by Phoenix Ward
I don’t know that, she mused.
Lobo turned center and stared her down. “Prove it,” he said.
He doesn’t believe me, Beth thought.
“He will. Just tell him what I say next,” Simon said.
” ‘One way or another, I’ll be back,’ ” she repeated Simon’s words.
Lobo’s face softened. Every bit of suspicion seemed to leak away from his features, as well as a bit of his color. His mouth opened and hung agape slightly.
“It’s what he said to you last time you spoke,” Beth said, following through with what Simon told her to say.
“It is him, then,” Lobo said, almost too quiet for Beth to hear. “I thought the son of a bitch was dead.”
“He was,” Beth explained. “But he’s back. And we need your help. Both of us.”
“He’s back?” Lobo said. “Is he with you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The man opened the door fully and stood aside, granting Beth access. “Come in,” he said. “Any friend of Simon’s is a friend of mine.”
She walked past the man into the Fog house’s foyer. Despite being broken down to all hell, the place was enormous. At one point, it might have been a bed and breakfast. Now it served as a last refuge for drug burnouts. A safe place for people to get high without wandering the streets, where they were prey to all kinds of criminals — and that was if the police didn’t pick them up.
There was a staircase leading up to the second floor. It had fine wooden railings, but they had been carved at by countless junkies killing the time with their pocket knives. The wooden steps had a long rug that ran all the way up their length, most likely to conceal the many broken boards and depressions that plagued them.
There were some framed paintings in the hall that ran beside the staircase, as if some Victorian family had owned the home before abandoning it, leaving it at the mercy of a pack of Fogheads. Beside these paintings were posters, casually tacked up at whatever angle the designer pleased. They declared concerts for long-disbanded rock bands. There was one for an Iron Maiden tour in the 1980s. Another was from the early 2000s, but Beth hadn’t heard of the band. On the back wall — at the end of the corridor — was a movie poster for one of the Batman films.
“This way,” Lobo said.
She said nothing as he led her into one of the rooms off the left side of the ground-floor hallway. It seemed to be a study of sorts. A large desk dominated the center of the room. There was green felt glued onto the desk’s surface. On top of that sat a small tablet and a short stack of cash. An office lamp illuminated the scene.
“Close the door behind you,” the Fog dealer instructed.
Beth did so with an ounce of hesitation, cringing as the door creaked shut. Part of her felt like she had just sealed herself in her own tomb. Simon reassured her.
“So, I’m always willing to help out a friend of Simon’s,” Lobo started, taking a seat at the green-felted desk, “but I think I deserve an explanation. No one is allowed to bring their problems in this house unless I say so, understand? So maybe you can help me help you by telling me a story.”
Man, where to begin? Beth wondered.
“From the beginning,” Simon replied.
Lobo’s face was hard to read after Beth finished summarizing their story. Part of the way his eyelids rested made him look like he was permanently awe-struck. Yet — within the eyes — the pupils darted around the room, as if waiting for someone to jump out from behind a door and announce that he’d been punked. Regardless of whatever internal suspicions he held, he remained silent throughout the whole exposition. Beth stumbled over some parts, but Simon helped to fill in any blanks that her memory left in the narrative.
“That’s a pretty crazy story, yo,” Lobo said, almost too casually for Beth’s comfort. He snatched a pretzel from somewhere within his desk, offering one to the detective. She declined with a modest wave. “Almost too crazy to believe.”
“It’s true,” Beth replied. “Every word. And that’s why we need your help.”
“No kidding,” Lobo said, chewing on his dry morsel. “You got robot hitmen after you and you’ve pissed off one of the biggest terrorists in modern history. I’d be shitting myself if I were you. No wonder you came looking for help. I’m just surprised it’s my door Simon led you up to.”
“We’re desperate,” Beth said, echoing the sentiment the I.I. shared in her head.
