by T. K. Malone
Croft sat down and blew across his steaming mug. “Banks is familiar with the terrain. He was here in a day and was well-supplied. No, Banks was stationed around here, somewhere, either waiting for this exact event or protecting something.”
“Or someone,” said Byron.
“But,” said Connor, “surely you’d have been aware of another force in your territory?”
Croft scoffed. “We rely on our funds from the grid cities themselves; do you think they’re generous? The SDF barely functions—it’s not a news pull. We blow up no cities; we assassinate no enemies. Castoffs—that’s all I was furnished with—all the troops got as leaders. So, if you’re expecting some genius military-mind to be sitting behind this desk, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’m one of those castoffs.”
Connor looked across at Byron. He appeared to be digesting the information. “So, essentially…” he muttered.
“Essentially, you’re protected by a group of soldiers who are either too incompetent, too insolent, or too damned flawed to get into The Free World army.”
“Yet,” Byron said, “you held out for four days against a superior force wielding superior weapons.”
Croft smiled. “I never said we were shit.”
“No, you didn’t.” Byron drank his coffee down. “Tell me, you didn’t answer my question. Where did your orders come from—the ones which told you to stay outside?”
Croft shrugged. “Command.”
Byron tapped his knee. “How?”
“Same way they always came; I got an email.”
5
Connor’s Story
Strike time: plus 6 days
Location: Project Firebird
“What’s your AI done?” Charm raged, clattering through the studio door. He drew to a halt, hands on his hips. Connor looked up from his mixing desk.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Somehow, all the AIs were suddenly up and running. Somehow, someone got into the computer systems and took my blocks off. It’s taken Kirk’s team all night to restore order.”
“Eh? What?” Connor stammered, confused, not quite knowing the answer himself. “All the AIs?” That couldn’t be—Sable’s presence was still lurking in his mind.
Charm stood stock-still. “Well, not all.” At which he swirled around and shut the door. “Not all, Connor, but you know that already, don’t you?” He went to the coffee machine and poured himself one. “Not all, although I asked him to, but, well…” Charm looked up at the ceiling. “He said he couldn’t. Said it was beyond his team’s abilities. Tell me, Connor, what is inside your mind?”
“I…”
“Well? Cough it out… Ah, you don’t know, do you?”
Connor looked at him, somewhat bemused. “What don’t I know?”
Charm pulled up a chair and sat down. “Hmm. Is that you talking or… What’s her name? Sable, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Like what? Like she only talks in your mind? What if she is your mind? What then, Connor?”
“What do you mean?”
“Kenny, where’s Kenny?”
“He’ll be back in a minute.”
“Speaking of whom, don’t you ever wonder?” Charm smiled, mischievously, over the rim of his cup. “Don’t you ever wonder what particular quality Kenny has that saved his life?” He put his cup down and leaned over the desk, cupping his hands to his mouth. “While he’s not here…” he whispered.
Connor blinked in a vain attempt to unscramble his brain. Charm had a habit of confusing him, and today was no different. “Kenny?”
“Yes, Kenny. What’s up with you, Connor? You’ve gone quite pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“Kenny Holmes got selected because he made me laugh. There,” and Charm slapped his knee, “I’ve said it. My one indulgence in a hectic life is Kenny Holmes.” Charm beamed and picked his coffee cup up. “I have cameras follow him everywhere. The man’s a walking calamity. Now, what I don’t want you to do is let Tuttle in on the secret. Have you any idea how many files that man has cycling through his photographic mind trying to find the answer to that question: ‘Why Kenneth Holmes?’ I know he’s been asking himself. And no,” at which he wagged his finger, “no, no, no, I don’t want him put out of his misery.”
“You watch Kenny…all the time?”
Charm took a sip of his coffee. “All the time? No. Just the highlights—Kirk’s people put the best bits together for me. So, do we have a deal?”
Connor took a long breath. “I suppose. What you said, about Sable, what did you mean by that?”
