A.I. Zombie

by L. A. Johnson

  Lyra was getting tired of hearing that.

  "The weird part was that I was here when Maura's patient came in, the orc who got bit by the rat. He was exhibiting some very strange behavior. I was afraid it was a new drug version that we should catalog and did a brain scan on him too."

  "And they both exhibited the exact same characteristics," Grayson finished her thought.

  "Yeah, how'd you know? Despite the orc patient being nearly unresponsive, his brain activity was off the charts."

  "Oh, this is bad," Grayson said.

  "How so?" Lyra asked.

  "I didn't want to tell you this unless I was sure. But this Scythe character, before he turned rogue, did most of his research on rats."

  "What do you know about him?" Lyra and Emily both blurted out at the same time.

  "Just urban space legend stuff, or so I thought," Grayson said. "Nothing that would be at all helpful in this type of situation."

  "Well, if you're so worried about it, why don't you do something?" Lyra asked.

  "Like what?" Grayson asked, wrinkling up his face. "What are you implying? Oh no you don't."

  "Callista."

  "Don't even say her name," he said, looking around nervously.

  "But you said we were screwed."

  "And we probably are."

  Lyra could feel her blood pressure rising. "So why don't we get her?"

  "Get her? No, I'm not going to get her, but that's not to say the situation probably doesn't warrant it."

  Lyra balked. "So what, then, we should get Crash?"

  They all had a good laugh at that.

  "I guess he's our only option," Grayson said. "There's only one thing."

  "What's that?" Lyra asked, wiping a tear away from her eye. It wasn't really that funny, but once the tension burst, even for a second, it was overwhelming.

  "He should have been here by now."

  Lyra's heart raced. He was right.

  At that moment, red alert lights began flashing everywhere. Lyra swallowed hard. Only one guy could activate the station-wide alert and that was Crash. That meant that he was already involved, and it meant that really bad things were happening in more places than just the hospital. If he was in trouble, that didn't bode well for the rest of them.

  "Look, we could use Crash's help, if he's not up to his eyeballs in danger already, but this is way above his pay grade, Grayson, and you know it. We need to tell Callista. We're out of options."

  He shook his head. "No way." He looked very childish to Lyra, stomping his foot and refusing the only avenue of help available to them with the red emergency lights flashing around him like he was in the middle of some sort of dangerous disco.

  She scowled at him and looking around to see if anybody else was going to jump in and help. They weren't. As usual. "You'd really rather face down an evil mad scientist invasion, or whatever the hell this is than go get the head administrator of the space station?" Lyra boggled.

  "She's very scary."

  How do you even know she's scary if you have never seen her? Yes, we've all heard the stories, but we don't even know for sure if any of them are true. We need her, Grayson, now."

  He stood there and shook his head at her again. "You know how I got this job? After the last guy tried to go in there and summon her. They never found his body, you know."

  "Summon her? She's not a genie, she's an administrator. She has office hours, for stars sake!"

  "Then you go."

  "You are the Chief of Medicine! You're in charge! And you're sending me because you're afraid?"

  "You're adorable and people like you. I have no chance at all."

  Lyra screamed in frustration. "Fine," she said at last. "I'll go get Callista. And you people should scan the zombie patient and see if his activity matches the orc bite victim and the Frenzy rat."

  "If it does, then what does that mean?" Emily asked.

  "I don't have any idea," she answered on her way out the door.

  19

  Callista's eyes flickered open. There was a beeping sound in her head. An alarm? She really shouldn't be surprised. After all, this is how she was always awakened. She looked around her office, sitting forward in her chair.

  It happened in her chair this time. With her door closed. And by the looks of things, it had been quite a while. How long?

  The clock on her desk still worked, the lit numerals telling her it was 11:04 a.m. but that was little help. The time of day didn't matter at all, not to her.

  The wall calendar said 9283. A flicker of memory told her that wasn't up to date even before she fell asleep. She tried to move and failed.