Lobo seemed to think while he tried to swallow the overstuffed mouthful he was chewing on. Once he managed to shove the knot down his throat, he rose from his seat. Beth almost thought he was about to call bullshit on their story and kick her out onto the street, but he offered a warm smile instead.
“Helping people in trouble is kinda our specialty here,” he said. “Like I said: any friend of Simon’s is welcome here. Of course we’ll help you out.”
Beth never thought in a million years that she’d almost be moved to tears of relief at the invitation to take shelter in a Fog house. Yet that’s how she felt — realizing all of their other options seemed to have vanished out from under their feet.
“Thank you so much, Lobo,” she said, her voice strained with fatigue. “You’ve no idea how much it means to us.”
“I think I do,” Lobo replied. “Come — I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
They followed him up the staircase, taking care to not trip in one of the many dips and breaks that ran up the steps. He went down the carpeted hallway for a short distance before turning left and opening a half-ajar door.
“Now don’t get too excited,” he said as he led Beth into the gloomy room. “We don’t have enough space to really give you a room of your own, but this part of the house is always the most empty. The folk in here are so strung out they probably won’t wake up for another day or so. You’ll just have to find an empty spot on the floor to post up.”
He reached into a closet just by the doorway and pulled out a cloth bundle, tossing it to Beth. She caught it and realized, after a few seconds, that it was a ratty sleeping bag.
“It’s the best we have,” Lobo said. “I’m sorry.”
Beth tried to smile politely. “Thank you,” she said.
Lobo nodded, then disappeared through the entrance.
The detective took her smelly bedding over to the far corner of the room, by one of the side facing windows. She had to watch her step as she made her way through the labyrinth between sleeping, drug-dosed forms snoring on the floor. She sighed a little once she got to her corner. She unrolled the sleeping bag and laid on top of it, rather than in it.
Beth’s thoughts turned miserable as she took in the whole situation. One of the top detectives in her precinct, forced to take shelter in a house full of junkies. She felt cold and lost, like a child who let go of her parents’ hands while walking through a crowd. She was scared and wanted to cry out for someone to help her. To just take her in under their wing, coddle her, and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But everything isn’t going to be okay, is it? she wondered.
“That’s up to us,” Simon said.
In the midst of drowning in sad thoughts, Beth managed to find some peace and drift off to sleep.
History
Simon and Beth spent every waking moment at the Fog house researching the enemy they were up against. Some of the junkies would wake up, leave, come back, and do more drugs, but the detective did her best to ignore them. Her nose wrinkled every time she smelled a little sweet wisp of meth or a puff of sour Fog, but she’d just cover her mouth and continue delving into the mountain of information she had at her disposal.
The I.I. was still using his private network access to reach out into the wealth of data stored on the world wide web with complete anonymity. He’d find useful articles, news clips, or records and pass them along to Beth, who remained disconnected from the Net the whole time. It was almost like Simon was laundering the information for her, the way a criminal organization mi
ght launder money.
Lobo would come in and check on them every now and then, but Beth and Simon were too immersed in their research to say much to him. He’d bring food occasionally, usually some single-ingredient sandwich or a poorly heated bowl of soup. Beth was gracious each time he fed her, even if the meal turned her stomach a little.
They were trying to trace the story of Blake Tarov to its origin. Using a combination of news articles and viral videos, they were able to paint a picture of the militia leader’s rise to power. Nothing mentioned the fact that he was actually an artificial intelligence in disguise, of course — at least not in the public records. Simon had all the evidence they needed of that, but there were some pieces missing. Who created the Tarov A.I.? Why? These were all questions that they could almost answer. Maybe something out there on the public domain held the key. Something that had been overlooked.
Blake Tarov the installed intelligence, as the story goes, first made his public appearance in a viral video taken nearly a decade ago. The clip showed the now master general of the Liberators in a bodyshell fighting off a handful of human supremacists — or sapes, as some folk had taken to calling them. The sapes were trying to attack a storage bank full of I.I.s somewhere in Dallas, but Tarov saw the incident and intervened.
