The Installed Intelligence Trilogy Collection

by Phoenix Ward

  “Of course!” she answered. Her face was distorted with confusion. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know!” the young man replied. “I’m either in another simulation or this is really the Furnace. But I don’t know.”

  Tera’s expression grew concerned as the Clevingers entered the makeshift room.

  “He’s up?” Martin asked through the speaker in his wife’s head.

  Tera nodded, but didn’t say anything. Betsy’s face became one of inquisition.

  “Something wrong?” the old woman asked.

  Ethan slumped back down to his knees, then relaxed onto his bottom. His face was cold and hard to read; there were flashes of terror and confusion, but there were also moments of emotionless calm and almost joy. Betsy and Tera shared a worried look.

  Is anything even real? Ethan thought, burying his face into his arms. How can one tell? Just wait for another glitch?

  He looked over at the empty pod he emerged from. It looked even smaller from the outside — he wasn’t even sure how he fit in it. Just beyond it, he saw a second simpod. It was still full of the viscous green stuff. He could see a form floating within. He squinted through the goop that still clung to his eyelashes, but he couldn’t make out the other pod’s occupant.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, turning back to face Tera and the Clevingers.

  “King Hum,” Betsy explained. “He was a hostage in one of their simulations, just like you were.”

  “Why’s he still in there?”

  Tera and the woman with the speaker in her head shared another glance. Ethan felt a little upset, like he was being left out of an inside joke.

  “It’s going to be a bit more complex than that,” Betsy replied.

  “You see, they tricked the young monarch into letting them scan his brain — and create an installed intelligence from it,” Martin carried on from the skull-speaker. “We’re working on getting him out, but doing so with his organic body may be a different story.”

  Ethan looked back at the curled form in the simpod. After knowing who it was, he could see the subtle features of the young king. His heart dropped a little.

  “So this is definitely real?” he asked again, more to himself than to the others.

  Tera still answered, nodding. “Yes, Ethan,” she said.

  “They tried to trick you as well,” Martin explained. “They put you in an isolated simulation, created computer programs to emulate your friends. They tried to make you think that everything we’ve done together here was little more than a fever dream. But it was a trick, Ethan. You have to understand that.”

  “You do understand that,” Tera started, “right?”

  Ethan’s eyes shifted over to her. In his gut, he wanted to call her out for being another simulacrum, but in his heart, he was glad to see her. Even if this was just another layer of the seemingly endless mind game being played on him, he took relief in Tera’s presence. If everyone was a phony, he figured he’d rather be with the phony he liked most.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I understand. I was fooled.”

  “They put an astounding amount of effort into that deception, young man,” Betsy said. “Don’t fault yourself for that.”

  They stood in silence for a moment before Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowing in pain.

  “My head,” he groaned. “Can I get some water?”

  “Of course,” Betsy replied. “And might I suggest a shower afterward? We can also give you something for the headache.”

  “Thank you,” Ethan replied.

  He took a step forward to the hallway he knew led to the bathrooms, but his leg gave out for a moment and he needed to steady himself. Tera swooped in and put a hand under his arm.

  “I gotcha,” she said. “Let me help you down the hall.”

  He thought about protesting, but kept his mouth shut and nodded graciously.

  She let him use her as a crutch as they clanged down the metal walkway. She could feel some of the muscles under his skin spasming, like his brain was sending them a million contradicting signals at once.

  “What did they do to you?” she asked. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

  “They made me think you weren’t real,” he replied. “They made me think everything was a lie. And I believed it. They broke me, Tera. They fucking broke me.”

  She said nothing, gazing at him with sad eyes as she helped him around the corner to the washroom. He stopped at a water fountain and drank for over a full minute. He rose with a content sigh, water leaking down to his chin.

  “You got it from here?” Tera asked.

  He nodded. “Thanks, Tera,” he said. Then he slipped into the washroom, leaving her alone in the hallway.

