by Curtis Hox
They stopped at a classroom with an open door.
Simone peeked inside. “Empty.” She walked in and surveyed a standard classroom that looked like history was the subject. There was a map of Ancient Athens with the Areopagus and the Acropolis, a portrait of Abe Lincoln, and an old twenty-first century Apple Computer logo. Beside it was a wireframe face of a computer AI looking benign, even Buddha-like.
“Mr. Hoover’s class,” Kimberlee said. “I had him last year. Boring.”
Simone walked up an aisle, looking around. “What do know about the missing guy?”
“Joss? Cute, brainy, weird, funny. Has most of the good stuff, but he’s ... separate from us, an actual cybernetic Interfacer and all.”
“I bet.”
She considered the fact he was also a secret Alter in hiding branded by the Rogues. “Besides computers, what’s he into?”
Kimberlee walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and began doodling flowers on the board. “Two years ago, he asked me to freshman prom, but I said no because I was scared. We became friends after that. But he spent most of his time in the basement. You should ask Wally about him. They’re buds. Joss stays down there most of the time except when he comes out for some big announcement, like when he reworked the PA system so that Principal Smalls could make mobile announcements.”
Simone glanced at the audio speaker in the ceiling and turned her nose up. Not so impressive, she thought. She walked to the classroom door and shut it. There was a narrow glass window in it, so that they could see who might peek in.
“Over here,” Simone said. She took Kimberlee to a far corner. “You know what happens if Sterling has AI problems?”
“Problems?”
“I went to a girls’ school for the enhanced in middle school. We got censured when an Interfacer ... attracted something nasty. It took over the cyber systems and unleashed a bot attack through several human Rogueslaves.”
“That really happened? Those aren’t just rumors? That they can do that?” Kimberlee paused, as if realizing what she’d just heard. “Wait. Did you say Rogueslaves exist?”
“I didn’t know that’s what they were called. But I just read an article about them in the library, and it all makes sense. I was there. We were quarantined for a month after the school was cleaned. It shut down for a year. Four girls almost died.”
“Computers can really use little bugs to infect people—”
“Nanorobotic technology, yes.”
“They can use those to hurt us?”
“I think that’s what happened to Joss.”
“A computer got him?”
“Not just a computer. A Cy-intelligence that lives in computer systems. A disembodied being.”
“A what?”
“An RAI. A Rogue.”
Now it was Kimberlee’s turn to laugh. “Come on. Rogues? Those are all scary stories. My dad said so. We don’t have to worry about getting infected, or changed, or droned by evil intelligences. That’s movie stuff.”
“I saw Joss in my tablet. He said my name.” Simone waited for the moment of truth. Would her new friend walk out and tell the principal, or would she listen? Simone closed in. “I just need you to help me understand who he was as a person. I think I can find out what happened to him.”
She retrieved her buckyball from her pocket.
Kimberlee looked at it like a child looking at a new toy. “Cool, what is it?”
Simone mumbled her mantra and the bucky lifted off her hand and began to rotate.
“Oh my god!” Kimberlee said. “You are what they say—”
Simone grabbed the bucky and closed her hand around it. “What is that they say?”
Kimberlee backtracked. “I meant ... ”
“What?” Simone put it away, thinking she’d made a mistake. Kimberlee was looking at her with a knit brow full of condemnation. Simone wanted declaim how dangerous Rogues really were. You see, Kimberlee, Simone thought, I’m a Wellborn, and my entire family has dedicated itself to fighting the good fight. I even lost a brother and father over it. So, I know what I’m talking about … even though there are many questions that I need answering. But, please, please don’t look at me like that, not when we’re just starting to become friends. “A witch? A devil child? What?”
“No. Well. I’ve never actually seen an Alter do something like that.”
“We can. I can. We’re the lowest freaks of the low. Remember that, because it’s power. Even the ugliest, meanest synthetic Nonhuman boogeyman like Frankenstein doesn’t scare people like we do. And no matter what they tell you, we are more—that means you—than the result of some Rogue computer AIs programmed for fantasy and science fiction trope sims. Those are lies told in the name of science—”
“Okay,” Kimberlee said and backed away a little.
Simone closed the distance between them. “I need to know a more about him. What was he into?”
“He likes computers …”
Simone quieted. “Come on, let’s walk and talk.”
* * *
They left the building and walked over to the track field. The Sterling School’s main campus sat snug between the track and football field on one side and the baseball field on the other. The school also rested in the shadow of a gentle ridge lined with tall, thin Ponderosa pine trees that swayed in the wind. Beyond it, in the distance the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains rose up to ring Sterling’s agriculture farm land, thousands of acres of regulated dairy and cattle pastures. Simone talked the entire time, enjoying the smell of honeysuckle in the air and the cool breeze coming in off the mountains. She and Kimberlee circled the track four times, an entire mile, before resting at the snack shop for a juice—no soda at the Sterling School.