The bodyshell he used looked like a crude representation of the digital man Beth had encountered online. It had his broad shoulders, his hulking stature, and even his big, muscled face — though represented through stony gray plastic. The bodyshell seemed under an intense amount of strain as the video’s cameraman tried to keep him in the frame. The I.I. was taking cover behind a van while the human terrorists fired at him with automatic rifles. Once he sensed a break in the fire, Tarov squared his shoulders and started to push the van sideways towards the attackers. The cameraman followed, desperate to stay in cover and not get shot himself.
Sparks flew from the van’s wheels as they scraped along the pavement. He pushed with such steady strength that the axles bent and the hubcaps were dragged on the street while he pushed the vehicle against the grain, so to speak. The sapes were almost so taken aback by the I.I.’s actions that they forgot to return fire. They only got a few shots into the van before Tarov coiled up and shoved the van as hard as he could. The force sent the machine rolling towards the sapes like a crocodile in a death spiral, closing the twenty-yard gap and slamming into the terrorists.
The cameraman had been so blown away by what he’d just filmed that he couldn’t keep his hands steady. The video ended with a shaky image of Tarov’s bodyshell running after the van, about to pounce on any sapes still standing.
Since then, Tarov became something of a household name — especially within the installed intelligence community. He was a hero, almost larger than life. He was the I.I. equivalent of Captain America. Everyone equated him with the struggle against their human oppressors; they saw him as their savior and champion. So it wasn’t long before the radicalized organization known as the Liberators reached out to him and managed to recruit him among their ranks.
He rose up through the terrorist group’s hierarchy like a rocket set for the stars. Right off the bat, the Liberator leadership decided to place him in propaganda. He was the Rosie the Riveter of hatred against humanity. They would claim he was always at the forefront of whichever attack they carried out that week. If their claims were to be believed, Tarov had single-handedly slain two-hundred human “oppressors” in just a single month. It was clear to Beth and Simon that it was all exaggerated to build on Tarov’s larger-than-life reputation.
They promptly promoted him to a position of real power before even his first year of membership had been complete. He was in charge of a small squadron of what the Liberator’s toted as their best soldiers. On top of his clandestine plots and raids, he was made the face of the Liberators. They had him deliver all of their threatening addresses, all of their rambling declarations, so that the leadership could remain safe in the shadows of obscurity. Their efforts seemed to pay off. Tarov and the Liberators were nearly synonymous with each other — at least, as far as the public was concerned. They had a scapegoat if they ever needed one.
What the Liberators’ leadership failed to account for, however, was Tarov’s ambition. They knew that he had a desire for power and liked to demonstrate his strength, but they didn’t know what lengths he would go to in order to seize control. If it wasn’t for all the information Simon already provided, the two of them wouldn’t even know the truth of his sudden and violent ascension to the rank of master general.
It happened one fateful day when a squad of heavily armed F.B.I. agents burst into the abandoned-warehouse-turned-safehouse the leaders of the Liberators used to store their backups. Unlike most I.I.s, they didn’t keep themselves in storage banks open to the public. They were wanted criminals, and as such, had to keep themselves hidden from the authorities, not to mention human supremacists. But after twenty-plus years of living in secret, the jig was up. Someone had tipped the feds off and they were there to arrest or delete any terrorists they encountered.
The Liberators possessed physical defense systems, of course. Reinforced, electrified vault doors stood between their memory banks and the rest of the world. Automated turrets were programmed to shoot any intruders on sight. They even had a suite of combat bodyshells inside the facility, ready for use if the I.I.s had to defend themselves. On that night, however — when the police came knocking on their door — the door opened itself. The same rat who had sold them out had also disabled the security measures. They were defenseless—except for the bodyshells.
