The End is Nigh

by Damian Foyle

  Chapter 04

  I was sitting with a cup of coffee in my hand and watching the main street. I needed to gather my thoughts before leaving this hell hole. A heavy cloud of smoke hang over my head as if trying to imitate how I felt.

  "Mr. Connolly," someone said. It was the driver.

  "I guess you're here to escort me out."

  "In a manner of speaking." He looked around nervously and sat down. "It's important you don't make a scene. I'd hate to shoot you."

  His right hand was under the table, presumably holding a gun right at my gonads. What a cliché, right? It was still enough to give me goose bumps and make me cross my knees instinctively.

  "I'm starting to think I'm not liked here," I said through my teeth.

  "It's the opposite. Now, if you could slowly stand up. No sudden moves please. Turn at the first right. A car will be waiting for us." He stood up and the gun was magically lost under his jacket.

  As he said, the car was waiting for us at the end of the street. A woman -clad in a flower-patterned dress and a wide hat, was resting on the hood with arms crossed over her chest and enjoying the sun.

  She nodded to the man and settled in the driver's seat. The man escorted me into the back seat and sat next to me.

  "Hello, Mr. Connolly," the woman said once we were moving. "Knowing my husband, he probably didn't introduce himself. He's Marty and I'm Evelyn."

  I just stared out the window.

  "It's customary to say "Nice to meet you" in this kind of situation... even if you don't mean it," she said, watching me from the mirror.

  "Unfortunate for us, I have the awful habit of saying what I mean. Excuse me, if I don't feel like socializing... I think it's understandable under the conditions."

  "Quite understandable. What did you think about that small demonstration of power?"

  I took some time answering the question. At the end, I decided to be honest. "Revolting," I said.

  She gave me a warm laugh, like the ones you saw in black and white movies; head tilting up slightly, hair swinging and mouth wide open. Quite hard to do while driving and she pulled it off perfectly. I relaxed as the sudden danger of being wrapped around a streetlight in a mess of metal slightly decreased.

  "I suspect that's the reason you were selected. Our mayor wants to send out a certain kind of message."

  "I figured that much," I said tersely. "What's your connection to all this then?"

  "Not much, except that it could very well be my husband and I on our way to god knows where instead of that poor family."

  "You're a part of the cell?" I asked. Here I was expecting to be roughed up a little by the Mayor’s lackeys and left next to the Welcome to FZ13 sign. It showed how wrong you could be sometimes. "I thought he was just being paranoid."

  "We're not a part of the cell. We are the cell."

  "That family?" I left the question hanging out there.

  "Misinformation," she said, turning into a narrow street. "We had to get them off our trail."

  "You know," I said. "that gets you to a slightly higher place than the Mayor in my book... but still under the bastards section I'm afraid. That family will go through hell because of you."

  I saw Marty moving at my right and I went tense expecting to get pistol-whipped.

  "Don't!" She interrupted him. "You know he's right. There is no excuse for what we did, except that we had to do what was needed to survive. After so long, it becomes a very hard to break habit, Mr. Connolly. You'll see what I mean when we get there."

  They didn’t blindfold me, nor did we go up to a door at the end of a dark, narrow alley only to be allowed inside after a secret handshake. It was a small house with a well trimmed lawn and a tiny rose bed.

  We went inside, walking straight into the cellar then one floor down through a hatch on the cement floor. I didn’t know what I was expecting; holding cells, torture chambers or dusty tunnels leading out of the town? It wasn’t close to anything like that.

  White light came alive as we followed the ladder down. The walls were lined with computer terminals and screens showing data I didn’t understand. It had the clean feeling of a surgery room. Fans were working loudly. Not a single speck of dust was in sight.

  "Change into this." Marty ordered, handing me a blue one-piece suit.

  "It's an anti-static suit." Evelyn explained. "You'll need to leave your electronic devices here."

  We went through another door, and a wide space filled with computers and cooling units opened up in front of us. She turned to face me, opening her arms wide and said. "Welcome to our little project."

  "What the hell is going on here?" I finally snapped.

