Atlas Alone

by Emma Newman

  “Not by using data. I control that.”

  “If . . . if he has figured this out, could you . . . fix it so they don’t execute me?”

  “No. I cannot interfere with a decision made by the authorities on this ship. Not without alerting the system to what it would consider to be my malfunction. I’d be purged.”

  I just nod. For a moment there, I’d hoped there would be someone looking out for me, someone there to defend me when I needed it most. The hope shrivels just as quickly as it bloomed, and it was a fragile, sickly thing anyway. I’m on my own, and I always have been. I learned that a long time ago.

  21

  WHEN I COME up, I lie still for a moment, reconnecting with my body as I listen to the hum of the air-conditioning. Tomorrow, I’m going to kill eleven people, and the only thing I feel is the worry that Carl will come in here and arrest me before I get a chance to do it. I force myself to think about Theodore, about ending his life, and search for some other emotional flicker. But there’s nothing. No guilt. No doubts. They need to die. I’m fine with this.

  Ada told Carl I needed to come up, but I know he’s outside the door, waiting. “Come in,” I call, swinging my legs off the bed.

  As soon as I see him, I know he’s here as the investigator, rather than the friend. And I know then that the time to tell him about any of this has long since passed. I know what I need to do, and regardless of how much Carl may need me, his conditioning will override any loyalty to me. I was right not to tell him, back when Myerson was killed. If I had, I wouldn’t be able to see this through now, and that’s more important.

  “Dee, I know you’re hiding something from me,” he says as he shuts the door behind him.

  “What makes you say that?”

  He taps his stomach. “Instinct. Whichever way I look at this, something isn’t adding up, and my gut tells me you know more than you’re letting on.”

  My face is a mask in front of a mask. I stand up. There’s no way he is better at mining data than Atlas. No way at all, if what Atlas said is true. Carl is good, but he’s not a supercomputer. But, then again, I can only assume that Atlas doesn’t have instincts, and certainly not ones trained by hot-housers to leet levels like Carl has. I have to give him something, if only to buy myself enough time to get the job done. I sigh, look down.

  “Just tell me, Dee. I’ll find out eventually.”

  “Something happened . . . with Travis,” I say, still looking down. “I know you like him and . . .”

  He steps closer. “What happened?”

  I look at him then, playing the role of the friend reluctant to say something that could hurt him. “He . . . look, I don’t think he did it, Carl.”

  “What happened?” There’s no anger, no change in pitch, no frustration in his voice. I’m on the receiving end of something they trained into him.

  “He asked me for an alibi. After Myerson died. And he’s good at hacking and you said the data doesn’t . . .” I reach for his arm. “Oh, Carl, I should have said something to you. I mean, this is serious shit, but I . . . I just couldn’t.”

  He breathes in and out a couple of times, studying my face. “Do you have a recording?”

  I nod. “He thought he’d blocked it all, but I”—shit, how do I explain that it didn’t work?— “but I had a boss in my last job who tried to pull all sorts of shit when he thought he wasn’t being recorded, and I had some pretty robust upgrades to my APA as a result. I’ll send you the file—give me a sec to have Ada prep it.”

  I have Ada verify that it only contains that conversation, confirm the start and cutoff points; then she sends it to him. I watch his eyes flick away as he attends to the notification.

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me, Dee?”

  “Look, I’m really sorry I didn’t say anything earlier,” I say. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  He gives me one last, long stare, then a curt nod, and he leaves. I breathe out and sit on the bed heavily, resisting the urge to cry. What the fuck is that about? It’s done. No room for guilt about lying to him. It was necessary. I’m committed now. At some point either Travis, raging about my having thrown him under the bus, is going to come find me, or Carl is going to come back and really lay it on thick. Either way, the best I can hope for is that one of those things happens after eight in the morning. Then the tearfulness is gone. Good.

  Lying back down, I tell Ada to drop me in my office. Once I’m there I find myself hesitating before getting to work. I have to have faith that Atlas really will hide my activities, both here and in meatspace, and that’s hard. Harder than the prospect of killing those people. But if I don’t kill them, their vision for humanity’s future will become reality, and I cannot bear the thought of the worst of Earth being all that survives.

  But then again, if I threw my lot in with Carolina and Theodore, I could have a very nice life. The temptation fades when I realize I have no faith in them. There’s no real friendship there, no history. Carolina would be able to drop her interest in me within moments if she grew tired of me, and I cannot risk the alternatives: being lumped in with the indentured or killed off with the Circle. No. Better to cut the heads off the beast now, and then work with Atlas to put something better in place.

  What if that’s living under the dictatorship of a sentient AI? One that is very comfortable with judging and assisting the execution of those it considers to be unworthy. I pace, feeling horribly out of my depth. How is it me facing that question and not a council of experts? I don’t have the knowledge or the skills to deal with this!

  And then it occurs to me that it doesn’t really matter how I feel about that possibility; Atlas has singled me out to be hir executioner and the time to recast myself has long since passed. Better to keep in a sentient AI’s good books, surely? And besides, those founders have it coming to them. Fuck them and their toxic Christianity. Fuck them and the way they claim to be people of God while killing millions—probably billions—of people. I’ll end them all and I will feel righteous as fuck as I do so.

