Uncanny Valley

by C. A. Gray

  “This may very well be the breakthrough we have all been waiting for!” Halpert went on. “Again, this challenge is not a competition so much as a collaboration across the globe for the advancement of our species. General Specs has agreed to take no remuneration for their involvement: there will be no patents, and all blueprints are freely available on the labyrinth. Anyone else who wishes to simultaneously create similar bots using the De Vries team’s system can do so, and we ask only that you share your progress with the worldwide community. I will keep you posted on the results of the prototypes! Thank you all for your kind attention. This is a day to celebrate!”

  The overhead lights brightened, the stage dimmed again, and Halpert’s holograph disappeared. The cafe burst into applause.

  Once the applause died down, the chatter in the cafe resumed. But our table sat in silent mourning. Liam did not move, still staring at where Halpert’s holograph had been.

  “Liam?”

  He turned around to face the rest of us. I expected a haunted expression, but instead his jaw was set. His eyes, alight with determination, sought Dr. Yin’s and then mine.

  “Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Dr. Yin nodded. “Definitely. We’ll use their blueprints and collaborate with robotics back home to create a few prototypes as fast as possible. Then we’ll get to work on iterations of Rebecca’s synthetic morality idea, as soon as she has one…”

  “Put a call out for collaboration for synthetic morality on the labyrinth, too. See if it gets pulled,” Liam cut her off. Nilesh raised his eyebrows and glanced at Dr. Yin—technically she was his boss, not the other way around—but Dr. Yin didn’t seem to notice. She nodded, as Liam went on, “We haven’t tried open sourcing that yet. If they pull it, and I’m pretty sure they will—well, we should have the Commune up in a few days anyway. I’m going to try to set up a meeting with Halpert directly.”

  We all gaped at him, and Nilesh started laughing incredulously. “Oh, just like that, huh? You’re just gonna call him and arrange a lunch meeting, you and the most powerful man in the world?”

  Liam leveled Nilesh with a confident gaze that silenced him. “Yes I am, and Halpert will take it.”

  “Why?” I asked what we all wanted to know.

  He glanced back at me and said significantly, “I’ll just tell him Liam Kelly of General Specs wants to meet with him regarding the robotic prototypes they’re creating.”

  “And… he’ll assume you’re your father!” I gasped, both impressed and a little frightened for him.

  From the expressions around the table, I gathered no one else had known of Liam’s background, either.

  “Your father?” Dr. Yin choked, and whispered, “Your father is the CEO of General Specs?”

  “Yup.” It was evident that she wasn’t about to get nearly the explanation I'd had last night. Liam sat back, touching his A.E. chip on his temple, his expression faraway.

  “What are you doing?” Larissa breathed. “Do you have Halpert’s direct contact information already?”

  “No. I’m having Francis get it for me.” His focus returned to us then, and he shrugged. “I could find it myself, but we’d better get down to the Quantum Track pretty soon. And I should help Rebecca pack.” He glanced at me pointedly.

  “I’m staying with you,” I said at once, before I could stop myself. They all turned to look at me, and I flushed. How could I explain my reaction? “I mean… I can… go to The Capitol University and scour the research, just as well as in Dublin. Maybe better, their uni is twice the size of ours. I’ll just pose as a graduate student there. It’ll be faster! I can’t set up clinical trials here, of course, but we probably only have weeks before the prototypes are approved and General Specs starts to mass produce them. There’s no time for human experiments anyway, so I’ll just pass along whatever I find out to you guys. You can collaborate on it with robotics in Dublin, until the Commune is up and running. Then hopefully we’ll have a bunch of researchers to help worldwide.”

  I was glad I thought fast on my feet: I saw that I’d convinced them. I’d even mostly convinced myself. Dr. Yin shrugged.

  “I guess that makes sense. Clinical trials take awhile. Probably too long.” Then she tapped her temple, presumably to look at the time, and looked at Larissa and Nilesh. “We’d better get down to the Quantum Track station.”