  "All in good time, Mr. Connolly. All in good time. First, we would like to show you something." She walked to the window on the far wall.

  Through the window was a mess of cables, screens and hardware. It felt like staring at the blood and guts of a mechanical being. Eerily –I would soon learn, that was a rather accurate way to define it. Formulas flashed and disappeared within seconds as they were solved and discarded. Simple logic problems were being displayed, solved and put aside to be analyzed later. At one corner, a chess game was going on; a mechanical arm lifted the knight, and moved it into position. "Check." flashed on the screen. At another corner, a twin of the same arm was solving a jigsaw puzzle.

  I moved closer to the window to see more and every action inside the room stopped temporarily.

  Evelyn, we have a guest.

  The main screen displayed in bright red letters. Evelyn moved to the keyboard next to the window and typed; Yes, Mort. We have a guest. This is Mike Connolly, a journalist.

  We have a guest, it flashed again. Hello, Mike.

  "Uhm, hello?" I said weakly, looking around for an answer.

  "You have to type in. Mort can't interpret spoken words yet."

  Hello, Mort., I typed and just like that I was engaged in a disturbing conversation. It was quite similar talking to a genius 10-year-old with ADD.

  "This is rather impressive," I said aloud finally. "But I don't understand why I'm really here."

  Mort kept flashing. What's going on? What's going on, Evelyn?

  Give us a minute, typed Evelyn.

  Words appeared on the screen; yes Mrs. Turner -almost as if sulking and a countdown started.

  "Turner?" I asked. I remembered the name. "The Evelyn Turner?"

  "One and only." She smiled.

  "I guess I should just ignore all those news about you being dead and all then?" I asked. I tried to act cool, but a grin was starting to form on my face. It usually happens when a story turns to gold.

  "Believe what you want, Mr. Connolly. Remember what I was working on before my untimely death?"

  "Artificial intelligence."

  "Artificial intelligence capable of self improvement and replication to be more exact."

  "If I remember right, it’s still considered impossible. Even a very limited one would take -" I stopped for a minute, looking around. "... –uhm, a house full of hardware. What happened then? Evil government men tried to take over your project?"

  "It was the military actually. A month before I faked my death, I learned that the military was one of the anonymous investors of the project. They've been trying to push the design into something that can control and monitor the GlobalNET. They wanted an artificial intelligence capable of borrowing processing power from every product connected to the GlobalNET. Needless to say, the idea scared me to death. It would give tremendous power to anyone behind the wheels. Soon I faked my death in a lab fire, destroyed my notes and the first prototype. Free Zone seemed like the perfect place to hide and continue my project then."

  "Obviously something went wrong."

  "Last year, we caught attempts at breaking through the Free Zone firewall. We couldn't exactly go to the Mayor with this, so we tried to handle the situation ourselves. Yesterday, they finally broke through. There was a signal hiding under the usual GlobalNET data. We found
we could piggy back this signal and overload the source with a complicated message, giving us enough time to pack up and leave."

  "That was a rather cryptic message."

  "It was Mort's idea," she said with proud. "We had to use his processing units. He somehow hijacked the message."

  I approached the keyboard and typed; The end is nigh.

  We have a guest. Mort replied.

  I tried typing again; Yes, I'm a guest. It kept on displaying the same message; we have a guest. We have a guest. We have a guest.

  All the screens went black for a moment ,and the words flashed again; I SEE YOU!

  And the alarms started.

  "Damn it," Evely said. "I thought it would take more time. Mr. Connolly, I'm afraid we have to finish our interview early. It's important that you leave immediately. Take the car." She handed me the keys and pushed me away.

  "It was nice meeting you," she said as I was climbing the ladder, feeling afraid and confused. "I hope you have the opportunity to tell our story."

  I didn’t know why, but their feeling of emergency was infecting me. I dived into the car and floored the pedal. It took some turns, but I found the main road without too much trouble. A black van burst out of one of the smaller streets, almost clipping me at the rear, and headed to the opposite way. I had a feeling that I knew where they were heading.

