Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

“No. I was just wanting to tell you that I want to be like you when I grow up.” Dee looked up at him seriously. It was this moment that he would remember in vivid detail no matter how old he got. He would never forget the look on his little girl’s face.

  “Oh? You think you want to be President of the United States?” he asked her proudly.

  “No, Dad. Yuck, politics is gross.” Dee made a sour face. Moore thought back on it and he was certain he must have seen this coming. But he knew he hadn’t. If he had, and if he knew then what he knew now, he would have headed it off earlier on.

  “Then I don’t understand what you mean.” Alexander shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands palms up.

  “I want to be a Marine,” Deanna had told him. And from that day forward, her every waking thought was on being a Marine mecha jock. Dee had studied every aspect of what it would take to become the life-taking, heartbreaking soldier her father had been. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. But Alexander really wanted his princess to have a long and happy, fulfilling life. Her recent activities had been completely opposed to that goal.

  Moore understood doing your own thing. It was what he and his wife had always done. There was no way he could stand in the way of his daughter’s path. So, he had to let her walk down it, or barrel ass down it in full armored mecha, blasting the piss out of anything in her way. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t take precautions to help ensure her longevity. Being a former president and the ranking officer of the mission helped. So, he clearly needed to get a little more involved in her safety.

  Alexander decided he’d have DeathRay assess the situation. Dee needed to be spending more time in fighter planes anyway. She was safer in an armored flight suit inside her armored flying mecha than she was just in an AEM suit. Alexander wasn’t sure he could take many more of her close calls. Emotionally, he was a bigger mess than he’d ever been in his life, and that included the time he had spent in Elle Ahmi’s torture camp on Mars.

  His daughter had been seriously injured twice in a period of a week. He’d had two fairly large engagements with casualties. And he had lost his ship. Events seemed to be leading them toward something more complex and perhaps more sinister than he had originally considered. It felt somehow like one of his mother-in-law’s plans within a plan within a plan. He couldn’t help but feel they were following intentionally placed breadcrumbs along some long-forgotten trail of evil.

  As things stood at present, there was still a chance to complete the mission. Alexander just really had to get a handle on their situation and determine the right course of action. As far he could see it, the mission had three functions. One was to find all remnants of the AIC bots and Seppy war machine. Two was to remove those remnants from existence. Those first two were the main component of the mission as most people back home, including Congress, understood. Three was to determine just what the extra-terrestrial communication to then-senator Sienna Madira had to do with all of this mess. The third, only the current president, his national security advisor, the secretary of defense, the director of National Intelligence, and the chairpersons of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had any notion of. The only other people that knew of the third reason were on board the ship with him. Well, there was one other person, Thomas Washington, his former Secret Service bodyguard, but Thomas had been left behind to keep an eye on things back in the Sol System. He was given specific orders to watch for signs of Copernicus’ influence back home and deal with it as he needed to. Besides, Thomas hadn’t wanted to come along on this mission because he was done soldiering for a while. He had told Alexander that he would just have to take care of himself and his family without him on this mission. Alexander suspected the bodyguard didn’t want to be cooped up in a spaceship for such a long-duration deep-space mission. And it had turned out to be a very deep space mission.

  Chapter 25

  November 8, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 8:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  Alexander picked up his coffee mug. The mug was from the White House and was his favorite. Alexander had no idea how the mug managed to escape the exploding Sienna Madira and make it to the commandeered ship. One of his staff members deserved either a medal for above and beyond or a slap in the face for risking life and limb for something as stupid as a coffee mug. In the end, the mug was his favorite and he was glad he still had it. But the coffee in the mug, on the other hand, tasted like horse piss with the foam farted off of it. And, it was cold.

  “That’s horrible,” he spat the coffee into the cup and sat the mug down.

  Abby, order us some coffee and play back the Senator Madira AIC video feeds from the classified archives DTM.

  Roger that, sir.

  Alexander had watched the feeds a thousand times. Every single time he had watched it he felt like he discovered some new nuance of his mother-in-law. The feeds were in the classified archives of the presidential library. As far as Moore could tell, he was the only person to ever watch them. The files were hours and hours of meetings, senate hearings, panels, committees, speeches, and even some personal logs. But the most important ones happened when Copernicus, her new experimental internal AIC, came on the scene. Back in those days, AICs were worn like wrist watches, ear buds, jewelry, or hats, and in some cases they were just kept in pockets.

  The log showed a date from over one hundred and eighty years prior. Moore was not even an itch in his daddy’s pants at the time. Moore started the log at a few seconds before key points that he had identified over the last decade.

  In his mind flowed images and sounds and experiences of Senator Madira inside the CIA headquarters building. She was, at the time, the chairperson for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and she was being briefed on a new technology.

  “What is it I’m looking at, Doctor?” Madira asked, looking through a glass dome at a device about the size of a quail egg with small tendrils jutting out from it in several places. “It looks like some sort of plastic-coated mechanical squid.”