“What? The bit about who’s really speaking?” Charm put his coffee down and stretched his arms. “AI—artificial intelligence, Connor—the clue’s in the name. It worries me, Connor, worries me a lot. Tell me, what’s to stop it taking over? Why doesn’t it just jump in the old driving seat and shove your feeble brain out of the way?”
“Aren’t they limited—”
“Sandboxed, Connor. That’s the term. Isolated; whatever. But how does that truly work? How can they be isolated if they interact? You know what I think? Let me tell you. I think that none of them, not a single one, Connor, has true artificial intelligence. I think it was all bull.”
“Then how do you explain all the—”
“Lies, Connor, Free World lies. Sure, you can have a little chip inside your head, but the notion it’s an artificial intelligence is just plain daft. If that were the case, well, people’s knowledge would grow exponentially. Tell me, apart from the only man in the whole compound without a supposed AI implant, who is becoming incrementally wiser by the day? And I’m telling you—I’ve seen the tapes—it’s not Kenneth Holmes. So, now we’ve established that, back to my original question: why did your AI remove all my blocks?”
“Why should it matter if they’re all so useless?”
“Useless? I didn’t say that. It matters for two reasons. Firstly, a ship, Connor, does not navigate well with four hands on its wheel. One solid, firm grip is all it requires. I note you aren’t denying it—quite the contrary.”
“She told me she couldn’t function.”
Charm’s face cracked into a grin. “I knew it. I knew it was her.”
“Will you put the block back on her?”
He laughed then, that deep and throaty laugh he’d let loose on the balcony a previous time. “Good god, no, why should I? How could I? No, Connor.” Charm got up. “Tell your AI; and I truly believe she is a bona-fide AI—the bona-fide AI, not just a diary or a doctor—tell her…” Charm opened the door, but then turned to Connor and smiled. “But of course, she can hear me. You have free rein, Connor. Sable has free rein; she’ll know what to do.” And with that, he left.
Sticks appeared to be in good spirits and certainly looked a lot better. Molly was sitting on the end of his bed, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up. They both stopped talking when Connor poked his head around the door.
“Up to another visitor?” he asked.
Sticks hesitated, then glanced at Molly and nodded. Molly looked at Connor, a furtive dart of a look, and quickly turned back to Sticks. “Yeah, come in,” Sticks finally managed. “Grab a seat.”
“How you feeling?” Connor asked, sitting down.
“We were going to ask you that,” Molly blurted out.
Connor looked from one to the other. “What?”
Sticks made a point of sitting up farther. “Look,” he said, as if that was all the explanation needed. “Look,” he repeated.
“What?”
Sticks slumped back down. “I was shot in the arm and the belly. True, the doctors say they were clean enough entry and exits, but they’re also saying I’ve healed way too fast. A day, Connor, and I’m nearly done. Well, I’m on the right road. They also can’t seem to mess with my medications, like my drip—nothing. They try, of course they try, but it just resets every time; overridden by
something ever since you did your…your thing. You know, that thing you did with your hand.” His stare told Connor what he was thinking, Molly’s too. Their stares told Connor they feared him.
“Just tell him the truth. I adjusted his meds,” Sable told Connor.
“It was my AI, Sable, she’s adjusted your meds, made them…”
“Tailored to his exact needs.”
“…Specific to your body, your… Look, I don’t know exactly what she did, but it seems to be working.” He tried a smile, but Sticks shrank away from him a little.
“Yeah, well, tell…Sable, tell her, ‘Thanks’.”
“My own AI blinked on and off for a bit,” Molly said. “But then, I’m kind of in Kenny’s camp—never really got on with them. The health thing’s good, but the rest, blah!”
Sticks shuffled back up, as if somehow Molly’s admission made him feel more comfortable with Connor. “Well, can’t pretend to understand what it’s all about. Kind of freaks me, the thought of something inside interfering ‘n all.”
