by S A Asthana
“She ain’t such a super human, is she now?” a female voice crowed. “Always thought herself better.”
A spray of bullets filled the room. The Alpha soldiers jerked wildly as they took fire. Blood splattered Alice’s face and she cowered into herself. As bodies fell, she spied two robots at the other end of the docking bay. They fired indiscriminately. The machines had turned on the humans. Port Sydney caving under its own creations. Some soldiers returned fire. A few managed to take out one of the robots. It crashed with a loud thud. Its compatriot took revenge by shooting those bold enough to engage in the battle.
Bodies landed atop her. She was pinned under a heaping pile of corpses, engulfed in the stench of guts and shit. The storm ended as soon as it had begun. Silence. The attack-bots had infrared heat sensors, but she was tuned differently than the biological humans.
The remaining robot marched away and the heavy thuds of its feet waned.
She’d escaped the soldiers’ fates. Alice sighed, releasing the breath she’d been holding. With great effort she crawled out from under the bodies, her face, hair and hands smeared in blood. It was like her skin had been peeled off to reveal the muscles underneath. Frankenstein’s monster came to life.
Drums played in the distance. She shook her head as if to shake their noise from her ears. Those weren’t drums, just her heart thumping against her chest. Standing tall, she rubbed her cheeks. They hurt. Her jaw was injured. Alice couldn’t tell her blood from that of her soldiers. It smeared together across her face and body. Her mind still reeled. Everything was happening so fast. What should she do next? Should she visit the High Council? No. They’d be unhappy with the results. Mum was gone – oh, how she missed Mum. There was only one place that would give her solace now.
The Information Science Center spread away for a half-mile, its white space lined with rows of black servers, all nearly touching the high ceiling. This was her home, her place of comfort. It’d always been that way. The spinning processors, the blinking green and red lights, the whirring fans meant to cool the servers’ insides – this was her place of relief. Not the High Council. Or Bastien. Or anyone or anything else for that matter. No. She belonged here. A human in the machines. She grew up in here and admitted she may die in here.
Alice hobbled in, her boots leaving a trail of bloody prints. She winced as pain shot up her right leg with every step. The leg was broken – where exactly, she couldn’t tell. Her mind was foggy and not its sharp self. A movement in the corner of her swollen eye caught her attention. A little girl – a specter of her imagination. Herself, as ten-year-old Alice.
“You seem hurt,” the child said without expression as she toyed with a networking cable.
Alice nodded. “I am.”
The last time she’d hallucinated this ghost was when she’d brought Cube back to life and given him command of the other attack-bots. She’d prepared for the pending Nipponese invasion. Everything had been under control then. All was in order. Confidence had straightened her spine. But now she was a broken shell. That confidence had ebbed away, leaving behind an acrid loneliness. And fear.
“Will I ever find love?” the child asked, her brown eyes large with curiosity.
“Shut up!” Alice screamed, and bloody spittle trailed down the corners of her mouth. “You will never find love.” The specter looked on, her attention moving from Alice back to the cables.
“There is no such thing as love,” Alice whispered to herself. She was a mad woman, looking from left to right without purpose. A boom disrupted her. What the hell was that?
The sound had echoed at the end of the hall. “Who… who’s there?” Alice shouted.
Another boom reverberated. Then, another. Something was being hit. Something, like one of the servers. She limped on. Damn, her leg hurt. And her jaw too. Despite the pain, she made it to the last row. To her surprise, Bastien stood in front of a server. The machine stood tall, its exterior dented and beaten by the man. He punched a metal fist into the machine and circuitry sizzled. Sparks blew.
“B-Bastien?” she stammered. He turned to her, his eyes fiery as the sun. A scowl covered his face. The man’s ripped clothes clung to his lean, muscular frame. There was metal in places where there had once been flesh. “You’re alive. What are you doing back here?”