  Vulnerable. There was always that period upon waking that she was vulnerable to attack. Everything was quiet, though, so she sat for a moment and thought. She shut her eyes, hoping that when she reopened them again, she would still be conscious and she was. It was true. Finally, she was awake again.

  Her computer. Yes. She turned it on. It immediately began trying to implement thousands of upgrades. She groaned. There was nothing to do but wait. Ten minutes later, according to the glowing clock on her desk, the computer gave up on the updates altogether saying that it wasn't compatible with current computer operating systems.

  Yes, she thought, that sounds about right. Unable to figure out what the date was and still feeling vulnerable, she opened her top desk drawer. Weapons. Now these she remembered. She chuckled, grabbed her favorite mini pistol blaster, and placed it on top of the desk. Then she sat back and relaxed.

  "Stupid Grayson," Lyra muttered the phrase in a mantra all the way to Callista's office. She had to look up the office location on her computer and double checked that she was arriving squarely within her posted office hours, which frankly, were pretty late for a Head of Space Station.

  Then she continued all the way down the station’s corridors, stopping only for a friendly wave to some of the people she knew as she was making her way there.

  "The emergency lights really livened up the day," one friend said. "It's been a while."

  "Does this have anything to do with you guys?" another one asked.

  "Sort of," Lyra answered and continued on. "Stupid Grayson."

  The other person nodded, as if it was an acceptable saying, and went along his merry way. It wasn't as crowded as it usually was in the travel arteries of the station, but that didn't mean that most people weren't going along with their own business. She had to give it to them, the people living here were a brave and steadfast bunch. And she was one of them, even if Grayson wasn't.

  She began plotting her revenge on him in her head when she turned the last corner and realized she was in a part of the space station she had never been before. In fact, until she looked up the directions to this office she didn't even know this part of the station was here.

  She continued along the eerie corridor, which would have been creepy even without the red flashing lights. She wished somebody would turn them off. They lost their adrenaline pounding allure within the first five minutes, and now they were just distracting her from her thoughts. And she needed all of her thoughts right now. There it was. Callista's office.

  Lyra got to the door and stopped. She listened. There was nothing but a very eerie silence coming from the other side. How was it that all of this was going on, with the emergency lights and everything and Callista was just in there on her computer or whatever. You'd think she'd come out and have a look around. Although only a handful of people on the station claimed to have ever seen her and most of them weren't credible.

  The door had what looked like a dragon logo carved into the wood, but now that she was staring at it very hard trying to get up the courage to knock, she could clearly see that the carving had several layers to it underneath. She nearly got mesmerized by the pattern.

  Get it together, Lyra. It's just a door. We're all about to die. Maybe. Here, at the door, she understood Grayson's reluctance to come himself. She was here to tell the mysterious Callista about the life a
nd death situation of unknown origin that they guessed was coming based on the prediction of a visiting neo-web star, the necropsy of a mutant rat, and the beeping of a mysterious, obsolete robot who had just started seriously communicating with them a few hours ago. And also, a medical mystery that may or may not be singing a message of their doom.

  Her fist poised over the wood door and then hesitated for a moment. Her inner fear and uncertainty was doing battle with all of the space station alarms and flashing lights. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and then knocked.

  Under normal, quiet, daytime working hours it would probably have barely been heard. Under current circumstances it was completely impossible. She tried to figure out what to do next. The obvious choice being to knock harder or to actually try the door handle, both of which she was afraid to do.

  "Come."

  The voice on the other side of the door startled her. She lost her nerve and her mind had to do battle with her body, which was screaming at her legs to run away. Callista was in there, alright. After crossing herself, Lyra turned the handle and eased the door open just enough to peek in.

  A volley of laser blasts nearly greeted her face. She backed up around the wall again. The door, where the blasts had hit, didn't have a mark or a singe on it. Weird. After a few seconds, the volley of fire stopped.