“Exactly,” said Molly. “Besides, I didn’t really need one. Never could quite understand why they fitted one in me. Every day was much the same as the next. Personally, I think—no, I know—it was just a way for the government to keep tabs on everyone.”
“They could do that?” Sticks looked shocked. “Still, I suppose you were all important. Croft knew where we were mostly because we’d nowhere else to go. Every now and then we’d get chits to go to the bar up Morton, or Sendro Verde, or any of the others. Never allowed near Christmas, though—def’ off limits there.”
“Christmas?” Molly asked.
“Sure, some place up the valley, past Sendro. Full of bad types, Croft reckoned.”
“I was born in Christmas,” Connor said, Sticks’ mention of it dragging up foggy memories. “Don’t remember much about it now, but I know I was born there. Zac talked about the place a lot—him and Billy Flynn.”
“You weren’t born on the grid?” Molly muttered.
Connor shook his head. “Christmas, I’m sure of that. Like I said, the memories aren’t clear. Remember a small house in a clearing, though—well, its stoop and backyard. And I remember my dad’s big ole bike, and the roar as he’d come up the trail. Then we didn’t live there no more, and my dad didn’t come home…”
“You had parents? So, you aren’t—”
“A gridder? No, I suppose not. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it?”
Molly shivered. “Imagine having a child. Doesn’t bear thinking about. How would you know what to do? They always said parents transferred their bad traits on to their children—that’s why they took the eggs ‘n stuff. To me, like micro farming, it was just more efficient. Exact population control—no wastage, not too many girls, boys, etcetera. Everything functional, organized, safe.”
“Shoot,” said Sticks, “you won’t get no arguments off of me—my dad was a bastard.”
Molly looked at him. “Sorry, Sticks, I didn’t…”
“Like I said, you won’t get no arguments here. My folks couldn’t wait for me t’get ‘napped. They might just as well have hung a sign on my neck and tied me to the pillars of the old courthouse. They near pushed me in front of them, anyhow.”
“Where were you from?” Connor asked.
“Me? Place called Madison. A way from here, but much the same—all trees where I was from, ‘cept browner ‘n more golden—somehow nicer, you know? Warmer. I know that sounds wrong, a tree being just a tree ‘n all.”
“Sounds nice,” Molly whispered.
“Yeah, could’ve been. Still, The Free World ‘napped me and that’s that. Probably just as well, weren’t a lot to do ‘part from fish ‘n trap. Not that you’d need to do much more than that, but I had a pair of itchy feet, and they wanted to walk the world.”
“Did you get to see much of it? What’s it like?” Molly asked, and Connor now realized she’d never known anywhere apart from Black City. But then, he himself only had those murky, early years to fall back on.”
“Like?” Sticks looked up at the ceiling. “Guessing you’d never seen a tree up close until a few days ago, least not a proper one.” Connor realized Sticks’ fear had been taken away for the moment, and wondered if it had been for Molly, too.
“Y’know,” she said, shifting around to face Sticks, “when we first got out of the compound, through the door… No, just before that. Before that I’d planned to take the biggest gulp of fresh air ever. I wanted to drink in whatever I saw. But all I saw was mud and sandbags, and all I breathed in was dust and adrenaline. When I looked through those binoculars, I didn’t see the trees and mountains, just a little kid in a stockade, wandering around, looking lost.”
“Yeah.” Sticks reached out and took her hand. “If there’s a way, we usually fuck things up. Say, Connor, just how good is your AI?”
“What?”
“Well, it can heal me better than any doctor. Any chance we can get it to find a way outta here? You know, perhaps show Molly a more peaceful valley?”
Connor scoffed. “I’m sure Charm would have something to say about that.”
Connor lay on his bed, his room dark and quiet. Charm’s words played in his mind. But was it his mind or Sable’s now? How did he know who was who?