  Liam, Larissa and I helped them all down with their luggage. With promises to keep in close contact, handshakes and hugs, they were gone.

  “I’ll head back to Francis’s pub now!” Larissa announced, looking a little flushed. “I’ll see you guys later, I’m sure!”

  Once she had gone, my heart started to pound in anticipation of what I knew I needed to do next. I turned to Liam with a determined expression. To my surprise, he met my gaze with equal expectation.

  “All right. Out with it,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  My eyebrows shot up. “Out with what?” I hadn’t planned on the innocent act, but I really wasn’t sure what he was referring to.

  “That was some pretty fast thinking in there. You almost convinced even me, but not quite.” He stared me down. “You were awfully quick and vehement about refusing to go back with them, and somehow I don’t think you were just being stubborn, although you are certainly that. Why? What are you hiding?”

  Instead of agreeing or denying, I just said, “Not here.” I turned to walk back to the hotel, and Liam fell into step beside me. It was only about five minutes away, but we walked in prickly silence, and I composed my speech as we went.

  After crossing the threshold of the glass doors in the lobby, I went straight up to my room. Liam followed me inside without waiting for an invitation.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, I motioned to Madeline to stay out of the way. Eyes wide, she mimed a zipper across her lips and wheeled herself into a corner to give us privacy, her face turned toward the wall.

  Then I said to Liam with a deep breath, “I have something to confess. But before I do,” I held up my hands to stop him from interrupting, “you have to promise not to do anything with what I am about to tell you. No one else can know, and I mean no one—not Francis, not the Renegades, not Dr. Yin—no one.”

  He balked, arms still crossed over his chest. “I’m not sure what kind of arrangement you think we have here, but I’m not going to give you a blank check, Rebecca. No.”

  I blinked, taken aback. “Then I won’t tell you anything!”

  He closed the distance between us, eyes flashing. “How dare you keep secrets from me—of all people! I am the original conspirator here, do you understand that? This is my mission, it has been for years, and you didn’t even care about it until a few weeks ago! Now suddenly you presume to withhold information from me—?”

  “You have a big mouth, Liam!” I shouted back. I wasn’t sure at what point we started shouting, but I was glad the walls were sound-proof. “You just shout everything you know from the rooftops, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up just like my dad, and your brother! I didn’t tell you because I was trying to keep you safe!”

  He laughed—a short, incredulous sound, like he couldn’t believe my presumption—but he backed up a step before sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed. “You were trying to keep me safe?” he repeated, his tone still biting but no longer a shout. He ran a hand through his dark hair so that it stood up in every direction.

  “Yes I was, believe it or not!” I rounded on him, hands on my hips. “You may be super cautious when it comes to me, but you don’t think about your own safety at all! The second you get a scrap of information, you want to tell anybody and everybody. Well, you can’t do that with this. All I’m asking is for you to promise me to think before announcing what I’m about to tell you to anyone who will listen, because this just might be the only ace up our sleeves that we’ve got. All right?”

  He sighed, heavy and resigned. “Fine. F
ine. I promise. What is this enormous secret of yours?”

  We stared each other down for a few minutes, and I bit my lip before I said at last, “I think I found Randall Loomis.”

  Chapter 19

  Liam stared at me for a second, not comprehending.

  “You—what?” He shook his head, as if to clear it of all the other things he’d apparently been expecting me to say that weren’t this. “When? How? Who is he?”

  I took another deep breath—suddenly I felt like I needed the extra oxygen. “The first night we were here,” I confessed all at once. “After you took me back to the hotel, I went for a walk. Even though you told me not to,” I held up a hand to ward off his angry reply, “I went anyway, and I met this man in the alley the next block over—”

  “You did what?”

  “Let me finish!” I retorted. “I can’t explain how, but I knew he was trying to get my attention. He knew my name, Liam, and he knew why we were here, he knew about the Renegades, and he knew about my father and his friends’ disappearance. He told me to call him John Doe, and he told me that he’d find me when I needed him, but I wouldn’t be able to contact him. That was the first time I talked to him.” I took a deep breath, and went on, “The second time was right after we met with Senator Kim.”