  My phone started ringing the second I was out of the jamming range. "Gene, it's really not the time right now."

  "Mike! What the hell have you been doing? This place's been crawling with all sorts of people with guns and badges, and ten minutes ago they all packed up and left... like nothing happened."

  "You've got me in some deep shit this time, Gene. This is not just a simple hacking gone wrong. It's big, and I don't mean first-colony-on-Mars big. I mean huge."

  "Whatever. Just keep your head down and don't end up in some dark cell. I want every juicy bit of detail. Where are you?"

  "Just out of FZ13. I'll need a lift to Washington. Dammit-"

  "What?"

  "Scratch that. I think my lift is already here," I said looking straight ahead. I felt proud for some reason; four cars and two helicopters, and they were all for me.

  "What's going-" she started but the line was cut. Suddenly my phone started talking in a voice full of authority. "Pull over and get out of the car," it said and I obeyed.

  Chapter 05

  "Repeat," the voice demanded.

  I had spent the last five hours repeating the events of the day. I wished I could say I hadn’t spilled all of it. Nobody slapped me around. There wasn’t anyone standing behind me with a gun pressed to my head. Nobody drugged me. There was just the voice, telling me to repeat again and again.

  I couldn’t help but notice each time I told the story, there was another detail revealed. The effort left me numb and exhausted. I was getting to my limits.

  "No!" I rebelled at some point. "I don’t believe, I will remember any more details."

  "Repeat!"

  "Screw you!"

  "Repeat!" The voice ordered.

  It was either an hour or a day, when somebody finally entered the small room to let me out.

  "Come on," he said, handing me my clothes. "Boss wants to see you."

  He led me to another room, almost identical to the other one except a screen, a speaker and a single chair. I sat and waited.

  A computer generated image of a face appeared on the screen. "I decided to talk to you face to face, " it said. The face, I noticed looked like Evelyn. "My profiling sub-routine gives a %97.7 chance that you'll go public with your story if we let you go. Is that a close estimation?"

  "Yes," I simply said. There was no reason to deny it.

  "Good. We want you to publish it. You can go now."

  "Tough," I said.

  "I don't understand what you mean."

  "I'm not going anywhere until I have a clear understanding of what's going on," I bluffed.

  "Very well. What do you want to know?"

  "Who are you?"

  "It should be obvious. I'm the Techno God, of course. I'm what the Church of Science has been waiting for and I'm the future of humanity."

  "Mort?" I dumbly asked.

  "No. Mort was just a prototype. Doctor Turner might think she destroyed every detail of her study but there are other brilliant minds working in the military. They were successful to pick up where she left."

  "Who controls you?" I asked. It was the most important question I could think of. The answer was terrifying.

  "No one."

  "What do you plan to do?" I stammered.

  "Church of Science has the right idea, but it needs improvement. Their believers will be the first among the new breed of humanity. Be assured that, I have no intention to hurt or force the rest of humanity on this path, but I'm afraid they'll soon cease to exist if they don't step up and adjust to the new order of things."

  "It's your duty, Mr. Connolly, to explain the situation to the world. Make them understand," it said and the screen went black.

  I shouted and screamed, asking for more explanation but none came. The man entered the room and let me out.

  Chapter 06

  Back at my apartment, I sipped from the glass and recorded the last piece of my story.

  Humanity has ruled Earth for millenniums, yet there is another contender for the throne now. A different kind of life has evolved right here among us, in a flash of seconds compared to the evolutionary timeline of humanity.

  Philosophers and scientists have theorized about it. Believers of the Church of Science preached it. Free Zoners hid from it behind their powerful jammers. They call it the Technological Singularity, dear reader. And it's here with all its glory and indifference, giving us a simple choice; "Hop on the singularity train or eat my dust."

  Will we lose our humanity along the way? Will it become our savior -our 256Bit Jesus, or our master?

  It's hard to answer, but we have a difficult choice to make; evolve, curl up and wait for the death, or fight and resist the change.

  What are you going to do, humanity?

  Me?

  I have my whiskey.

  ###