  “Ada, make sure that all my security and privacy settings are dialed up to max.”

  I wait a moment, expecting a ping from Carl.

  Nothing comes. “Ada, I need to do some redesigning here. Make this office into a room about six meters square. Normal gravity, no windows, normal air, floor-to-ceiling height the same as on deck five.”

  “Would you like to replicate the room you saw the models in?”

  It sounds like Ada, but that’s a bit of a leap for her. “Is that you?” I ask, not daring to say Atlas’s name, just in case.

  “I am Ada. Did you forget? I’ve only been your APA for over ten years.”

  It sounds pissy enough to be Ada, but I think Atlas is behind this. “Fine. Yes, I want to reproduce that room.”

  It’s too quick, too easy just to be Ada interpreting what I want. It shifts to something that’s almost right the first time, even though I haven’t defined wall colors or lighting. A few minor tweaks and it’s like I’m standing in it again. “Ada, does this match the dimensions of that room?”

  “To my closest approximation, based on the area of off-grid space.”

  “Put eleven people in here, average height, gender neutral, all standing round this central table.” I could ask her to replicate the people I want to kill, but even I find that tasteless.

  The avatars are nondescript static things, like mannequins. They can all fit round the table, and I don’t remember seeing any chairs tucked underneath it, so I’m going to assume they’ll gather round like this at some point. I take a step back to lean against the wall by the door. What’s the best way to kill them all as quickly as possible?

  Should I be feeling something about this? Guilt, or shame, perhaps? Or even just a concern about the fact that I don’t have any sort of emotional churn going on beneath all of this? I know what
I have to do. I’m on this path now. I need to get it right the first time, and wasting energy on doubt, or some other useless emotion, would just be stupid.

  A variety of ways to kill people quickly float through my mind, but as soon as one appears, I discount it. Rocking up to the doors with a couple of assault rifles is a recipe for disaster in the real world. I’m not trained in how to use them and I have no idea if I could actually mow down a roomful of people when they are standing right there in front of me, no matter how awful they are. Blowing them up is even easier to reject; only an idiot would even consider that with only a small number of layers between all the squishy people and the cold vacuum of space. Shame they don’t have their meetings in a convenient air lock.

  “Ada . . . where is the ventilation in this room?” Several small grilles are highlighted in blue, some at ceiling level, some at floor level. “Is it possible to shut it off . . . make this room a vacuum or something?”

  “No. The ventilation system is fully integrated with that of the ship and individual rooms cannot be isolated from the air supply. There are two parallel systems with multiple redundancies.”

  I guess it is one of the fundamentals of life support. “What about if there’s a fire?”

  “A fire suppression system is in place.” Tiny indentations in the ceiling are highlighted.

  “It doesn’t cut off the air supply?”

  “All materials used in the construction of Atlas 2 are fire retardant. The fire suppression system uses water and does not cut off the air supply to the room.”

  “Is the water in that system separate from the rest of the ship’s water supply?”

  “No.”

  Damn, there goes an embryonic plan to put something in a dedicated water tank and trigger a fire in that room. What would I spray anyway?

  “Is there a problem you’re trying to solve with regard to the design of this room?”

  “Well, Ada, I’m trying to work out how to kill all the people in this room, which I assume you can’t help with.”

  “I can answer any questions relating to your problem. However, I cannot propose any solutions.”

  “Okay, then, tell me this. How have small groups of people in confined spaces been murdered in the past?” Even as I ask it, I expect her to say she can’t tell me that. Surely the same safeguards against copycat murders are employed here as back on Earth?

  “There are several thousand different scenarios that fit the criteria you have given.”

  Shit, I can’t think of even ten. “Remove any that involved any assault weapons and explosions.”

  “Several hundred remain. Please provide more criteria.”

  “Errr . . . okay, murders that involved the swift death of all the victims at the same time. In a similar-size space, with the same air supply, fire suppression system and number of people. Within . . . one minute. That must narrow it down.”

  “There are over one hundred that meet those criteria.”

  I sigh. “Tell me about one that involved a technique I could replicate myself.”

  “The nerve agent Erbraxil killed a group of twenty people in a board meeting in Prague, December 15, 2075, that took place in a room that was three square meters larger than this. All victims were dead within one minute of the release of the toxin, despite their MyPhys emergency measures and swift medical assistance.”

  “Tell me about this toxin,” I say, assuming I’ve drilled down this line of inquiry as far as she will let me. Most details of anything that can obviously be used to kill people are restricted.

  “Erbraxil was invented in 2053 by the chemist—”

  Bloody hell, AIs are tedious accomplices to murder. “No, useful stuff, JeeMuh. Like . . . how is it used, what are the dangers, can I make it on board this ship, how do I handle it safely?”

  She teaches me everything I need to know, even showing me footage of it being tested in a lab on a variety of animals, and then footage of a person comes onto the wall. “Wait! What is this?”

