his eyes.
“Des,” Peyton whispered.
He tried to sit up, but fell back to the cot. He was groggy—as he had been when he had recovered his memories. He lifted his head toward Peyton, huddled over Avery, then looked past them to where Conner struggled with Yuri, Lin cautiously moving toward them. He must have seen the troops next, because his eyes went wide. He struggled and was finally able to sit up and swing his legs off the side of the cot.
His voice was hoarse and faint. “Conner.”
His brother turned his head. At the same moment, Yuri’s gun hand broke free, and Yuri aimed at Desmond.
For the second time, Conner was quicker. But this time, he was unable to redirect Yuri’s shot.
He could only step in the way of it.
Desmond’s scream rattled Peyton to her core. It was almost inhuman, a mix of rage and shock and pain. The look on his face broke her heart.
Chapter 83
The gunshot went right through Conner, shattering another pane of glass in the rotunda. The flow of cold air increased. Glass fell on the ice floor, the impacts like the sound of wind chimes. A streak of blood painted the Rendition server. Conner’s blood. But he hung on to Yuri, both hands now gripping the older man’s arms, struggling, wrestling, blood pouring down his back.
Peyton rose, but stopped. A Citium Security operative raised his gun and shook his head, silently warning her.
Desmond staggered toward his brother, who was on top of Yuri now, using his last bit of strength to pin him to the ground.
Lin Shaw got there first. In a quick motion, she drew a gun from her parka and fired at point blank range.
Yuri’s limp body fell to the ice.
Conner looked back at her in horror.
Desmond reached his brother a second later and pulled him off of Yuri, into his arms.
Peyton saw the wound then. The bullet had pierced Conner’s neck and passed through his carotid artery. Blood was gushing freely. He wouldn’t last long.
Desmond must have realized this as well. He sat on the ice floor, his brother in his arms, tears rolling down his face. “I’m sorry, Conner. I’m so sorry.”
Conner said something Peyton couldn’t make out. Then his shoulders sagged and his hands fell to the ice. Desmond bowed his head and closed his eyes.
“Desmond,” Lin said.
He looked up, eyes filled with tears.
“Finish it.”
He looked confused.
She pointed to the open suitcase, the one she had used to upload Rendition.
“That terminal has root access.”
The words seemed to mean something to Desmond. He nodded. Gently, he placed his brother’s head on the floor and began moving toward the suitcase.
Around the room, the troops raised their rifles and trained their laser sights on him.
Chapter 84
Desmond stopped and held up his hands. A cold wind was blowing through the gaps in the rotunda’s glass ceiling, and his breath came out in white steam as he looked around at the soldiers.
The Rendition programmers were starting to stir and sit up on the cots. The soldiers took aim at them as well.
“Stand down,” Lin called out. “Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that Desmond and I are the last remaining members of the Citium. If you’ll recall, Yuri reinstated me before his death.”
The troops looked confused, but they didn’t budge. Most looked to the colonel.
Lin addressed him. “Colonel, this is the only play. The only way out for all of us.”
He grimaced, but said, “Stand down.”
The troops lowered the rifles, and Desmond raced to the suitcase terminal. It had full access to Rendition—which made sense, since it had uploaded and created the instance. He opened the archives and stared in shock. Over two hundred million lives. All of them now living in the virtual-reality space he had created. Rendition.
The Rapture backups for Citium personnel were stored in a protected area that only Desmond had the password to. He entered it and scanned the log. Last backup was ten hours ago. Both Yuri and Conner had been mapped.
He clicked Yuri’s name, and a listing of all of his Rapture backups appeared—going back almost ten years, to when the technology was still being tested. He selected all of them. And clicked delete. He had to verify the command twice and re-enter his password. He pressed ENTER—and Yuri was gone forever.
In the real world, Lin had taken his life—avenging her husband and son.
Inside the Looking Glass, Desmond had ensured Yuri would never live again, never enjoy the machine he had killed so many to create.
Desmond nodded at Lin. She took the sat phone from Yuri’s pocket and dialed the last number called.
“Miss Whitmeyer, it’s Lin Shaw. We’ve had an unfortunate accident here. Yuri is dead. As is Conner. Desmond and I are the last living members of the Citium.”
A pause.
“Yes, of course.”
Lin handed the phone to the colonel. He listened for a moment. “Confirmed. My authorization code is Jackson-Auth-Delta-India-Romeo-Victor-X-ray-39382.”
He listened, nodded, and handed the phone back to Lin.
“Miss Whitmeyer,” said Lin, “give me a status update.” She paused to listen. “Good. Your first priority is to ensure that the Looking Glass remains running. Second, you are to stop all transfers immediately—including any actions being taken or scheduled to proceed against government officials or individuals deemed enemies of the Citium.”
Desmond was suddenly aware of the pain from the knife wound in his ribs. But he had a more urgent matter to attend to. He walked over to Peyton and Avery, whose breathing was shallow. The pool of blood was massive. Too big.