  Ethan stumbled into one of the shower stalls just to the left of the entrance, twisted the knob until water came out, and stepped into the stream. It was freezing cold; the air caught in his lungs while his muscles protested the temperature. He exhaled hard as he embraced the water, doing nothing to move the knob to a warmer position. He let his skin grown cold, then numb while the clumps of simpod mucus fell from his body.

  He looked down and watched the largest of the clumps slowly shrink under the stream of water. And, for a moment, he swore it blinked in and out of existence.

  Faithless

  King Hum was falling. He no longer had any control over his flight. Instead, he plummeted straight down into the valley he was just peacefully drifting above. He tried to alter his course, but nothing he did had any impact. He was powerless.

  The young monarch wanted to scream out for help, to raise his arms and shield his face from the approaching ground, but he could do nothing. Nothing but watch. Before long, he crashed into the earth below, a cloud of dust rising up to the heavens around him.

  With strain, he tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move. It was like he was wearing a suit made of dark matter, impossibly heavy. He could still feel everything, but he was powerless to do anything with it.

  He felt a presence return above him. It was the redheaded man, appearing in the sky again.

  “We’re trying to get you out of the simulation now, Hum — ”

  “King Hum,” the young monarch interrupted.

  “Right, King Hum,” Gauge corrected himself. “I have some bad news, though.”

  “As long as it gets me out of here, I’ll hear it.”

  Gauge took in a deep breath before continuing. “Your body is dead,” he said.

  King Hum waited for a moment, expecting the redheaded giant to elaborate. After a minute, Hum asked, “It’s dead?”

  “That’s right,” Gauge replied. “Nidus and the Council, they — they installed your brain onto a computer and destroyed your body. We can bring it out of the simpod, but at this point, it’s just a corpse.”

  “I don’t understand,” King Hum said. A tinge on panic worked its way through his veins.

  “You’re an installed intelligence now,” Gauge said. “They tricked you into shedding your body. Now you’re like me and my friend Tera.”

  King Hum didn’t reply. The world felt like it suddenly shrunk around him, like it was a plastic bag being pulled over his face. He needed to breathe but didn’t feel like he could. Like he had no mouth to take air in through, no nostrils. He felt the terror grip every part of his body — or rather, his consciousness. Being unable to stand up only made it worse.

  Everything went dark.

  Vision returned to King Hum’s eyes. The colors and forms around him were so different from the valley and the giant redhead he had just been surrounded by. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lighting. It appeared that he was inside a windowless room, or deep underground.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “You’re in the Furnace,” a familiar voice said. Turning, the young king saw a robotic man, but the voice was indistinguishable. It was Gauge. “Welcome to the headquarters of the People’s Union.”

  King Hum looked at the ce
iling, which towered so high above their heads that he half expected there to be clouds between them and it. Lowering his gaze, he recognized Ethan and Tera, who watched him with concerned expressions. There was another woman there he didn’t recognize. She was a bit older than the others and had a strange device embedded into the side of her head. He eyed her with such fascination that he almost missed Adviser Orram standing in the corner of the room.

  “Not the welcoming party I was expecting,” he said. “I must have missed a lot.”

  As he spoke, something caught his attention from the corner of his vision. At first, he thought it was another bodyshell standing behind him that he hadn’t noticed, about to wrap its arms around him. Then, with an icy drop of his heart, he realized the motion came from himself. Looking down, he didn’t see the Opesian clothes he was used to wearing, nor his own naked flesh. Instead, he saw a machine. A bodyshell. His bodyshell.

  With an expression of horror, he looked up at the others. None of them seemed surprised by his predicament, but they seemed pained by it — especially Adviser Orram.

  “What’s become of me?” he asked.

  “Like we were saying,” Gauge said after a moment of solemn silence, “we weren’t able to save your body. But that doesn’t mean you won’t still be able to use one.”