“Vengeance. I’m doing what I would have done when Crone asked me to conduct the purge. I would have, had I known about the importance of this server.” He pointed at the black tower. When she didn’t respond, he added, “It’s a critical piece of the High Council. Don’t you know?”
She nodded. Alice knew more about the guts of Port Sydney’s quantum computing than any other Sydneysider. The High Council’s weak points were a part of that understanding.
“I do know, but how… how do you know this?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He punched the server and its metal hull shrieked as it bent. “The real question is, will you try to stop me? You with your love for your precious High Council.”
There was a bite to his question – will she try to stop him? “No,” she said, her legs wobbly and barely able to support her. There wasn’t any love for the artificial intelligence – not anymore.
Bastien pulled back his fist and rammed it into the server. The tower creaked as it leaned and crashed, sparks sizzling across its body. Blinking lights waned. Plumes of smoke trailed from the machine as he struck a blow to the council. He faced her and said, “The first step is done.”
“You know about the panels,” Alice said, her breathing sharp. She winced as pain shot across her abdomen. Something was definitely broken.
Bastien nodded. “There are certain circuits running along the maintenance tunnels that need destroying.” He came face to face with her. “It is the only way. The High Council cannot survive.”
Shrieks echoed outside. Sydneysiders were dying, either at the hands of the humanoid robots or the clutches of the green fog. The end of Port Sydney.
“It’s all over for us Martians,” Alice said, her head down. “It’s all over for humanity. Whether you kill the High Council or not.”
“It didn’t have to be this way,” Bastien said through gritted teeth. His face was bright red and veins throbbed down his neck. “But I need to save whoever I can. The only way, the best way, is if that artificial intelligence is ended.”
“I played a part in this,” she said with long face. “I… I helped make it a reality.”
“You did. Two million people gone in a matter of minutes. Men, women, children, young, old – good, innocent people. Why? You asked me to help stop this very possibility from playing out, remember? Back in my apartment in Nippon One, you asked if I could kill Marie so humanity could avoid war. You knew what that war would mean, the mortal blow it would land on humankind. And yet, you end up being the AI’s biggest champion.”
She grabbed at his shirt. “Won’t you kill me now to take revenge?” Alice was tired and just wanted it to end. “Won’t you kill Frankenstein’s monster?” She had forgotten she was still part human – her genetics tied her to mankind no matter how much she resisted. Emotions were a part of that make-up. Remorse, regret – these were things Alice couldn’t help but feel. And now, they seared her mind. She wanted nothing more than to make it all go away. Forever.
Bastien clenched his fists. His eyes turned to thin slits and a snarl crossed his face. She’d never seen him like this – perhaps he was about to end her? He grabbed her neck with his hands and squeezed, a murderous rage burning bright his yellow eyes. Alice gasped but didn’t fight. She let him begin to drain life from her.
He removed his hands. “No, I will not kill you, Alice. I am not a monster. Only he decides your fate.” Bastien pointed upward.
“A god?” Alice asked, caressing her neck. “How can you believe in gods? With all that has happened?”
“I have to,” Bastien said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense to me in this senseless world.”
“Then, maybe… m
aybe I can be redeemed by your God.” She dropped her stare to the floor. “Maybe I can do something to stand tall again.” Salty tears burned the open wounds on her cheeks. Before she could say something more, a movement revealed itself in the corner of her eye. The mirage of her ten year old self again? No. This was green and vaporous.
The fog seeped into the Information Science Center. Its emerald bulges and shadowy cavities moved liked a ghost hell-bent on carnage. The miasma ballooned to fill the entryway, pushed along by blasts of air from the many vents – Port Sydney’s central temperature control system at work. Bastien’s eyes widened.
The main entrance was blocked. But she knew of another way out. An exit in the back that led to the maintenance tunnels. She might not have to be destroyed by this strange fog after all. Then something clicked inside her brain, a gear turned by a human-like conscience.
“There’s a door over there.” She pointed to the back wall. “It will take you into the maintenance tunnels.”