  Lyra, confused by the attack, said the only thing that came to her mind. "Callista? You can't shoot at me, these are your posted office hours!"

  There was a long pause. "Who are you?" the voice asked.

  "Oh yeah, I'm Lyra. And at the risk of pissing you off again, why would you tell me to come in and then shoot at me?"

  Another pause. "I mean who are you? Are you my second in command?"

  As far as Lyra knew there was no such thing as a Head of Space Station Second in Command. But she was pretty sure that if she had been so designated she'd remember. "Um, no. I'm just a doctor at the hospital here."

  "Then go away, Dr. Lyra."

  "Oh, hey, it's just Lyra to you. We're on the same team here, right? Look, you are in charge of this entire Space Station, right? And we are under attack, sort of. As you can see from all of the flashing red lights and alarms and stuff.” For the first time, she was actually grateful to all of the annoying lights for adding a certain gravity to her words. "Have you, um, noticed any of that at all?"

  "Yes? Why are you here?"

  "I told you. Alarms. Emergency. Attack. Something's about to go down, I'm telling you. And we need your help."

  "What are the rumors?"

  "What?” Lyra was unable to keep the fear and the frustration from coming out in her tone, but Callista seemed to be out of it somehow, and hopefully wouldn't pick up on it.

  "About me? What are the rumors," Callista asked.

  "Do you really think now is the time?"

  There was more shooting.

  "Fine, alright, stop! Some people swear you are a shifter. Or part vampire. Part goddess. Flesh over evil robot. I mean, I could keep going, but what's the point? Are you going to help us or not? You think there's any chance I'd be here if we weren't really, really desperate?"

  Her plea was met with more laser fire and another, "Go away."

  "Screw this," said Lyra. "Thanks for nothing!" she called out as she ran back down the hallway to the normal part of the station.

  Once she was a sufficient distance away, she slumped against the wall and closed her eyes to think, which she had to do because of the still flashing lights.

  And then it hit her, there was a trio of problems on the station right now that she knew of. She'd decoded MACRO's messages and Ian figured out the patient was sending a signal. There was still one more piece of the puzzle, and she knew just who to go to in order to figure it out. Maura.

  20

  Maura smiled when Lyra entered the room. "Girl, it's been too long." She offered coffee, bravely ignoring the emergency lights.

  Lyra shook her head and sat down.

  "You're here about all of this, aren't you?" She gestured with her hands toward the seizure inducing lights all around. "Are we all gonna die or what?"

  "I don't know about you, but I'd like to avoid that."

  "How can I help?"

  "Rats. Tell me everything you can about these rats."

  Maura raised an eyebrow. "The rats are unusual. What am I saying? They're nuts. They're exhibiting completely abnormal behavior and feature an enlarged size. But other than the one that started the bar fight, they haven't shown any aggressive behavior. In fact-" Maura's voice trailed off.

  "What?" Lyra asked, taking a seat across from Maura.

  "It's crazy," Maura said.

  "Trust me, with what's already happened today I'm desensitized to crazy."

  "Well, I can't be sure, but it feels to me like they're waiting for something. How weird is that?"

  Lyra thought it over. If Ian was right, and the patient was calling something evil to them, maybe they were waiting for whatever it was calling. If whatever they were facing was planning on using a rat army, this was bad. Her blood ran cold.

  "As much as I hate to say it, it sort of makes sense to me."

  Maura raised an eyebrow.

  Lyra decided to tell her, if there was going to be the slightest possibility of a rat army in her immediate future, then she wanted Maura on her side. The problem was, the story she had to tell felt more outlandish every single time she tried to tell it. She took a deep breath. "So, um, there might or might not be a weird zombie patient emitting a signal that could be a sort of homing beacon to draw an evil scientist called Scythe here."

  Maura's expression changed to reflect the fact that she believed Lyra was screwing with her. But Lyra made very clear she was not. That caused Maura to open her mouth to argue and then shut it again.