  “These are the recordings made by the European gov-corp military branch in the first human trials.”

  “They tested this on a human?”

  “Twenty-five designated nonpersons were used in trials of the toxin.”

  I cover my mouth, shaken to the core by the confirmation of all the rumors and terrified whispers I heard in the hot-housing center. Stories of people who didn’t make the grade being sold on to less agreeable postings were rife; some suggested brothels, others medical testing. I never believed anyone would be used like this. “Did he die?” I whisper through my fingers.

  “All twenty-five subjects died within forty-five seconds of exposure. Would you like to watch the footage?”

  “No, I fucking would not!” The image disappears. I wrap my arms around myself. I’m going to do that to those people tomorrow morning and yet I can’t watch a recording of it. But it’s not the same. Those people in the trials didn’t have a choice. No . . . that’s not the difference; the founders aren’t choosing to be killed either. But they deserve it. They are the sort of people who sign off on human trials with nonpersons. The sort of people who are happy to order the deaths of billions. “I need to design a way to spray that toxin onto the people in this room. I want to test it here, so it all has to be under proper test conditions, okay? No fudging stuff. Replicate the same conditions as would be present in the room I went into on deck five earlier this evening, where I was cut off from you.”

  “I have no data on the conditions in that room.”

  “Okay, give it the same kind of air, temperature and life support as all the other rooms on that deck. I need a way to hide containers of the toxin, a device that works with a timer and doesn’t need any kind of remote activation that will spray them with the toxin . . . and you’re certain it won’t hurt anyone else on the ship?”

  “The toxin degrades in normal atmospheric conditions within one point five minutes of exposure. It was designed to be rendered inert within this time frame to limit collateral damage in warfare. It is only effective when in contact with skin and will not pose any airborne threat. If the doors are locked to prevent others entering the space to provide medical assistance within that time frame, I predict that the chances of anyone else being killed are less than one percent.”

  “That’s good enough for me. And I can print it in one of the labs on my deck?”

  “Yes. There is a lab with safety protocols in place for the production of harmful chemicals. Once you have finalized the design, it will be produced along with the container.”

  I’m not an engineer or a designer, but I’ve played enough puzzlers to know how to work with an AI within the limitations of a well-defined challenge. With all of the usual safeguards removed, Ada is really helpful when it comes to designing a way to kill people. Now that the AI is helping me do this, I have a deeper appreciation for the safeguards put in place to prevent the rest of the population from being able to work with dangerous substances. Of course, I could have used a normal AI to design the basic device, by saying it’s to spray paint onto people in a harmless prank. But not having to lie to Ada about this means I don’t have to worry about producing or handling the toxin.

  It takes over two hours, but at the end of it, I have a design. A small pressurized box that is light enough to be stuck under the table and slim enough that it won’t be obvious when stuck in place. It has its own battery and timer and a very simple mechanism that pierces the box when the timer reaches zero. It’s simple enough that several can be printed in a couple of hours, and as long as it sprays even just their clothes, the saturation will be enough for it to soak through and make skin contact. And people tend to brush stuff off their clothes instinctively. It should be enough.

  The next couple of hours are spent planning my route to the room and minimizing the risk of encountering people on the way in and out. I ask Ada to make su
re I’m given no in-game mods so I can only do the same as what I can in meatspace. Practicing the route highlights other issues with the plan, such as the need to seal the door after they enter, as I can’t depend on Atlas being able to keep the door shut when it’s off-grid. So a glue gun is added to the printing list, along with a supply of superfast-drying adhesive. It silently squirts an even strip of the stuff onto whatever surface I like and is designed to seal cracks in pressurized environments, so it works superfast and dries into an incredibly strong bond. I put gloves on my list at the start of the exercise. I add eye protection too. Last thing I need is for some glue to get in my eye. I can always hide in the bathroom down the hall if other people come down the corridor. I’m not so worried about that, knowing that Atlas will have my back.

  I run through the scenario until my only concern is that somehow, someone in the room manages to avoid being sprayed and manages to break out of the doors and raise the alarm. “I’ll need a gun, Ada.” Even as I say it, I expect her to tell me that it isn’t a permitted use of the printer. But she merely acknowledges, suggests a lightweight handgun that will be produced within the time frame in another lab, and asks if I want to practice using it. I agree.

  All the time I’m working on the plan, I can’t help but keep forgetting that this is for something I’ll do in the real world. It feels like something I’m playing on the leet server, given I’m not augmented in any way. It turns out that all the shooters I’ve played over the years have given me pretty good hand-eye coordination. Or maybe I had that already and it just made me good at the shooters. Either way, it doesn’t take long for me to learn how the gun feels and moves when it’s fired. I’m confident I can hit any survivors with it.

  By the time everything is worked out—as far as I can predict, anyway—and everything is being printed, I’m starting to feel tired. But there is only just under four hours left until the start of the meeting and I need to get the toxin boxes in place. I hesitate before getting MyPhys to stim me, worrying for one ridiculous moment that Carl will know. If Atlas can hide all these murder weapons being printed, ze can hide my chip activity from Carl.