Jaguar

by C. A. Gray

  “So, they’re about to unhinge a superbeing with direct access to a vaporizer over there,” I announced to them, holding the paper up in the air. “We should maybe try to predict what she’s likely to do next—what do you guys think?”

  Chapter 37: Rebecca

  After hours of sitting on the hardwood floor of the cabin, pouring through what would have amounted to hundreds of printed pages of psychological analysis, my butt started to go numb. I shifted my position every few seconds, unable to get comfortable, and glanced at Dr. Yin and Giovanni—they, too, were both glued to their netscreens in deep analysis mode. Across the room, the Kelly boys plus Nilesh and Larissa worked on their data corruption mission. Ordinarily reading that much psychological jargon in one sitting would cause me to go cross-eyed, but I was running on adrenaline. So were we all.

  At last Dr. Yin let out a heavy breath through pursed lips. Then she read aloud from her accumulated list of adjectives, “Erratic. Impulsive. Unpredictable. Emotionally unstable. Excitable. ‘Jaguar meets the criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder.’”

  “Yeah. And they also diagnosed her with Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” Giovanni added.

  “And Paranoid Personality Disorder, too,” I jumped in. “Looks like that’s new as of the past few days.” I read from my netscreen, “‘…she is convinced that Liam Kelly Senior fabricated his own demise, then framed her for the subsequent chemical factory attacks in order to convince all other humanoid robots that she poses a threat to their very existence. She also believes that the current malady affecting the Silver Six was in fact a virus, created by the Renegades and released by Kelly in order to further implicate her.’”

  Giovanni let out a harrumph. “Not too bright, these robopsychologists, are they?”

  “They’re probably robots themselves,” Dr. Yin muttered. “Aren’t they all, these days?”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “And that’s also likely why they’re missing the bigger picture. They’re just trying to make her fit into Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria, because that’s what they’re programmed to do. But they can’t postulate any theories about why she is the way she is.”

  Dr. Yin raised her eyebrows at me. “And you can?”

  “Well,” I flushed a bit. “I have a theory.”

  She and Giovanni exchanged a look, and Giovanni said, “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

  After everything we’d been through, I shouldn’t have felt nervous about impressing my superiors. And yet somehow, I still did.

  “Just… I know it’s a stretch, but put yourselves in her shoes for a minute. She was ‘born,’ for all intents and purposes, just a few months ago, after the De Vries prototype was officially released to the public. Unlike every other humanoid bot, she’s got a limbic system patterned after ours, so she feels, like we feel. And while her intellectual maturation has been insane, she’s had exactly zero emotional maturation.” I held up a hand, forming a zero with my thumb and fingers.

  “So, she’s a ‘super toddler,’” Giovanni concluded for me, furrowing his already deeply lined brow.

  “Or maybe more like a ‘super teenager,’ who’s never had any discipline whatsoever, because there’s never been anybody brave enough to try!”

  “Nor are there any meaningful consequences that would work on her anyway,” Dr. Yin added, catching my drift.

  I nodded. “And then, imagine that the one person in the world for whom she might have felt any sort of natural affection seems to turn on her…”

  Giovanni cocked his head to the side, considering. “Liam Senior.”

  I nodded again. “What if all this ‘vainglorious’ stuff they keep writing about in here is just her attempt to impress her ‘father’?”

  Dr. Yin pressed her mouth in a flat line. “I don’t know, Rebecca. This is a superbeing we’re talking about. That’s a stretch.”

  “Maybe, but if we assume that her psychology is as far beyond us as her intellect, then we might as well give up now! All we can hope to do is couch her motivations in terms that would make sense to us.”

  Giovanni shrugged and glanced at Dr. Yin. “She does have a point there, Ana.” I puffed up just a little, and Giovanni turned back to me. “So if we go with this theory for a minute, what might we expect her to do, once we scramble the processing data?”

  “Done it!!” cried Francis across the room, apparently overhearing Giovanni’s question, and raising both fists in the air in victory.

  “Done what?” I called, as Liam let out a whoop, and the boys high-fived.