Peyton met his eyes. “She needs an OR. And blood. Right now. In the construction habitat—”
“I’ve got something better.” To the colonel, Desmond said, “We need to get this woman back to the plane and over to McMurdo Station.”
Chapter 85
Desmond was still sore from the brief operation. The anesthesia had worn off, but the bandage on his side itched.
He and Peyton sat in the waiting room at McMurdo General Hospital, the largest medical facility in Antarctica. It was part of McMurdo Station, a research center operated by the United States. The base was home to nearly eight hundred people, and they were in near-constant danger. McMurdo General had seen more than its share of trauma wounds, and the doctors had impressed Desmond as capable.
He just hoped they had gotten Avery there in time. Upon seeing her, the surgeon had looked grim. He had given no reply when Desmond asked if they could save her.
Peyton stood. “Want some coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Still drink it black?”
“Yeah.”
“Cream and sugar hard to come by on remote oil rigs?”
He laughed, feeling some of the nervous tension flowing out of him. “You could say that.”
When Peyton returned, they sat in silence, sipping their coffee. His thoughts wandered, and finally she said, “Sorry about your brother.”
He glanced over at her, but she didn’t make eye contact. “Me too. And I’m sorry for what he did. He was… a very troubled person. Still a boy in so many ways. One who… who never got to grow up. Or know love.”
“Until he met you,” Peyton said quietly.
“It was too late then. Our world was not for him. But he’s in a better place now.”
Peyton looked at him. “The Looking Glass.”
He nodded.
“My mother completed it. She betrayed us.”
“She protected us. It was the only way. She told us that the Looking Glass was inevitable. That the only thing that could change was who controlled it.”
“And now she does.”
“We do
,” Desmond said.
“And what does that mean? For the rest of the world?”
“It means things will change—but we decide when and how. Not Yuri. Or Conner. Or bureaucrats or politicians.”
Peyton took another sip of coffee.
“I saw him, Peyton. In the Looking Glass. Your father. He’s there, waiting.”
She squinted at him. “How?”
“Yuri scanned him before he died.”
She rubbed her temples. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
Desmond leaned closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him and let her head rest on his chest, just below his chin.
“Don’t worry. He has all the time in the world,” he whispered.
He had waited for this moment for a very long time. He had never been so sure of anything in his life. “But we don’t.”
Peyton didn’t move, but her breathing accelerated.
“Des, I know… you care about her.”
There was no question who the her was. The door to the OR was only a few feet away, and it loomed like a third presence in the room.
“I do love her. She was there for me—we were there for each other—at a time when we needed one another. She’ll always have a special place in my heart. But I didn’t love her the way I loved you.”
Peyton’s chest was heaving now. She sat up and looked at him.
“The way I still love you.” He couldn’t keep the emotion out of his voice, and he didn’t care. “I created it for you—the Looking Glass. I wanted to fix myself and go back and do things differently. I want to start over.”
She took his face in her hands. “I told you before: you don’t need fixing. And we don’t need a machine to start over. All we need is each other.”
Epilogue
The twenty middle schoolers sprinted back and forth on the tennis court, some panting, all sweating through their clothes. Avery checked her watch and blew the whistle. As they were packing up, she called to them, “Remember, tournament next week. Bring your A-game.”
They waved to her and taunted each other as they walked to the bus stop.
The tennis courts were located in Washington Highlands, a rough, low-income neighborhood in the nation’s capital. That was what had drawn Avery to it—and why she stayed in her car after practice and watched to make sure every one of her kids got on the bus safely.
Back at her apartment in Arlington, she showered and plopped down on the couch, a towel still wrapped around her hair. The scar from the chest wound was still red and gnarly. The surgeon had told her that she would likely be a little self-conscious in a bathing suit for a while, but she knew she wouldn’t. She had a good story to go along with the scar.
She stretched out on the couch, opened the Rendition Games app on her phone, and typed in her pass code.
The apartment faded away, replaced by her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house. It was well lit, the midday sun blazing through the large double-hung windows. Grass spread out for about an acre around the farmhouse, and beyond it, a soybean field stretched as far as the eye could see. It was slowly disappearing, being mowed down in neat rows as her father crossed back and forth in his new John Deere combine.
As she watched, the giant machine came to a halt, the door swung open, and her father got out and sauntered toward the house.
Avery descended the straight staircase, following the smell of chicken and mashed potatoes. Her dad had always been the meat-and-potatoes type, and her mother had always obliged. She smiled at Avery when she entered the kitchen.
“Hi, honey. Did you get a nap?”
“Nah, just read.”
“You need your rest, sweetie. Are you going back tomorrow?”
Avery poured three glasses of tea and set the small breakfast table. “Figured I’d leave Tuesday morning. First class isn’t until that afternoon.”
Her mother beamed as she set down the mashed potatoes. “Wonderful.”
The door swung open and her father took off his volunteer fire department cap. “What’s wonderful?”