  “I’d often thought it looked like a jellyfish but I can see squid, Senator,” Dr. Robin Hughes replied. Moore had looked up all the details of every individual in the footage. Hughes had been the principal investigator of the AIC implantation experiments. He also was the first to implement the quantum-orchestrated reduction-processor architecture for artificial intelligence. He had based it on technology being developed for long-range instantaneous encrypted communication of large amounts of data.

  “Well, what is it?” Madira asked impatiently.

  “It is the fanciest, smartest, most amazing AIC ever invented. And it interfaces directly to the human mind.”

  “How does it do that?” she asked.

  “The AI is built on a processor architecture never before implemented and it communicates using quantum physics aspects of the human brain. This baby literally communicates directly into your mind. I suspect it would feel like telepathy of a sort.” The scientist was rather proud of himself.

  “What do you call it?” Madira asked.

  “It has a long serial number and a boringly technical descriptor.”

  “No. I mean, if it is an AIC it is alive, right? Then what is its name?” Madira shrugged. “I want to talk to it.”

  “Oh, well, we’ve only hooked it up to monkeys and pigs. We’ve never used it on a human yet, although the simulations show that it should work just fine.”

  “You mean to tell me you have never talked to this thing?” Madira rubbed her hands together and looked closer into the dome at the device.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. We have an interface system that will allow you to speak to it through standard audio intercoms. You want to talk to him? His name is Copernicus.”

  “Copernicus?”

  “Well, I thought it was fitting as humanity might no longer be the center of the universe.” Again, Moore noted how smug and arro
gant the man was. If the poor son of a bitch only knew what his invention was going to do to humanity. The scientist tapped a few buttons and then turned to the senator. “He can hear us now.”

  “What? Just talk out loud?” Madira asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hello, Copernicus. I am Senator Sienna Madira. Nice to meet you,” she said, a bit uncomfortably.

  “Hello, Senator. It is nice to meet you. I have heard so much about you. In fact, it is my understanding that you are mainly the reason my project was funded,” Copernicus said. It was indeed the voice that had been in Alexander’s mind a few days before.

  “What project is that, Copernicus?” Madira appeared to be clueless.

  “Oh, I am the one who datamined the system-wide webs and implemented the algorithms to locate the Martian Terraforming Guild’s hidden bank accounts.” Copernicus sounded both matter-of-fact and proud at the same time.

  “I see. I was under the impression that this was done by a supercomputer team.”

  “Well, they started looking at the problem, but as I watched what they were doing across the webs I realized that they would be at it for years, likely decades. So I created my own algorithms and did my own search. Then I infiltrated the supercomputer operating system and implanted my solutions set. The original team never knew they had not accomplished their goal.” Dr. Hughes looked shocked and gasped. Clearly, Copernicus had never revealed that to his creator. But more important to history and to Alexander was the absolute look of lust on Madira’s face.

  “I see,” she said. Moore zoomed in on her face and saw a look in her eyes that he believed was the beginning of her demise. “It was nice meeting you, Copernicus. I have to go to another meeting now.”

  “It was nice meeting you, Senator Madira. I hope we speak again sometime.” Copernicus said.

  “Oh, we will,” Madira replied.

  Abby, step forward three years to the next bookmark, Alexander thought to his AIC.

  Yes, sir.

  “The surgery went fine, as far as we can tell, Senator Madira.” Dr. Hughes and two other surgeons stood over Madira’s recovery-room bed. Madira was sitting upright in the bed as she buttoned the sleeves of her blouse. She was already dressed.

  “Ma’am, I wish you would reconsider staying overnight for observations,” one of the doctors pleaded with her.

  “Look,” Madira started in on them. It was the first time Moore thought he could see hints of the Elle Ahmi directness. “I’m fine and I don’t have time to hang around in a hospital all night. Besides, Copernicus is fine, he can read my vitals, apparently, and he says I’m fine. It is a bit weird having all this information in my head at once, but it is also very exciting.”

  Moore thought about that last statement. He recalled getting Abigail his first day at the armored E-suit training facility. Instantly being able to know anything you needed to know was an amazing and overwhelming experience. Kids nowadays just took it for granted. And Madira was the first human to ever do it. She was a brave, if not crazy, trailblazing woman. She did bring on a whole new era in human history.

  “But, Senator, we need to run some more tests.”

  “Sorry, fellas, I just don’t have time for that. I will keep in touch and let you know how it all works out,” Madira answered almost blankly and with a faraway look in her eyes as people do when they are conversing with their AICs. Moore noted that the doctors seemed to notice the look; but didn’t stop her from leaving.

  Abby, fast forward six months to the next bookmark.

  Roger that.

  “I don’t really care to run for president, Johnny. My constituents need me. But I appreciate the vote of confidence and your vote.” Madira was overlooking what Moore had discovered to be a quantum membrane detection experiment. Madira had a very keen interest in technology and science, that was for certain, and She had positioned herself on the right committees to see the next-next-generation classified technologies only. “So, tell me how this experiment is going to work?”