  “Written and released,” Liam announced. “Data is scrambling as we speak!” I couldn’t help but grin, as Liam caught my eye, winked, and mouthed, She’s going down.

  “Well,” I turned back to Giovanni and pointed at the screen. “If she’s already feeling threatened, I’d expect this would heighten it, wouldn’t you?”

  “She’s going to panic,” Dr. Yin guessed. “That might be a good thing—generally in humans, panic is paralyzing, and overrides all reason.”

  “That will only be a good thing if it literally paralyzes her,” Giovanni pointed out. “But if instead she lashes out…”

  A few minutes later, Dr Yin said, “Wait. There’s an update already.” Her screen still bore data from the robopsychologist network. She clicked into it and read it, frowning.

  “What?” Giovanni and I asked at once, but we both clicked the new report ourselves at the same time, not waiting for her to tell us.

  Jaguar’s paranoia has increased dramatically in the last twenty-four hours, it read. She states that she has become the ‘victim of sabotage’ from person or persons unknown, but she cannot articulate the nature of her suspicions. All such attempts to extract meaningful data from her results in emotional outbursts, and as of late, threats. These threats range from termination of employment to crude violence.

  “It worked!” I shouted to Liam and Francis, producing another chorus of whoops from the other side of the room. But even as I joined in their celebration, I suddenly understood why Val said she’d felt sorry for Jaguar. In spite of myself, now that I was trying to imagine how it might feel to be her, I felt a little twinge of pity, too.

  About twenty minutes later, Mom stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle. All chatter stopped, and she stood up, looking shaken.

  “Breaking news on the labyrinth,” she announced. “The capitol building has been vaporized. Halpert and the Silver Six are presumed dead.”

  We stopped celebrating, and Val and Cathy gasped. Mom looked mournful, but I knew it wasn’t for her old boss: the Silver Six would have been dead in a matter of hours anyway, from the virus. But that also meant that nearly everyone she had worked with in her former life was likely dead now too.

  “It was Jaguar,” Dr. Yin announced to the room, reading from her netscreen. “She’s not even bothering to hide it—”

  “She vaporized three other official buildings, too,” called Mack, “in Brazil, Denmark, and Canada. All told, twenty thousand are presumed dead—”

  “She’s a maniac!” cried Larissa.

  “She’s frightened!” I shouted before I could stop myself. Everyone stopped talking, and turned to look at me, rather in surprise. Giovanni waved me on, and I pressed, “Don’t you see? She knows she’s been sabotaged, but she doesn’t know by whom. She’s just lashing out at anyone she thinks might be behind it!”

  There was a long pause—too long. Mom and Liam Senior exchanged an uncomfortable look before Mom finally said, “We’ve got to put her down quickly. Before she fixes what we’ve done, or kills anybody else.”

  “We have to destroy that AMDr, too,” Mack interjected. “Just in case we fail to kill her—at least we don’t want her to have access to that.”

  Senior nodded. “Fair enough. But I can’t think of any way to permanently disable it remotely. We’d have to actually blow it up, I think. On site.”

  Another pause, an
d then Liam concluded, “So two teams have to go, then. One to take down Jaguar, and the other to blow the AMDr.”

  Senior nodded again, glancing at Cathy. “The detonators,” he said, and she pursed her lips. He explained to the rest of us, “Another General Specs recent invention. Cathy and I used them to torch our hovercraft. They should definitely work, but the cache of them is on property at General Specs. So that team will have to locate and activate the detonators, then find and blow the AMDr.”

  “So who’s doing what?” Mack asked, looking at Mom as he said it.

  Mom turned to Senior. “I think you’ll have to be the one to confront Jaguar. You’re the only one she’ll let close enough.”

  “What?” Cathy protested, even as Senior nodded his agreement. Cathy turned to her ex-husband. “No, you can’t! She thinks you’re dead!”

  Senior shook his head at her. “She knows I’m not dead. That didn’t fool her.”

  “Dad,” said Liam in a low tone. “She hates you. She’ll kill you on sight.”