“Avery’s staying until Tuesday.”
“Well, I’m going back with you,” he said as he sat down. “I need to get a PhD in computer programming to run that blasted machine.”
“It’s not that bad,” Avery said.
“You try going from the horse-and-buggy days to driving a spaceship, young lady.”
Avery laughed. “You’re not that old, Dad.”
“Well maybe my brain just ain’t as sharp as all these other folks.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your brain, honey.” Her mother reached out and grasped both of their hands, and Avery’s father said grace.
“I tell you this, this ole farmer has had about all the change and progress he can stand.”
Avery took a bite of chicken. It was delicious. “Oh, Dad. I think you can relax. I have a feeling things are going to stay the same for quite a while.”
An Army major escorted Desmond through the halls of the Pentagon to an auditorium. The seats were filled with flag officers, cabinet secretaries, and intelligence officials. The vice president, Speaker of the House, and president pro tempore of the Senate sat in the first row.
The president and his secretary of defense waited by the dais. When Desmond joined them, the president stepped to the microphone.
“Our guest requires no introduction. You’ve read Agent Price’s report and the recommendations from the Rubicon Group. I’ve met at length with Mr. Hughes over the last few days. Listen to what he has to say. Ask questions—tough ones, because I know you’ll have them. And keep an open mind. We’re here to figure out how we can work together. Because we have to.”
He stepped aside, and Desmond took his place. Desmond cleared his throat and looked out at the faces. He saw skepticism. Aggression. And here and there, curiosity. It was going to be a tough crowd.
“Since the beginning of time, we have been at the mercy of our environment. Hurricanes. Floods. Famine. Drought. Disease. And in the last few decades, we have increasingly been a victim of another force: our own creations. War. Nuclear weapons. Environmental pollution. In the coming years, those creations will only become more powerful. This place,” Desmond motioned to the Pentagon, “was built to fight an older kind of enemy. Other nations. Armies. Not a poor kid in an impoverished corner of the world who creates a bioweapon and gets on a plane. Not the radicalized PhD student who decides to build a dozen nuclear bombs and put them in suitcases and get on a boat. And those are just the scenarios I can imagine.”
He took out a sheet of paper. “Here’s what some of the techies who work for me said might be in store for us. Drones that can control the weather. A computer virus that kills every computer in the world, like digital locusts. A machine capable of digging into the ground at the tectonic plates and causing earthquakes and tsunamis.” Desmond squinted at the page. “Okay, this is a little out there, but a virus that decreases intelligence in every population around the world except for those pre-treated with a vaccine via drinking water. Such a novel gene therapy would render everyone outside the perpetrating group subhuman, subservient to the remaining humans with normal intelligence.”
The group was starting to whisper among themselves. Some were taking notes.
“And here are a few scenarios I’m sure you’ve thought of. A robot that costs what an average worker earns in a week, can operate on solar power, and will work twenty-four hours a day for decades without replacement or even maintenance. Such a device will make ninety percent of the world’s manual laborers unemployable. And if you outlaw it here, the countries that don’t outlaw it will become the manufacturing hubs of the world. If you ban trade with those countries, the countries who don’t will enjoy a huge economic advantage.
“And finally, an artificial intelligence capable of doing over half of the work in the world: technical support, data entry, simple medical diagnoses, routine legal work like wills and real estate, and
accounting. This would be a world built by humans—but with very little need for human bodies or human minds within it. This is the world that is coming. And the transition to that world will be a very painful journey.”
Desmond took the bottle of water from the dais and sipped, letting his words sink in. “What we offer is a way to prevent these catastrophes—both natural and man-made. A way to model scenarios and understand the future. A way to identify, via their brain activity, those who would do others harm—and stop them instantaneously. But our solution is much more than that. It is the key to a new kind of existence. And it is already here, inside each of you, and me.
“I’m here today to ask for peace. The Citium is not your enemy. We are simply here to help. We want to work together. But I warn you, we want a peaceful, kind world, and we’ll have it—with or without your help.”
Desmond let the words hang in the air. “Any questions?”
One of the generals snarled. “You’re asking us to surrender?”
“No. You only surrender to your enemies.”
He rolled his eyes. “Put it this way: you want control, don’t you? Of us, hell, of the whole world.”
“I don’t. Believe me, it’s the last thing I want. What we demand is very simple: we want the human race to stop killing each other.”
After the meeting, Desmond returned to his office, stretched out in a zero-gravity chair, and activated the Rendition Games app.
When the scene came into focus, he was in the living room of his childhood home. The walls were as they had been—unburned. In this Rendition, the Ash Wednesday bushfires had never occurred.
A face peeked through the wide opening and smiled. “Where you been?”
“Meetings,” Desmond muttered.
He got up and hugged his brother. Conner’s grin reached toward his ears, tugging at the smooth, recently shaved face, with no scars or burn marks.
“Who?” he asked.
“Generals and politicians.”
“You should stay here.”
