by C. A. Gray
“They said they’ll put out the fire when they’re done,” Jake told me when he wandered back in our direction, indicating Giovanni and Liam, “and you’ve got another long day of script writing ahead of you tomorrow, Becca. Want to call it a night?”
“Sure, I guess,” I said, with one more glance at Liam and Giovanni, deep in conversation by the mouth of the cave. I wanted to know what they were talking about, but the conversation looked private, and I hadn’t been invited to join. Reluctantly, I allowed Jake to pull me away.
Chapter 27
I woke early the next morning to get a head start on Giovanni’s script. After I showered and made myself presentable, I watched the footage of Giovanni’s interview on Madeline. I decided to turn this one into a frame story: instead of showing Giovanni’s entire interview at the end, I’d chop it up, giving his own background at the beginning, and then once he introduces the characters of the father and son, the interview would fade into the live action sequences of the story.
I’d scarcely gotten that far when it was time for breakfast.
Nearly everyone was already at the table, except Liam, Val, Andy, and Alex. I assumed this meant the former two were in the kitchen cooking, and the latter two were off being sulky, separately. So I was stunned to see Alex emerge from the kitchen, looking like a Second Age magazine cover. She bore a casserole dish in both hands, with an apron wrapped around her tiny, perfect waist. Andy trailed out of the kitchen after her like a lost puppy. Mom and Mack exchanged a look, and I raised my eyebrows too.
“Alex?” I asked, uncertainly. “You… can cook?”
Alex set the casserole dish down in front of Francis with an alluring sway of her hips, favoring him with a flirty smile that was still on her face when she turned to me.
“Of course,” she chirped with uncharacteristic brightness, as if she were channeling a 1950s housewife.
“Cooking is merely edible chemistry,” Francis volunteered, “all one need know are a few basic principles—”
“I know, I know. Liam’s told me,” I cut him off. “Speaking of which, where is Liam?”
On cue, the basement door opened, and Liam emerged first, speaking in a low voice to Val, who was right behind him. Whatever they were saying looked confidential, because they stopped talking before any of us could hear. Don’t leap to conclusions, I reminded myself. I caught Liam’s eye, and he gave me a distracted smile, which I struggled to return before looking away.
Except for meals, the group dispersed to work on our own various projects for the rest of the day. I spent most of it in my room—as much as I longed to remain accessible, if I wanted to actually get anything done, I knew I needed to be alone.
Next on my task list was to figure out the cast. This was live action rather than animated, so they needed to be able to act, even more so than in “The Renegades.” I’d try to get Liam to play the son. But the father would have to be either Giovanni himself, Rick, or Mack, and one of the others would need to play Justice Wallenberg. I didn’t know if any of them could act, though I figured Mack would probably be decent. In my script, the father’s wife was also in the story: that would have to be Dr. Yin, since I knew Mom wouldn’t do it.
Every few hours, I allowed myself to take a break, and wander through the compound. I told myself this was for the sake of resetting my creativity, but I knew the real reason. I wanted to talk to Liam. Maybe then he’d tell me whatever he’d told Giovanni last night, and Val this morning. And maybe, just maybe, I’d have another chance to say what I should have said to him two nights ago.
Jake spent the day upstairs working on the film’s score—“I took a class on film scores, and I wrote a midterm and final project, so I mean… I sort of know how to do it?” he gave me a comical grimace. But Jake was a wizard with all things musical and artistic; I knew whatever he came up with would be spectacular. Plus, RecordingStudio came with plenty of pre-recorded loops that he could just mix and match, in a pinch.
At another break, I wandered into the den, where Larissa and Nilesh sat at a large wooden table, bickering over whatever code they seemed to be writing both on paper and on one of the netscreens they took from downstairs. They both looked up and waved at me as I passed through. I almost turned around and left, not terribly interested in joining their coding debate, when I saw Andy slumped over in a chair on the sun lamp porch, staring at another netscreen with a neutral expression of utter boredom. I knocked on the sliding door and slid it open.
“Hey,” I said, “just wanting a change of scenery?”
“Liam kicked me out of the basement,” Andy muttered.
I blinked at him. “What? Why?”
Andy shrugged. “Said he needed to concentrate and the projector distracted him.”
I turned back around, looking at Larissa and Nilesh. “Is he down there by himself now?”
“Was when I left.” Andy turned his attention back to the screen, clearly done with me.
I lingered for a moment, watching him, wishing I could rouse him to some kind of action. But I wanted to talk to Liam more, so I turned and left the den, heading for the basement.
Liam was indeed alone, hunched forward over a netscreen in a position that looked like it would hurt his shoulders later. He jumped a little when I opened the door.
“Bec! You scared me.”
“Sorry.” My heart began to beat faster. I didn’t have a plan of what to say exactly—I was just going to let the conversation go where it went. “What are you doing?”
He glanced at me, opened his mouth, and hesitated. “Research,” he said at last.
“On what?”
“Maybe nothing.” He shrugged, and swiveled to face me with a forced smile, at the same time closing the cover of his netscreen so I couldn’t see it. “What’s up?”