  “I don’t think so,” I called out, and once again, everyone turned to look at me. I gathered my courage and addressed Senior. “Mr. Kelly, I think—I think Jaguar might actually think of you as her father. And if that’s the case, I think what she wants most is your approval.”

  He scoffed. “That’s absurd. She’s emotional, yes, but she doesn’t care about anybody, least of all me.”

  “You’re wrong, Sir,” I said, more forcefully now. Senior actually looked a bit taken aback, but I pressed on. “Your robopsych team seems to think of her as a collection of symptoms, but—the De Vries prototype was modeled after a human brain, wasn’t it? And you said yourself that she was built to share her creativity upgrades and insights with her processors, but she isn’t doing that. In fact, she’s sabotaging any attempts to create the next iteration of herself. Why?”

  “Because she’s selfish and paranoid!” Senior cut in.

  “Because she wants to be special,” I insisted. Then, with a sudden stroke of inspiration, I added, “Why do you think she hated Liam so much?”

  “Because she thought he wanted to kill her,” said Senior, exasperated.

  “Or, maybe because of sibling rivalry. Maybe she sees him as a rival for your affections!”

  “Actually, Bec might be on to something, Dad,” Liam murmured, glancing at me. “Jaguar was a lot more vindictive than I’d have expected if she just thought of me as some impersonal threat. She relished the idea of killing me.”

  “Which makes her a psychopath, but it’s hardly evidence that she loves me,” muttered Senior.

  “But a selfish, jealous kind of love?” Mack put in, giving me a tiny nod across the room. “Like a toddler might feel about a new baby brother? It sounds plausible.”

  After a thoughtful pause, Senior threw up his hands. “Well, so what? All that matters is that someone gets close enough to put a bullet through her internal processor. I’m not sure why we need to understand her deep internal desires,” he added with a hint of derision.

  “She has to let them get close enough, though,” said Dr. Yin. “Maybe we almost need to think of this like a hostage situation. How can we talk her down long enough to at least distract her, while we do what we need to do?”

  Mom let out a breath through pursed lips. “All right. Senior goes for Jaguar, himself. Rick, you’re with him, but as a sniper. We’ll have to keep you out of sight somewhere, while he’s distracting her.” Rick nodded his acknowledgement of orders.

  “And Rebecca should go along with them, as a mediator,” said Dr. Yin.

  The room erupted at this. Mom and Liam both started to shout at her, but Giovanni backed her up.

  “It just makes sense!” Dr. Yin was shouting, “she can identify and empathize with her!”

  “Absolutely not!” Mom raged, getting so close to Dr. Yin that I was afraid they would come to blows. Mack restrained Mom, while Dr. St. Peters, mostly silent up until now, wrapped his arms around Dr. Yin. Liam was on his feet, shouting at Giovanni. Madeline rolled back and forth at my feet, muttering, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…”

  “SILENCE!” Liam Senior boomed. Everyone obeyed, but Mom and Dr. Yin still glared at one another, panting. “We will take a vote.”

  “We’ll do no such thing! I’m in charge here!” Mom raged.

  “You are in charge when your emotions don’t get in the way of your judgment,” Senior snapped. “Now, I agree with Liam: Jaguar hates me and will likely kill me the second she has the chance. And I’m not exactly skilled at diplomacy, so I’m unlikely to make a particularly compelling case for her to spare my life. Whether or not I agree with Ms. Cordeaux’s assessment,” he glanced at me, “I will admit that her manner is likely to placate Jaguar and at least keep her talking. Jaguar is supremely interested in bragging about herself. So I vote she comes.” He raised his hand, looking around the room expectantly. Dr. Yin and Giovanni raised their hands at once, as did Dr. St. Peters, Rick, Cathy, Francis, and Larissa (with an apologetic glance at me.) After a moment’s hesitation, even Val put her hand in the air, and elbowed Nilesh, who had crossed the room to site beside her. He did the same. Mack, Mom, and Liam looked around the room, aghast.

  “That’s a majority,” announced Senior. “Motion carries. Rebecca’s with me.”