  I could see Liam’s blood pressure rising as I talked, until at last he couldn’t sit anymore. He stood up and began to pace. He always did that when he was upset and trying not to shout, I’d noticed.

  “He told me that Senator Kim knew the same secret my father and his friends had known, and the same secret your brother knew.”

  Here Liam looked up sharply. “So you already knew about my brother, then?”

  I held up my hands in a protestation of innocence. “Not until John Doe mentioned him that morning. I swear that was the first I knew you even had a brother.”

  He gave a short laugh and resumed pacing. “And then you had to figure out a way to get me to tell you the story, without arousing my suspicion. Bravo, Rebecca. Well done.”

  “I am telling you less than twenty-four hours later!” I shot back angrily, “will you scale back the sarcasm for half a second?”

  “I trusted you,” was Liam’s reply, all sarcasm gone. He met my gaze, and did not bother to disguise his hurt. That was worse, much worse, than his anger. I felt tears spring to my eyes, but I maintained my anger like a shield.

  “John Doe told me not to tell you specifically, because he said you were reckless!”

  Liam said nothing to this, pacing still. I waited a few beats, and when it didn’t seem like he was going to say anything more, I added, calmer, “The last time I heard from him was last night. He sent me another comm, and warned me to go back to Dublin with the others from the lab. And I think he must’ve sent a comm to Dr. Yin, too, because she woke me up this morning and told me she got an anonymous comm telling her that I was going back with them.”

  Liam’s pacing was beginning to drive me mad. His accusation still rang in my ears: I trusted you.

  Finally I begged, “Liam. Stop that. Look at me. Say something.”

  He did stop, and I saw the little muscle in his jaw tighten before he turned to look at me. I blinked my tears away before they could fall, determined not to let him see them. I couldn't stand it when people were angry with me.

  “I want to meet him,” Liam announced at last.

  I sighed, exasperated. “I told you, I don’t have control over when or where we meet—”

  “He’s contacted you multiple times since we’ve been here, that indicates it won’t be long,” Liam cut me off. “And you will tell me the second you hear from him the next time. Right?” I bristled, but before I could retort, he burst out again, “What were you thinking, Rebecca? You snuck out, on your own, twice—to a dark alley! What if he’s not Loomis? What if he’s keeping tabs on us for the other side, trying to find out what we know? Did you ever think of that, that maybe he didn’t want you to tell me because he wanted to use you against me? Against the Renegades? What if one of these times they take you too, as a hostage or something, to shut us up?”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I countered, but without any real conviction. The truth was, I felt shaken. He was right; I had just blindly trusted that John Doe was Loomis, and that he was on my side. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that he might not be?

  “I want to meet him,” Liam demanded again. “The next time you hear from him—”

  “I don’t even know if I will again, now that I’ve told you!” I shot back. “He always seems to know all about everything we’ve done so far, so he probably knows I’ve told you now, too! I don’t know how—”

  “Maybe because he’s on the inside,” Liam growled. “Unless you think he’s got our hotel rooms bugged.”

  I felt angry and confused and defensive all at once. I wished I could prove to him that John Doe was who I’d believed him to be, but I didn’t know what to say. Liam made me feel foolish and naive. Maybe I was.

  Before I could formulate a reply, though, I saw Liam freeze.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Then I saw him tap his temple, and I realized he’d gotten a comm.

  “It’s Odessa,” he murmured to me, and I saw his eyes slide back and forth, reading the comm on the inside of his retinas. “That’s odd,” he muttered to himself.

  “What?”

  His eyes snapped back to the room, and he said bitingly, “I don’t know, can I trust you? You just have a tendency to run off and tell random men in alleys everything I say to you.”

  “That’s not fair!” I shot back, feeling the tears pricking the corners of my eyes again. I blinked them back fiercely. I would not let him see me cry. I would not.