I blinked at him, hurt, but trying not to show it. I acted nonchalant. “Oh nothing, I was just taking a break from the script.”
“Oh yeah, how’s that going?” His words were friendly, but his expression seemed cagey, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. My hurt became resolve. He’d tell me, if I probed him enough. Liam had always confided in me before.
“It’s going fine,” I said, thinking about how to wind the conversation back to whatever was on his netscreen. “I thought you could play the son in Giovanni’s story, the one who dies on the operating table in end?”
“Oh.” He hesitated, and I saw his eyes flick towards his netscreen involuntarily.
“Unless you’re… busy?”
He shrugged. “What about Andy? I hear you and Jake have been trying to figure out how to get him involved somehow. Do you think he could do it?”
“You don’t want to act now?” I blurted before I could stop myself. “What ever happened to that whole conversation we had here yesterday, about the ‘life you might have had,’ and how much fun you thought it was?”
“No, I do want to,” he backpedaled, “I just thought it might… be a chance to give Andy something to do, that’s all.”
I was tired of this. I gestured at the closed netscreen. “You’re acting weird, Liam. What are you hiding?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Bec. But this doesn’t concern you, at least not yet. If that changes, I’ll let you know.” He must have seen the hurt flash across my face, so he set the closed netscreen aside on the table, and leaned forward, finally giving me his full attention. “Hey. I’m just trying to protect you here.”
“I don’t want you to protect me, I want you to trust me! Whatever happened to ‘no more secrets’?” I demanded, referencing a promise we’d made to each other back in San Jose.
Maybe I was overcompensating for my body’s strong response, combined with the hurt that he’d told Val and not me. But I set my jaw and just said, “Fine.” I stood up to retreat, but he grabbed on to my hand firmly.
“Nope. Not leaving on that note.” He tugged, and forced me to sit back down.
>
“You just said you can’t tell me anything. What else is there to say?”
Liam sighed and rolled his eyes. “Geez. You can be so perverse sometimes.”
“Well?” I demanded. “You told Val this morning, didn’t you?”
He blinked, taken off guard, and searched my face. “Is that what you’re upset about?” Then, with the tiniest of smiles, “Are you jealous?”
“Of course I’m not jealous. You can tell whoever you want, whatever you want. I don’t care.” It flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. Denial was just so automatic.
“That was convincing,” he observed dryly.
“I have to get back to work,” I huffed, and got to my feet again.
He called after me, exasperated, “And you’re mad at me for not being totally forthcoming? Really?”
He was right. Of course he was right. This was the exact opposite of what Julie told me to do. But if he was going to confide in Val and not me, what was I supposed to make of that?
“What’s wrong?” Madeline asked when I reentered my room. I’d managed to make it from the basement to my door without anyone else seeing me.
“Nothing,” I choked out, hot tears gushing over my cheeks now. “I’m being ridiculous.”
“No you’re not,” Madeline cooed, rolling over to me and stroking my arm with her metal hand. “I know you’re not. Why are you crying?”
“I am,” I insisted, wiping my tears and trying to staunch their flow. “I don’t even know anything, I’m just—assuming.” I told her about Liam’s secrecy, how I’d seen him talking to Val that morning at breakfast, but he wouldn’t tell me what he was working on.
“Are you sure he told her?” Madeline asked reasonably.
“Well—no, but yes!” Madeline blinked at me, perplexed, and I rushed on, “No, I didn’t hear them, but I know Liam. When he gets focused on something, he’s all in. That’s what he wants to talk about, and it’s all he wants to talk about. They wouldn’t have been having an intense, secretive conversation about anything else.”
“And this means…?”
“They’re together again,” I concluded, my voice cracking.
Madeline shook her head. “But… two nights ago, Liam all but told you…”
“I don’t know, I can’t explain it either!” I burst out. “Or maybe they’re not ‘officially’ together again yet, but it’s headed there. Of course it is! How could it not be? It was inevitable from the moment she arrived!”
Madeline fell silent for a long moment. “What would make you happy?” she asked at last.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I moaned miserably. “I want to know what he’s working on, I guess. But I want him to tell me, I don’t want to find out any other way!”
“That’s… all?” she asked, confused. “Nothing to do with him and Val?”
“Well, okay. I want him to knock on the door right now, sweep me into his arms, and tell me he loves me. Can you arrange that?” I rolled my eyes, and gave her a watery smile. I saw her digital eyes flashing back and forth, like she was running possibilities, so I interjected, “I’m kidding, Madeline. I mean, I’m not kidding, that is what I want. But nobody but Liam can make that happen.”
“Or… you?” she ventured tentatively. “Is it possible he thinks he’s already told you that, and now he’s just waiting for you to respond?”
I shook my head, and stared forlornly at the ceiling. “I was so obvious just now, Madeline. It was humiliating. Trust me, he knows exactly how I feel. But every time I turn around, he’s with her! Just like Andy always was with whoever the girl was at the time. I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me!” I sniffed. “Okay. Stop it,” I told myself firmly. “Not you, me,” I added to Madeline, “I have to get back to work. This is stupid—”
Someone rapped on my door. I froze, and glanced at Madeline. Her already enormous eyes widened even further. The knock came again.