  King Hum lifted his mechanical hand and stared at it. He observed the little wires, the interlocking metal pieces, the rubber and polymer that separated the joints. His face was cold — his emotions impossible to decrypt. Everyone watched him, not daring to interrupt the moment.

  “I’m a fool,” King Hum said, lowering his arm. “I should have seen through the illusion.” He looked over at Adviser Orram. “I’m not fit to be a king anymore.”

  “Nonsense, your grace,” the older man said. “You were chosen by God and the spirit of the Earth.”

  “And I was just tricked by them, too,” King Hum said, his voice louder than Ethan or Tera had ever heard it. “Please, Orram — leave me. And do not allow any of our people to see me. Not like this.”

  “As you wish,” Adviser Orram replied, bowing slightly. “However, I will continue to serve you. I have no plans of — ”

  “I said leave me,” the young king ordered once more. He turned his gaze away from the others. On the other side of the room, he saw two containers. One was empty, the lights extinguished, but the other was still filled with green goo. He could see a form floating in the middle of it.

  He took a step toward the simpod, leaning forward to see the face inside. He already knew what he would see but it still took him by surprise.

  “So this is it,” he said aloud, gazing at his own face through the glass of the simpod. “This is what death looks like.”

  “I’m sorry, King Hum,” Gauge said. The others remained silent.

  He turned back to them. “I’d like to have it put to rest, if I may,” he said.

  “Of course,” Betsy said, nodding her augmented head. “Whatever you need.”

  “Good,” King Hum replied. “I’m going to need all the help I can get to destroy Reverend Nidus and the Council.”

  Scheming

  King Hum was the last to join the table, a timid look across his artificial features as he took his seat. His chair scraped across the metal floor, causing Ethan to cringe in response. The others waited patiently for the young monarch to get comfortable. He frowned as he did so.

  A giant map of Shell City was spread out over the table. The Clevingers stood at one end, Betsy balancing herself up on her arms as she leaned against the surface.

  “That’s everyone, right?” Martin said through his wife’s speaker. “Okay, good. We can get started. Gauge?”

  The I.I. rebel seemed caught off guard for a moment before rising to his feet and looking around at the table with a serious expression.

  “Our plan is to take the Pavilion in a full frontal assault,” Gauge started, scanning the faces surrounding him. “The first step to doing that is to create a diversion at the city gates.”

  “What kind of diversion?” King Hum asked.

  “A secondary attack on all of the routes in and out of the city,” Gauge answered. “It’s just for show. Hopefully we can divide their forces and make it easier for our guys to take the Council’s storage unit.”

  “Then allow me to offer my troops for the distraction,” the young monarch said. His optical lights stared at Gauge without blinking.

  “How do we move our people to the Pavilion without giving away our hand?” Tera asked. “I’m sure seeing hundreds of rebels storming their memory banks will give away our deception. Not to mention how likely it is we’ll be stopped before ever getting to the Pavilion.”

  “That’s why we’re going to take them by surprise through the geothermal ducts,” Gauge explained. “There are a couple of routes that run from the Furnace to the Pavilion; enough to sneak an entire army up there without the Council being any the wiser.”

  “What will keep the soldiers away from the Pavilion once we take them by surprise?” Adviser Orram said. “They’ll surely disengage our people at the gate when you play your hand.”

  “By then it’ll be too late,” Gauge explained. “But we do have a plan to delay their response.”

  Betsy took over. “Martin and I are channeling the last of our wealth into weapons for the citizens of Shell City,” she started. “We want to arm as many people as possible; especially if they’re sympathetic to our cause. That means putting a gun in the hands of every slum dweller we can. That way the Council troops will have an entire city of angry, armed citizens between them and the Pavilion.”

  “Maybe we can push it further and start a riot,” Ethan said. “Shouldn’t be hard to do. It’s practically a powder keg down there. We just need to strike a match, so to speak.”

  “If we place a few actors in the right place, a riot is all but certain,” Tera commented. “The slum dwellers are itching for a reason to fight against the cops. I can show you where they will be the most effective.”