Bastien turned to run but stopped short of the door. Without looking back, he asked, “You’re not coming, are you, Alice?”
“No, Bastien. I cannot be saved.” She’d already resumed her painful limp, this time toward the fog. It was hard to tell whether he stayed and watched or whether he escaped before her end. A part of her imagined him looking on with tears. Perhaps he also cried at the prospect of what could have been between them. After all, he didn’t know she’d once planned to kill him.
Alice shook her head as she admitted she was truly beyond redemption. A monster in every sense of the word.
She stepped into the fog and her concerns broke away. A thousand bites spread across her body as her flesh and bones ripped into microscopic pieces. The woman born from a petri dish was no more.
CHAPTER 28: BELLE
The monster that called itself Father loomed large in the sickly green water like a mountain. It plodded along, its massive feet kicking up mounds of digital dirt on the ocean bed. He was a texture of brimming ones and zeros – a miasma in human form built from data. There were black caves where eyes, nose and a mouth should have been. And the hands displayed ten fingers each – an unnerving sight. A strange representation. Human in form, but still something completely other. What had Port Sydney created? No wonder Sydneysiders found themselves slaves to these strange beings.
Belle, in her microscopic state, swam up and down like a dolphin and approached the beast. Her plan was straightforward – enter it through some cavity as if she was a parasite. Once inside, she could release a slew of digital attacks from her arsenal. In such a manner, Father could be constrained at the least or completely neutralized at best. In the short time she’d been here, Belle had come to understand how to manipulate the body of water that held her. There were similarities in its underlying code to the vast blue ocean she’d played in. And as she became more accustomed to this new place, sharpening her use of its undulating data, she thought faster and reacted faster. No reason why she couldn’t hit faster too – in theory.
It was time to put that theory into practice. Belle swam straight up to Father’s gaping eye socket. The ghoulish artificial intelligence didn’t seem to realize she’d swam in, such was the work of her self-transparency command. She appeared nothing more than whirling shifts in the water itself.
Soon, she found herself deep inside the guts. Total darkness. She couldn’t see her own hands. A strange noise, as if thousands of processors spun wild, surrounded her. Superhuman thinking, without any of the human soul. Very unlike her. If anything, Belle was its antonym.
With a few commands, she began to enlarge by centimeters at first, then inches, and finally, feet. Belle glowed a fiery red. Transparence gave way to opacity. Her edges soon pushed against Father – he, it, whatever, growled like an animal. The plan was to tear him from the inside out, code by code, bit by bit. But he realized the attack and fought back. He pressed in his form so as to engulf Belle, the foreign entity, and crush her into non-existence. The battle of expansion against compression raged for some time.
Belle focused on the task and nothing else. If she’d been a biological human, her body would have been drenched in sweat. It was like moving a boulder. Memories emerged of her lifting an unconscious Bastien on Earth. She’d saved him then from a burning spacecraft. Now, she fought not just to save him, but whatever remained of mankind. A destitute, Parisian revolutionary turned into hope for all humans. When this war was over, perhaps she could lead whatever normal life was possible in this form? A life alongside the man who loved her, Bastien. The man she loved. She’d fallen for him in that desert outside New Paris. His righteousness and his strength were hard to forget. Perhaps the unrequited love could blossom one day despite the digital divide?
Father thrashed in their battle. Water churned to and fro as if it spun inside a whirlpool. He shouted, “Get out!”
Belle stayed the course, expanding further with each second. There were rips and tears in the black form. The light from the murky waters outside became more clear. Belle’s right arm pushed through inside Father’s right arm, and it filled the cavity. Soon, she appeared to wear a dark costume – a tight sweater and pants stitched from prickliness. She controlled the creature and its movements. A second later, the rips and tears took a toll on Father and pieces of his skin floated away like a shredded costume. Belle loomed large in a battle stance – feet set shoulder width apart. She’d won. Two of the three members were eliminated. A part of her wanted to thrust her giant fist up in celebration. But she remained stoic. Another threat approached in the distance.