“Answer it!” Madeline hissed.
I wiped my face self-consciously, heart in my throat, and pulled the door open. It was Nilesh. I tried not to show my disappointment.
“Becca, come downstairs, Halpert released another address. Matt just sent it over on the Commune!”
He took off, presumably to alert the others. I glanced at Madeline, ran back to my bathroom to splash water on my face to make it look like I hadn’t been crying, and then followed Nilesh down to the basement.
Nearly everyone was already assembled by the time I got there. Liam stood in the back of the room and watched me as I descended the stairs to the basement, his face a mask of concern. I knew that the concern was not for me, though—it was surely just in anticipation of what we were about to learn from Halpert’s address. But he kept his eyes on me, so I approached him. When I got close enough, he reached an arm out and pulled me in for a hug. It was a distracted sort of hug, though: once I was in his arms, I saw that his attention was already elsewhere, focused on the spot in the room where Halpert’s holograph would soon appear.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into my hair. “Forgive me?”
I swallowed the lump that rose again in my throat, and nodded. He let me go then, but kept one of my hands, raising my palm to his lips and glancing back at me with a twinkle in his eye. I blushed. That had been a really weird thing for me to do.
“Okay, here we go!” called Nilesh.
Giovanni turned off the lights, and Halpert’s three dimensional image appeared in the middle of the room with us.
“Citizens of the Republic, today I bring you wonderful news,” he said, arms open wide as if encompassing the whole world. “General Specs has built and tested numerous models of the De Vries prototype, and it has indeed shown development of both synthetic emotion and creativity.”
“Of course it has, it was already created twenty years ago,” Liam muttered beside me, his arms now crossed over his chest.
Halpert went on, “Using the De Vries prototype, General Specs has gone on to build a creative, emotional bot called Jaguar, whose core program is simply to increase her own reasoning and learning abilities, and distill that capability down into a software upgrade for all other preexisting bots.”
I felt Liam freeze. My own stomach felt like it had dropped out from beneath me, as well. I leaned into him, the weight of my shoulder pressing into his arm. He stood rigid, transfixed in horror.
“Jaguar is already getting smarter by the day. She will soon become the world’s first true superintelligent being: a machine with intelligence exponentially beyond that of any other human or robot yet in existence. Once she achieves this, we have every confidence that she will be able to transfer her ‘super brain’ to all other machines, leading to an ultimate solution to humanity’s lingering problems of clean water, poverty, hunger, disease, space colonization, and perhaps even mortality. With superintelligence, anything is possible.”
When the address finished, the room went dark. But nobody moved to turn on the lights, and nobody spoke.
“So, this is bad, right?” said Julie at last, very slowly.
No one even answered her at first. Then Mom finally said, her voice dull, “Yes, Julie. This is bad.”
Another long pause. Jake asked, “So… how bad?”
Liam cleared his throat, and spoke with effort. “We might have weeks. Maybe a month or two, if we’re very lucky.”
With that, a few people began to shift in their seats, standing and shuffling toward the stairs.
“How many views did Rebecca’s and Jake’s film get so far?” asked Mack, as Giovanni and Dr. Yin made their way up the stairs. They stopped walking to listen. “Are we getting any traction with that at all?”
In response, Nilesh silently made his way to one of the netscreens, and typed in a few commands on the Commune. He frowned.
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” he murmured, typing some more.
“What?�
� asked Francis.
“Matt says… he didn’t air it, because he never got the file. He thought we didn’t send it on purpose because we wanted to delay it for some reason.”
“What?” Francis repeated, irritated now, as he muttered under his breath, “I’m surprised Matt has the ability to dress himself in the morning.” He crossed the room in a few strides to where Nilesh sat, and barked, “Move!”
Nilesh raised his hands in the air and obediently vacated the seat. Francis slid into it, typing, pausing, frowning, clicking, and rubbing his face.
“What’s wrong?” Mom finally asked in exasperation.
“The upload was cancelled on our end,” Francis murmured. “That… makes no sense.”
“Well, send it again!” Mom declared, tossing her hands up, “and I want those upgrades done ASAP, Liam and Larissa. Giovanni and Ana,” she pointed at them, still lingering on the stairs, “meet me in the den and give me updates on the progress of your virus.” She sighed, looking around at all of us. “We need to start a revolution. And as Liam says—we’ve got about two weeks to do it.”
As the room dispersed, Nilesh joked weakly, “No pressure!”
Chapter 28
Mom and Mack went upstairs to join Giovanni and Dr. Yin. Liam wandered away from me with a faraway look on his face, his brow knitted. I watched him, trying to guess what was going on inside his head. Val jumped up from the couch and ran after him, but he didn’t seem to see her any more than he saw me.
My eyes fell on Alex, who stood aloof in the back of the room, expressionless. Then they flicked to Francis, still comming Matt. Then back to Alex. A prickle of suspicion rippled down my spine, like a cold droplet of water.
She deleted the film.
Who else would have done it? Who else even could have done it?
I stood rooted to the spot, as this revelation hit me. What did that mean? Was she just doing it to get even with us… or was there more to it than that?