  “Perfect,” Martin said, his voice buzzing a little in his wife’s skull speaker. “That should cover the diversion.”

  “Won’t you be a little thin on the Pavilion without my army?” King Hum asked. “Even with a distraction, there should be plenty of resistance there.”

  “The repairs on the gunships are almost done,” Gauge started. “They’ll be ready to provide some air support once we start storming the Pavilion. If we can take care of any anti-aircraft defenses when we first start the attack, they can rain fire upon the enemies.”

  The table fell silent. Every pair of eyes turned down to the map of Shell City before them. King Hum nodded for a moment before breaking the silence.

  “It sounds like we have a plan,” he said matter-of-factly. If he felt any joy over that, no one could tell. “We can win this.”

  There was a bit of scattered applause and cheering, made weak by the small number of attendants. Confident gazes met each other as they considered the task before them.

  Betsy opened her mouth to speak, but was stopped by a low rumbling and a slight vibration in the Furnace’s metal floor. Everyone turned toward the sound, which came from the southern part of the chamber.

  “What was that?” Ethan asked.

  No one answered. They listened as a deafening boom split open the man-made cavern.

  Bits of stone and debris scattered out onto the floor, clattering as they fell over the room and everyone in attendance. A few people were thrown from their chairs while others leaped from them instinctively. Ethan was knocked down and a fist-sized chunk of earth slammed into his eye. Tera ducked under the table. The concussions of debris pounding the table above her threatened to blow out her auditory receivers.

  Dust hung over the room once the percussion of destruction ceased. Ethan groaned a little as he felt the wound on his face. He heard several others making similar sounds, most of them outside the meeting room.

  Tera remained under the table for a m
oment after the debris stopped falling, waiting and listening. The rebels all stayed still, anticipating what might come next while trying to see through the solid cloud of dust. When the silence went on for too long and Tera considered standing up, a loud pop ripped through the room, followed by several others. It took a few seconds for the I.I. woman to realize they were gunshots. She covered her head and stayed low.

  Ethan’s uninjured eye went wide as he saw a couple of tracer rounds crash into the wall behind him. He shielded himself with his arm as he felt stone chips blown over his face. The gunfire filled his ears and caused his temples to throb like a bass drum.

  Screams broke out, melding with the gunshots to create a melody of terror. Hundreds of footsteps surrounded the meeting room, coming from both the sundered wall and farther into the Furnace.

  Ethan dared to look up and saw the attackers emerge from the hole in the wall, parting the dust as they marched forward. Most of them were bodyshells, white and pristine like a platoon of Stormtroopers. They advanced with almost robotic precision, their weapons raised and opening fire, despite being unable to see through the dust.

  “They’ve found us!” Gauge shouted from somewhere among the chaos. “Fall back! Fall back!”

  Tera scrambled from under the table, darting ahead of a pair of Council bodyshells before they could spot her. She tried to follow Gauge’s voice, who seemed to be moving away from the breach and deeper into the cavern. As she started to move, she spotted some familiar forms weaving between the Council soldiers.

  Shedders, she realized.

  Just as she recognized the cultists and spotted the guns they carried, a loud pounding sound came from the breach in the wall. She stopped for a moment when she caught the source of the commotion through the dust haze. Her jaw dropped as the form became clearer.

  It was shaped like a human — at least, the top half was. The bottom half of the creature was composed of eight spider-like legs made of jet black metal. Each step made a terrible clacking sound on the Furnace’s floor.

  Though it took the form of a man, it was at least four times larger. It seemed to be composed of a few different humans, its flesh made of different shades of pale, sewn together like some grotesque Frankenstein’s monster. It towered a good twelve feet above the other soldiers, it’s huge mouth locked in a permanent open-mouthed grin. A sickly purple tongue hung below a noseless face. Its eyes were solid black, like two pieces of charcoal.