He clung to Christmas at first, remembering the small house he’d once known. He recalled crawling around on its bare boards, worn smooth by time, and sitting by a fragrant fire as the logs spat and sparks danced up the chimney flue. The old, quartered windows let in little light, stifled by worn net curtains, making the flames more vivid, almost alive.
Outside was the stoop, with its fat chairs he’d climb onto and their thick cushions he’d sink into. His father’s vast shadowy figure would often loom over him, chunky medallions bumping on Connor’s chin as he reached up for them, grabbing them, watching them glint in the waning sun.
And he remembered Zac constantly poking and tormenting him as he dragged him over those same floorboards, as he spun him around and made him cry and giggle. He remembered the rustling of the trees at night, and Zac’s voice, reassuring at first, then tense, telling him to keep quiet. And he saw the door to their small bedroom creaking open and his mother coming in, and her soothing voice as his eyes grew heavy.
He could remember little more of her, though. She’d been one with the shadows; always hiding in them, always quiet, like the mice which scurried over the smooth boards of the floor. She was the warmth on the chair on the stoop. She was the hand that slapped Zac’s away. She was as quiet as those mice, just the soft fall of her feet in the quiet of her day. He remembered his mother; she was the shadow.
“Am I still alive, Sable?” Connor asked.
“You are Connor Clay; you are alive.”
“But I did die, didn’t I?”
“You’re not dead now.”
“No.”
Connor shut his eyes, now back in the wastelands surrounding Black City. Zac; he was chasing after Zac. He needed his brother. Something was wrong—his mother wasn’t moving—but Connor was running, running through the driving rain. There were drones overhead, searching for something; they were hunting him down. A man tried to grab him, to stop him from running away. The man looked like a vagrant, a dark, shadowy man. Connor dodged past him and ran into a giant pipe, tripping on its black ribs, rolling farther in.
Zac and Billy had often vanished into that same pipe; Connor knew that, he’d watched them. He wished he’d brought a flashlight. The rainwater was running in, carrying him along. He couldn’t get a grip, couldn’t find his feet. But a light ahead lent him direction. It was the erratic sweep of a flashlight beam, like when his dad had ridden the trail back to the house, a funnel of light which signified safety. He crawled toward it.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice called out. “Is that you, Lester?”
He remembered those words now. She’d called him Lester. He’d begun to cry, wanted to scream out. Where was Zac? Was that his mother ahead? The v
oice sounded different somehow, strange, hollow. It couldn’t be his mother; she was lying on the floor back at their house, still and quiet.
“Hello?” the woman cried out again.
Connor found his feet and got up, steadying himself on the wall of the pipe. He stumbled toward the light, toward its sweeping cone.
“Lester?” she shouted again, and her light found his eyes, blinding him. He raised his arms to fend it off and tripped on the pipe’s ribbing, stumbling forward, losing his footing completely before crashing into something—a pole, a metal pole. Then his leading foot seemed to tread on nothing but thin air, and he grabbed the unseen pole, swinging around it. Reaching out with his other hand, he’d felt something, something he couldn’t grab a hold of before swinging back. His arm twisted around the pole and screamed in pain, his fingers just wanting to let go, but then he swung again and found something to grip, something thinner than the pole. It felt like a handle, one he now clung onto in hope, but it just gave way. Then there was a sound like metal sliding on metal, and he cried out.
The woman’s scream now echoed around him as the flashlight flickered high above, diminishing as he fell through the air, still holding the handle. He crashed into something hard, then foul water swilled around him as something else smashed into him. He screamed, his mouth filling with a liquid, with what he then saw was white and luminous water, but water which slid down his throat like oil. He stopped struggling and welcomed its embrace.
Connor jerked up from his bed, soaked in sweat.
“So, you see, you didn’t die.”
“Why do they say I did?”
“Because your body was still for a while. I let you adjust.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Sable, but you know that.”
“Sticks wants to know if you can find a way out of here.”