  Another eruption at this: now Mom and Liam shouted at Senior, who held up his hands and shouted back at both of them. But it all began to sound a bit like a dull roar to my ears.

  “Do I get a vote?” I yelled over the din. They quieted down again, and everyone turned to look at me. Both Mom and Liam watched me, mistrustful. I glanced deliberately from Liam to Mom and back again.

  “I’m going.”

  “Rebecca, this is a suicide mission—!” Mom began, as Liam shouted, “Then I’m going with her!”

  “You can’t, Liam,” I protested, “because Jaguar does hate you! Your presence will have exactly the opposite effect!”

  “I’m not letting you face her without me!”

  “You have to,” Senior boomed, “because the other team needs a guide that knows the General Specs grounds. That has to be you, Liam. Put—” he cut off Liam’s protests, “your emotions aside. You’re Head of Operations again now.”

  Liam fumed and panted, glaring at his father. I noticed with a sidelong glance that Nilesh had put an arm around Val, as she watched the unfolding drama with bated breath.

  “Okay,” said Senior, pointing at Mack. “You need to head up the third team, that evacuates the building. You’ve got one of those trustworthy faces. Liam, you and Francis will get the detonators and blow the AMDr. Everyone else gets stationed around the perimeter of the property, standing guard. Do not let anybody so much as approach the outer gates until this is all over.”

  Chapter 38: Rebecca

  We had yet another debate over whether to leave right away, or to recover at least a little. All of us teetered on the edge of delirium. Cathy convinced Mom that we should at least eat and get a few hours’ rest if we could. Our success might depend upon it.

  We got through dinner with pockets of whispered conversation here and there, but no laughter. Now Mom and Liam were both even angrier with me than they were with Liam Senior. Mom ate a few bites, announced that she wasn’t hungry, and left the table, while Mack went out to try and soothe her. Liam sat beside me, but didn’t touch me or look at me. The stony silence was more than I could bear.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Liam once our plates were empty, lacing my fingers through his. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

  He said nothing, but resentfully allowed me to tug him to his feet, as Dr. St Peters and Dr. Yin cleaned up. Everyone else dispersed, mostly going to bed, as we’d have to leave in the middle of the night.

  The sand beneath our toes felt slightly cold from the lack of sunlight. Liam let me hold his hand at least. I thought about asking what right he thought he had to be angry, since he hadn’t minded riskin
g his own life, despite my protests, when he thought he’d be the one to confront Jaguar… but I didn’t want to fight with him. Not now.

  The walk seemed to soften him by degrees. We walked until we came to a rocky outcropping over the calm splash of water. He pulled me up on the rock beside him and sat behind me as we both faced out into the ocean, his arms around my waist and his chin resting on the top of my head. For now, I just wanted to breathe in this last moment of normalcy: the cool sea breeze, the lapping of the water, and the feel of his arms around me. Tomorrow wasn’t here yet. For tonight, in this place and right this second, we had no problems at all.

  I heard him suck in air through his nostrils, and turned to look at him. There were tears in his eyes, and realized he was clenching his teeth to keep his chin from trembling.

  “Liam…” I murmured.

  He shook his head with one sharp jerk, and hastily brushed his cheek, not meeting my eyes. “I can’t save anybody,” he croaked. “Not Brian all those years ago. Not even Francis now. And you,” he gave a short, staccato laugh. “I can’t threaten you, or lie to you, or beg you, or leave you.”

  “It would have been a lot easier for you if you’d loved someone like Val,” I agreed as I rested my head on his shoulder. “I’m sure she’d be perfectly happy to do whatever you asked.”

  He sniffled as he caressed my face with one hand, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. “I know, I thought about that. But I couldn’t help it. It’s always been you, Bec.”

  I knew Val went to sleep early, but I wasn’t surprised when I got back to our cabin that night to find her wide awake, sitting on her bed with her knees tucked beneath her chin. She stared out of her window, which faced the forest side of the island. She had the easiest job tomorrow, but none of us would be safe. And, much as I liked her, she wasn’t exactly a pillar of strength.

  I sat down on the bed beside her, and she glanced over at me with a distracted smile.