  I think he saw them anyway, though, because his expression softened.

  He sighed, inspecting my face, hands on his hips. “No more secrets, Bec. Deal?”

  I nodded, angry with myself for my weakness. I didn’t trust myself to meet his eyes. “Deal.”

  He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. “Remember when I said I had Odessa scour everything she could find on Halpert on the labyrinth?” Then he tapped the chip in his temple again and read, “Odessa says, ‘Attached are loci with basic biographical information about William Halpert,’ and then she lists three of them. She goes on, ’But I can only find independent sources corroborating his history for the past 20 years: Masters’ Degree and graduation Summa Cum Laude from South Pacific University, his subsequent rise in politics, humanitarian relief efforts, professional alliances, etc. There’s a block before that, though. Aside from the officially sponsored loci giving a cursory back story, there’s nothing corroborating it anywhere. No other record that he even existed.’”

  “Huh,” I said, perplexed.

  “I know.” Liam nodded. “Then she says, ‘The most peculiar detail I found in the last twenty years was his spending habits: he purchases salt and sulfuric acid in bulk monthly from a discount chemistry supply company out of Baltimore.’”

  “Salt and sulfuric acid?” I repeated, reaching for my netscreen. A quick search on the labyrinth told me that such these were the ingredients necessary to produce hydrochloric acid, but I didn’t see how that could be relevant. I showed the screen to Liam.

  “What would Halpert want with that much hydrochloric acid, though?” I asked rhetorically.

  He shook his head slowly, staring at the screen. Then he tapped his temple again, and his eyes skimmed left to right as he mentally dictated a comm to Odessa.

  “I’m telling her to find all possible uses for salt, sulfuric acid, or hydrochloric acid. I’m telling Francis, too. He has an uncanny way of seeing patterns I can’t see.” He shrugged, and met my eyes. At least Odessa’s new mystery had diffused all remaining tension between us. After a moment, he reached out and squeezed my hand.

  “Hey. We’re okay. Right?”

  I felt that same swooping, jittery sensat
ion I’d had when Liam had touched me unexpectedly yesterday. “Yeah, of course.” I gave his hand a perfunctory squeeze back, and dropped it like a hot potato. “We’re fine.”

  Chapter 20

  As soon as Liam left my hotel room and the door clicked shut, Madeline spun around, eyes wide.

  “Sorry to make you stand in the corner,” I said, stuffing my netscreen back in my backpack. “I just didn’t think having an audience would be smart right then.”

  “I’m glad you told him after all,” Madeline murmured. “I see what you meant now, about him feeling betrayed if you didn’t. It would have been so much worse if you’d kept it from him any longer.”

  “As long as he keeps his end of the promise and doesn’t go telling anyone else,” I muttered. “Liam is so volatile, I never know what he’s gonna do.” I crossed the room to stuff some old fashioned pens and notebook paper into my backpack also. I was the only one who needed to go to Capitol University, but overprotective Liam insisted on coming with me. Since Liam needed to work on the Commune with Francis and Larissa, they were coming too—much to Francis’s irritation.

  “It’s safer to talk in the pub, and Rebecca will be perfectly safe on a university campus. For heaven’s sake, Liam,” were his exact words. He’d sent the comm to both of us.

  “He’s right, Liam. I’ll be fine.”

  “You know where you’d be fine? Dublin,” Liam had shot back.

  Francis sent Liam Halpert’s direct comm address after that, and Liam had disabled the holograph feature for the call so that Halpert’s secretary could not see that he wasn’t his father. He left a message that Liam Kelly of General Specs would like to meet with the senator at his earliest convenience, suggesting lunch the following day. The four of us finally agreed to meet up again in the lobby downstairs in a few minutes to head to Capitol University library. The three of them would try to find a soundproof study room to work on the Commune, while I dug up whatever I could to at least give me a starting point on the neuroscience of morality and free will. That wasn’t daunting at all.