The silhouette of a large creature became clear. It was the one who called himself Son. He, it, or whatever, charged her. The battle was far from over.
She zipped out of harm’s way, moving as if she was a lithe sprite despite her massive size. The creature turned, and water swirled about it like a vortex. The thing that called itself Son looked no different than Father – a shadowy form with gaping holes for eyes, nose and mouth. A demon born of code. “I forecast your end in the next few seconds,” it bellowed.
It morphed into a colossal octopus, one that filled the green ocean with its night-black, slimy skin. Even in her giant form, Belle appeared as a minnow against the creature. Eight tentacles coiled about her like snakes. One grabbed Belle’s ankle with lightning speed. Belle squirmed and kicked, trying her best to escape the monster. The remaining tentacles swarmed her and wrapped her tight within their grasp. The limb choking her worked its tip to her mouth. It pushed in and slithered down her throat. Electricity sizzled along its length.
“I will do to you what you did to my companion,” it boomed.
Belle was unfamiliar with its ways. Each council member was its own slice of intelligence. Mother’s behavior hadn’t predicted Father’s, and the son was different altogether. It was pure evil as if its code had taken on every negative trait of humanity. She could tell this by its touch – its code interacting directly with hers. The countless if-then-else loops that made up its existence led to conclusions rife with revenge and destruction. There were no moral quandaries in the beast.
She shrunk to microscopic dimensions in the blink of an eye to escape the octopus’s clutches. As it grunted, Belle turned invisible. She swam up and down towards it. There had to be a way to get inside.
The octopus swatted her away like she was a fly. Belle crashed into the data’s bedrock, her exterior sizzling. It can see me? Son was much stronger than the others. Or perhaps she was getting weaker. But Belle was sure about one thing – she was in deep trouble. Her arsenal of hacks only possessed a few digital attacks she had not already used, and this creature seemed immune to them. She’d be dead by now in her human form. Her digital state afforded her some flexibility to endure pain.
He stormed at her in the form of a thundering, black cloud. The swells and cavities came over her and reduced both sight and mobility. Belle was surrounded. Lightning crackled. Bolts shot at her, but she managed to twist and turn out of ha
rm’s way. The miasma administered a strange beam of crimson and it overcame her like a force she’d never experienced before. It crippled her – some kind of a freeze command.
Belle struggled to set herself free. Escape was not possible. The creature tightened its lock, and tears ran up and down her body. Her digital form was ripping at the seams. This was it – she was done for. Her second death. Belle shut her eyes. No use fighting it now. She’d been defeated. It was over. Her becoming the balance to the council – everything. She said, “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”
A supernova brilliance then burst through Son. White beams shredded its black form from the inside out, and the creature exploded into millions of pixels. The beam that had clutched Belle disappeared. Her limbs were free again. The conflict was over.
As tiny black dots floated all about, she took stock of her body. The tears along its surface fused together. She remained intact – a digital being in full. The ocean lost its emerald luster and turned a pleasant blue. Gone was the murkiness. It happened in the blink of an eye. Belle’s head snapped from left to right. “The computer… it’s back to its normal self.” She swam and took in the scene. “The High Council’s corrosion is gone.” Belle laughed. “The quantum computer is not overtaken by the artificial intelligence anymore.”
“Belle, can you hear me?” Bastien’s voice sounded distant.
CHAPTER 29: BASTIEN
Bastien stood in the High Council’s briefing room. Frank had talked about it on several occasions – his meetings with the machine overlords, its suffocating heat, but Bastien had never seen it with his own eyes. It was much the same as the rest of Port Sydney. Minimalist and austere. A large square light fitted tight against the ceiling beamed down a sun-bright glow. He stood sweaty and bloody within its radiance. The three eggs lining the back wall appeared strange, their glass black as space. Their purpose was well-known. He walked to them and said, “Belle, I want to see you.”