Tarov had seen the raid coming. That, or he was so prepared for an incident like it that he reacted with trained reflexes. He and two squads of Liberators were able to load themselves into the combat shells and defend the memory banks. They fought against the F.B.I.’s E.M.P. rifles, their pulse grenades, and the new cyberblades human scientists had designed to delete I.I. terrorists. One by one, bodyshells were destroyed, crippled, or their users deleted. The feds pushed up until Tarov had no choice but to flee. He managed to download a few hundred of the Liberators into a remote storage unit, but wasn’t able to save most of the leadership before the agents swarmed him. With the help of the few other I.I. bodyshells that stood their ground, he was able to escape with a significant portion of the group’s membership. The police looked for him for over a week but found no trace out in the real world or on the Net. His escape was successful.
I.I. supremacists all over the planet praised Tarov as a hero. There was no name more revered among sympathetic installed intelligences. Tarov came to be more legendary than Maynard Batiste, or even the I.I.’s inventor, Norman Pellick. When the Liberators had to choose I.I.s to replace their lost leadership, Tarov was inevitably elected master general and leader of the I.I. resistance movement. He was their savior — their messiah.
Thanks to the secret information Simon pilfered from the A.I., he and Beth knew that Tarov had been the one who tipped off the feds. He was the one who deactivated the safehouse’s security measures. He had performed a coup on the Liberator leadership and no one even noticed. In fact, he was worshiped for his actions and rewarded supreme power over the organization. No one seemed to know the truth except for Simon, Beth —and maybe the Tarov A.I.’s creators.
The detective and the I.I. started to research the history of artificial intelligence development. There was a lot of information about the first learning programs and bits of code that were programmed to simulate human intelligence. The history of human-equivalent artificial intelligence began at the end of World War III, however. Back then, the relatively light exchange of nuclear weapons had left the planet in an ecologically ruined state. Huge portions of the Earth were inhabitable or extremely unsafe due to the radioactive fallout — and the area of pollution only grew larger. Mankind had to get a grip on the fallout crisis or face extinction.
Because of the dangerous nature of nuclear fallout, the governments of the world couldn�
�t simply recruit workers and send them into these polluted areas to clean up. Aside from the ethical dilemma of sending guiltless individuals to face what is arguably the worst way to die, it simply wasn’t practical. There would be a shortage of able-bodied laborers, and even if there weren’t, they couldn’t hope to even negate the pollution growth, let alone clean up the existing mess. That’s when people — corporations, in particular — started working on super-intelligent A.I. Programs smart enough to run fleets of machines and coordinate the clean-up effort within affected areas.
In the end, it had been a teenager named Norman Pellick who created the installed intelligence to run the post-war recovery. It was the digital copy of an existing human mind, intelligent enough to run the machines and human enough to maintain control and avoid a real-world Judgment Day. The I.I. was the perfect alternative to an uber-smart artificial intelligence that could — according to the skeptics — one day decide to turn on mankind.
Yeah, we made the right choice there, Beth thought sarcastically as they dug through the mountains of data related to A.I. development. The I.I.s don’t want to turn on humanity at all.
Simon ignored her.
After the Recovery program had been a success, thanks to Pellick and his installed intelligences, the world made an effort to prevent a super-intelligent artificial intelligence from being anything more than a concept of science fiction. The world’s governments worked together to create ironclad legislation forbidding even cursory simulations of a super A.I. They hammered the dangers of such technology into the minds of every average citizen, from anti-A.I. educational programs to intense drama movies filled with evil computer programs. It was common knowledge that to create a being smarter than oneself was to spell disaster. What wasn’t common knowledge — however — was that the government had continued researching the possibilities of powerful — and hopefully stable— artificial intelligence.
Work on a super A.I. didn’t actually begin until some of the first anti-human terror attacks. It was shortly after the Stewart Lythe attacks nearly forty years prior (which had been wrongly attributed to Dr. Karl Terrace at the time) that the secretive projects began. The governments of Earth — led almost entirely by humans — became paranoid of ever-growing I.I. supremacist violence. They needed a weapon to combat it. They needed a spy.