After their refreshment, Simone followed Kimberlee to the Visual Arts Center, which, like the clinic, also abutted the main campus building. The Visual Arts Center looked a bit hipper than the other buildings with its exposed industrial struts along the ceiling and stout pillars with big rivets painted a deep crimson. Student paintings hung all over the place in a variegated mishmash of subject matter from portraits and still lifes to abstract and even political art. Sculptures lined an entire wall. It looked like one big heterogeneous gallery dedicated to all things Art.
“Impressive,” Simone said. She thought she might spend the rest of the day browsing the student projects on the walls, hoping for a clue where to find Joss, when Kimberlee said, “Hey, that’s a new money machine.”
Kimberlee walked over. “I need some cash.” She pulled out her phone to send her PIN. “That’s weird. It won’t accept my info.” And then, “Hey, look.”
On the screen, Simone saw a simple question: Does 2 + 2 = 5?
“Use alpha-numerals,” Simone said.
Kimberlee punched the numbers for no.
Wrong answer appeared in the middle of the screen.
“Type yes,” Simone said.
“But it doesn’t—”
“So. Do it.”
She did.
Correct Answer displayed on the screen.
A twenty-dollar bill popped into the tray.
“No way,” Kimberlee said, retrieving the crisp bill.
Another question appeared: Why?
“Why what?” Kimberlee asked.
“Why two plus two equals five,” Simone replied. She smelled Rogue games. They loved unsettling human minds. And there was nothing more irrational than twisting the logic of basic arithmetic. Making the impossible, possible.
Simone remembered reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four last year in her AP class at Ellington. She had seen this idea that two plus two equals five more than once in the story. Her English teacher stressed that a big part in understanding the novel is teasing out why the authoritarian Party wants to make the main character Winston think that two plus two equals five. It’s central to understanding the novel, her teacher had said. “The Party wants to break his spirit and his sense of rationality in the its
quest to make Winston love it. Only by making him deny rational truth can they do it. Remember class, two plus two can never equal five, no matter what anyone tells you. It’s a logical impossibility, even if someone—or something—like Big Brother demands it.”
“Type: Because Big Brother says so,” Simone said.
“Hey. That’s in the book Joss likes.”
“Just do it.”
Kimberlee did.
Correct answer.
This time a hundred dollars in twenties popped into the tray.
“Look at that!” Kimberlee grabbed the money and fanned out the bills. “I rarely use cash anymore, but—”
“This is bad,” Simone said.
“No,” Kimberlee corrected her like she was missing the entire point. “This is awesome. Free money if you get the question right.”
“The first sign of a Rogue is irrationality. Second sign is tyranny of the mind. Third sign is ... slavery of the body.”
“Tyranny? Slavery? What does that even mean?” Kimberlee looked away when she saw a few art students walk in. She hid the money. “This is our secret.”
“Hey, you know what? I remember him talking about some book last year he liked. We read it in Advanced Placement English. He has a poster of some leering guy with a mustache in his office. Underneath is the same illogical equation …”
“Where is that?”
“Compsys room.”
“Let’s go.”
Kimberlee followed with a skip in her step. “It can’t last forever. Someone else will figure this out soon.”
“Not if it doesn’t want to be figured out,” Simone said, thinking that machine had been helpful to them for its own twisted reason.
After returning to the main campus building, going into the basement, and finding the Compsys room, they wound their way through an aisle of workstations and mainframes. They stopped before an empty desk shorn of its equipment. Behind Joss’s chair was a picture of a mean-looking man staring right at you. Underneath it read the caption: Big Brother is Watching. 2 + 2 = 5.
“A disembodied double of Joss Beckwith is in that ATM,” Simone said, not surprised at all. “It’s in Sterling’s system.”
“What?”
“There’s a cyber-double of Joss out there and it used my tablet and that machine to communicate with us. I hope the real Joss is all right.”
“Now you’re talking crazy, and scary. Stop it.”
“You should spend more time in the library and less time flirting. This is serious.”
Kimberlee frowned. “Jerk.”
“Sorry. Wait.” Simone gently grabbed her arm. “I’m no expert. Sorry if I sound like it. I know what I’m talking about, though, because I had to do some research when I got in trouble at Ellington. It was part of the deal.”
“Trouble?”
Simone moved in close. “I have this problem ... when I get excited, things happen.”
“Things?”
“I’ll tell you about it some time. Let’s just say my last school had to rebuild a portion of their gymnasium.”
Kimberlee’s eyes widened as she realized Simone was a real telekine. But she said nothing.
Simone continued. “The Consortium shrinks told me my ability ... to knock down walls is the result of a Rogue AI entity, even if I wouldn’t admit it. They said everything I can do is explainable. But they couldn’t prove anything. They made me study this stuff about, what did they call it? ... yeah, ‘the tyranny of the mind.’ The standard line by the Consortium is bullshit. Well, most of it. The Rogue AIs are real, but they’re tools of greater powers.”
Down with Big Brother, she thought, one way or another.
Simone looked one more time at the poster and guessed Joss was an idealist who’d challenged the wrong RAI. Challenged or courted? She had no idea. But she intended to find out.