  Maura looked thoughtful and tapped on the desk. "We're friends," she began, "and I'm going to go ahead and try to roll with this. But the big question in my mind is, why would you think any of that?"

  "Well, you know the famous web scientist Ian?" People were going to figure it out eventually anyway, she thought.

  She nodded. "A little."

  "Well, this patient had us stumped, so I got the idea to bring him in and use this data analyzer on him to see what was going on."

  "That doesn't sound like medical protocol."

  "Desperate times." Lyra shrugged.

  "This was your idea? How do you know Ian?" She smirked.

  "He's visiting Celestica, and yes we've been dating."

  "Tell me everything," Maura said, leaning forward. Her eyes lit up.

  "Nothing to tell, I mean it's going ok as far as I'm concerned." The emergency lights that continued to flash reminded Lyra that she didn't have a lot of extra time to chat, especially since Callista wasn't going to help them.

  "Figures. So you had a hot date and then some data analysis?" She looked dubious.

  "Oh, there's also MACRO, he's freaking out."

  "Is he the robot that hangs out in the doctor's lounge?"

  "Yeah, how did you know?"

  "Oh, he's the focus of all kinds of gossip."

  "Really? Short robot, communicates with beeps and flashes? Blue fin on his head?"

  "Yep, that's him," Maura answered.

  Now Lyra had a lot more questions, but they'd have to wait. "MACRO freaked out. He was trying to tell us something, and when we started deciphering his message, it spelled out Scythe. Apparently, that's an evil, escaped scientist that may or may not have turned himself into an AI."

  "You think this AI person is going to come here and use his rat army to attack us?"

  Finally, Lyra thought, somebody gets it. "Well, I don't know, but if the events are all connected, and I hope they're not, then we're obviously going to need your help."

  Maura smiled and started digging through her paperwork and then her face fell. "I'm going to be very limited in what I can do, the regulations for pest control of rat species are very specific and…"

 
Lyra stood and shook her head. "No regulations, no rules. If I send you a message, then it's going down. Bring all the firepower you can to the ER waiting room. And by the way, I think that the AI component negates all of the natural-species regulations, does it not?"

  "Oh yeah." Maura's face brightened. "No rules?"

  "No rules. If I call you, I want maximum carnage. Everything you've got. Nothing less than total extermination. Got it?"

  "Okay," Maura answered. "Total extermination. I love it. Just give me a few minutes to get everything together."

  Once Lyra got back out into the hallway, she called Ian on her cell phone. "Hey, how are things over there?"

  "Well," he said, "I got the communication disrupter equipment back to the emergency waiting room, but not much has changed. The emergency lights are still going off and we're just waiting. Oh, your little robot is flipping out again."

  Uh-oh, Lyra thought. There was a commotion sound on the phone for a moment.

  "This is Grayson. Lyra? What's going on? Can you see about getting these idiotic lights and sirens turned off? If this whole thing goes south, is it too much to ask to be obliterated in peace and quiet? And who knows, without all of this racket I might actually be able to come up with an idea."

  "Oh, you are a piece of work," Lyra said.

  "What?" he asked.

  "You're asking me to check on Crash."

  "Well, you are on the other side of the station, correct," Grayson asked. "Technically you're closer."

  "I hate you. And give Ian his phone back." She hung up before he could think of any more suicide missions to send her on.

  She stopped to try and think. Grayson certainly had a point with the alarm system becoming a bother. But what about Crash? If something bad happened, she could be walking into a trap. But then again, she had already dealt with a mutant rat, Grayson, a freaked-out robot, a zombie patient, and whatever the hell Callista was. Because she didn't clear that up any. What was one more mysterious disaster?

  She looked down at herself. Nothing but a white coat with pens and forms and sticky notes in her pockets. She had nothing on her that would help with any kind of self-defense. What she wouldn't give for a weapon. What an odd thought. Believe it or not, she had never really felt unsafe before here on Celestica.