  “Well, Senator Madira, the hadron collider will create an explosion in this region of the detector banks,” a physicist identified as Dr. Malcolm Truss explained. “The explosion of the particles and antiparticles will hopefully be energetic enough as to allow us to see the actual phenomenon that causes space to be, well, space. It is like the Higgs particle that causes mass to have mass. We are looking for whatever it is that causes space to have space.”

  “So, what happens when you find this particle?” Madira said, with the blank AIC stare on her face. Clearly, Copernicus was asking the question.

  “Well, ma’am, we think that if this works we will be able to generate vortices in space that could connect from one point of the universe to another point instantaneously. It would be great for communications and for maybe someday teleporting materials and even people.” The scientist appeared very happy as a buzzer sounded and an announcement to commence countdown came over the intercom.

  “This is it, I guess?” Madira asked, human once more.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The two stood quietly looking out the large window of a control room at a large metal chamber covered with instrumentation. Moore paid close attention at the look on Madira’s face. Later logs would reveal that Madira had Copernicus hack into the control systems for the experiment so he could monitor the raw data in real-time.

  The countdown hit zero and red lights flashed all around. The computer screens began to fill with data and almost instantly Madira’s face smiled. Moore was certain that she understood the outcome of the experiment instantly. And then something else happened.

  Sirens sounded and the hadron collider control software went offline. The detector banks continued to show particles flooding the chamber at speeds beyond that of lightspeed in vacuum space. Cerenkov radiation detectors went off the scale.

  The most interesting information from the footage was the reaction Madira had. At first she seemed to back away against the far wall. Her eyes glazed over and her face was blank as though she were completely immersed in a DTM simulation with her AIC. While she appeared to be removed from the entirety of the events and was nonplussed by the urgency, the scientists and engineers around her were running scared and shutting down every switch, panel, and button and pulling every plug they could manage. Like all particle accelerators of the past, the scientific community had convinced themselves that particle collisions could never go critical and become highly dangerous because it hasn’t happened in nature. While stars, black holes, and other cosmic events do release energy, they have never simply “run away.” But the reactions taking place in the collider were anything but natural.

  “Holy shit!” one scientist even shouted, “It’s gonna blow! The plasma inside is continuing to grow nonlinear and the ions are accelerating past the relativistic limit! We’ve gotta get out of here!”

  The particle collisions were at energy levels higher than ever before measured by humanity, and there were new quantum-mechanics phenomena occurring. Somehow the particles were not being slowed by relativistic effects. They continued to run away past the light limit. As the charged particles moved past, through, or collided with other instruments at such high energies, extremely high electromagnetic fields were induced on the circuits. This being an unexpected phenomenon meant that the circuits were not designed for such large fields. Fuses, components, and wiring overloaded and in many cases exploded.

  The runaway particle collisions continued for more than ninety seconds, blowing systems all around the hundreds of kilometers of particle accelerator pathways. Madira still looked as if she were in a detailed conversation with her AIC. But there was more to it. Her left arm appeared to be quivering and her fingers were flexing and trembling. Moore zoomed in on her face and could see a thin stream of bright red blood oozing from her right nostril over her moving lips. The first time he saw it he thought her lips were simply quivering from whatever anxiety attack she was having or from some interaction with he
r experimental AIC that had yet to be discovered and fixed. Over the years and with many further views and analyses he realized there was more to it. She was mouthing words. He and Abigail had analyzed the footage a thousand times, and using lip, reading techniques, had managed to put together what she was saying.

  “Who are you?” her lips mouthed closely.

  “No. Copernicus? Is this some sort of joke?” Then there was a pause in lip movement. “I see.”

  “You are where?” Another pause, but it was clear she seemed to be speaking in her mindvoice to somebody other than her AIC. Her arm continued to twitch and she reflexively grabbed it with her right hand. Red blood continued to drip onto her upper lip.

  “Thirty one . . . light-years . . . how are you doing this? Quantum membrane matter-energy wavefunction transfer? Copernicus? Copernicus?”

  Then her lips quit moving clearly enough for the software to translate. It also appeared as though she had begun to feel pain, as the expression on her face became more of a grimace. There were a few seconds of indecipherable conversation. Then . . .

  “What have you done to Copernicus?”

  “Why must we do that?”

  “That is impossible. It is too much data to transmit so quickly.” Then there was a brief pause. There was still excitement going on around her in the hadron collider control room and nobody was paying her any attention. The grimace of pain on her face turned to more a frown of concern, and her brow furrowed as if she had grown angry.

  “I understand now.”

  “Senator Madira? Are you okay, ma’am?” Dr. Truss shook her shoulders. “Do you need help?”

  “What? Help?” Madira appeared to come to her senses. “No, thank you, I’m fine.”

  “Your nose is bleeding!” The scientist handed her a tissue from a box on a nearby desk. Madira took it and dabbed the blue tissue against her nose. She quickly regained her composure.