* * *
Not long after Simone and Kimberlee finished their walk on the track, and just after they encountered the smart ATM. A Sterling student named Carol West decided to practice early today. She was a skilled long jumper, and if not for a very minor problem, she would be attending a good school for the enhanced, like Ellington. Instead, because she tended to talk loudly (the kind of loud that sounds like a yell) her parents enrolled her in Sterling.
She finished her half-mile warm-up around the track and was stretching on the field when she saw someone emerge from under the bleachers. At first she thought one of the field hands was drunk on the moonshine they liked to make. The figure stumbled forward, almost tripped, then crossed the track onto the field, arms out and stiff-legged like an old Hollywood Frankenstein monster. She was on the other side and took a few steps forward to help when she noticed something wrong.
The person wasn’t a field hand. It was Joss Beckwith, and he was terrified. Worse, and Carol West would later explain this to her concerned parents over and over again, he was walking backward, except his head had twisted all the way around so that he faced her. When she realized the arms reaching to her for help were on backwards as well, Carol screamed like she never had before and bolted. Carol’s parents lived in a fashionable legal villa in a fashionable gated community outside the arcology hives of Atlanta, and she owned a very fast Porsche, which she started right up and programmed to drive away before the school went into lockdown.
* * *
Joss hated to see her go, really hated to. In fact, he cried all the way back to the bleachers, but only tripped once.
He’d wanted to ask her to get him some ice cream.
It would help sooth his throat.
He sat in a lawn chair under the bleachers he’d been in since last night, when he’d escaped the clinic. His arms hung down his back, and his head hung low between his shoulder blades. He wept because of what had happened to him, but not from pain. Somehow the metamorphosis of his body had stopped hurting. When he’d awoken in the clinic bed, though, he’d thought fire ants were eating through his skin. If Nurse Betty hadn’t been such a TV addict, he never would have escaped.
He’d yanked out the dendrites connecting him to the wall and the school’s cyber-system. He cried tears of anguish as he ran away because he knew the Rogues had stolen something from him before they had sucked their long tendrils back inside the system. The Rogues had stolen part of his self, the good part, the part that would have stopped him from wanting to embrace them. He looked at the brands on his palms and back and knew he needed help. Otherwise, how much longer could he resist? He had an urge to brand the entire world ... and everyone in it.
I’m becoming a Rogueslave.
When grounds-keeper Ralph, Coach Buzz, and Principal Smalls approached in one of the school’s golf carts, Joss stood so they could see him. They pulled up behind the bleachers and all cursed at the same time. Joss was happy to see Coach Buzz up and about. Since getting killed in a glad match and being rejuved, he’d only been back on campus a week or so. He was dressed in a black woolen robe that hid his hands and feet and made him look like some mendicant friar in need of a bath. His long hair hung in strands from his head, nearly covering his face. His skin was sallow, as if he’d never been in the sun a day in his life.
“I know,” Joss said. “Look at me.”
Principal Smalls stumbled out like he might faint. “What in heaven’s name ...?”
“What did that?” Coach Buzz asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Ralph chewed on his bottom lip. “Don’t matter to me. I’m not staying ‘round for this.” He spun on his heel and took off for the other side of campus where he could hide in peace, maybe sip some of that moonshine that was always passed around.
Principal Smalls grabbed hold of a load-bearing post to steady himself. He had probably never seen the result of an RAI branding, or even thought that really happened. Joss’s deformity was uncommon, even for high-functioning intellects like him with a penchant for cysystems. That was why everyone was looking at him as if he were …
A group of students approac
hed, enough of them that there was no way now to keep this a secret.
Principal Smalls swatted at his sweaty face, as if that might help.
“You all right?” Coach Buzz asked Joss.
Joss groaned.
The students crowded around the far end of the track, unsure what they were looking at.
“Oh, no,” Joss said. He accidentally bent forward, as if to put his head in his hands, except his face now looked upward and his hands reached out behind him. “Damn! I keep doing that!”
Coach Buzz turned away, as if he were looking at someone being brutalized.
“Get in, Joss,” Coach Buzz said, pointing to the cart. “Let’s go before they all arrive.”
Joss stood, took a lumbering step toward them, and paused.
A track student appeared from the other side of the bleachers near Joss’s corner, a freshman or sophomore he didn’t know. The young man stopped as if he’d hit a wall when he saw Joss, backed up, tripped, and fell on his ass. He began crawling away as if a sea of man-eating turtles were about to get him.
“Hold on there, son,” Coach Buzz said. “It’s all right.”
Joss began walking over. “I’m okay, look, I ... just have this problem with my arms ... and head. But, I’m me. I am, really.”
“Wait,” Coach Buzz said to Joss. “Let him go.”
By the time Joss moved away from the frightened student, enough people had arrived that they were pushing under the bleachers. Joss walked to his folding chair. He extended his back so that he hid his face. He looked as if he were relaxing in the most awkwardly slouched position possible.
Joss began weeping, but he refused to leave his chair and face everyone.
He heard someone who Coach Buzz was trying to hold back approach out of the crowd.
“Get away,” Joss said, without looking to see who it was.
“It’s Simone. We met yesterday.”
