“Now how do we get the database?” I asked.
“We have to move deeper into the complex. There is another, different and more secure network. We have to penetrate the Encrypted Core!”
“But how? We can't get inside at all. Even getting this far was dumb luck.”
She shrugged. Petch sat beside us, helpless.
The only option was to retreat to the last branch and explore the final path before us.
We crawled along the final path, passing several grates. We tried each one, hoping for one that might be loose enough to pry open. They were all solid, unmoving. We kept going. This tunnel did not end at a wall. It went on and on and on. I wish we had a way to measure how long it went, but we crawled for what seemed like hours, passing grate after impregnable grate, pausing at each one to rattle the bars for any weakness, and to give Teena's implant a chance to sniff for a signal. Not a peep!
Finally, we hit a 'T' with another even smaller line, this one too small for us to crawl into easily. We might crawl into it by crawling on our bellies, but could not hope to turn around. Actually, Teena might crawl into it. I didn't think my shoulders or those of Petch would even fit. Even so, her very womanly hips would be nearly as tight. Either way, crawling in reverse to get out would be slow and painful, if even possible.
The last grate before the 'T' felt like it could almost move. As before we leaned into it with all we could muster, but it was bolted, latched or something. It would move a little, but not yield.
We were stymied. Staring at the smaller pipe of the 'T' I wished we could get into it. Too bad we didn't have a hobbit on our team!
Teena refused to concede defeat. She was determined to crawl into that line in hopes of either finding an opening into the inside or at least a signal she could use to access the Encrypted Core and retrieve the database.
We discussed the idea at some length, as we took stock of our situation. Succinctly put, we were a mess. We were bloodied, tired, spent. We didn't know how long we had been here when our exit portal would open, or even how much longer we could survive. Crawling into a tight space that might be difficult to get out of seemed a prescription for dying a horrible, claustrophobic death on this forsaken planet!
I argued that we had completed the most crucial part of the mission, killing the runaway system. Even without the database, it might be possible that scientists may yet puzzle out the solution, even without the research data used to instigate the process. Knowing the specific research underlying the approach taken to reduce human fertility would make it a lot easier, but we still might succeed without it.
Teena shook her head. “I am not optimistic. Our best scientists, the best geneticists in the known universe have been working on it for over a century without significant progress. Genetics is complicated, Fitz, far more complex than most people have a clue, and it's hard. We need that database. If I don't get it here and now, before the machine is dead, it may well be unrecoverable.”
“Couldn't computer forensics recover the data from the dead system?” I asked.
“Admittedly it might be possible,” was the response. “But it's a long shot. To make sure the machine stays dead, the Nematode completely wipes all storage, all writable memory down to low-level machine bios code on every node, every server pod, rendering it incapable of booting, incapable of even running a power-on-self-test. If we didn't do that, the system would just isolate affected nodes and restore them individually. We have to take them all down, virtually at once, and make sure they stay dead else the machine will rebuild itself one node at a time until it is again back in full operation. There is no expectation that once Nematode has done its work there will be any functioning data processing hardware or any structured data of any sort. Anything left to recover would be an accident, pure dumb luck.
“I for one have no wish to bet the future of the human race on dumb luck. Not while I have a breath left in my body!”
Petch chimed in, “Killing the machine buys us little. If not for the genetic database, we could block off the portals and leave it abandoned on the planet. No! We simply MUST have that database. That is far more important than simply killing the machine.”
That made sense!
We considered our options. Teena thought she could crawl forward into the pipe. Crawling backward to get out would be much more difficult. We decided to tie our rope to her feet, in such a way that she can still crawl, but so we can help pull her back out.
We experimented by having her crawl just a very few feet in, and then I pulled her back. Painful, difficult, she got scraped and bruised in the process, but doable.
She took the left side of the 'T' and began crawling. I played out the rope to her and watched her progress. I had played out about three-quarters of the line when she stopped. She was still for a very long time. I began to worry. Finally, she signaled for assistance in retreating.
She was scraped and bloodied from head to toe, and from her expression, I could see there had been no success. She shook her head. “There was a grate, but I couldn't budge it. I tried and tried. There was no signal either. Just a dead end.”
She started for the right side of the 'T.' I stopped her. “Are you sure?” I asked with my eyes. She avoided my gaze, pulled away and moved toward the pipe. Once again she crawled into the tight space, inching forward. Again about three-quarters of the length of my rope disappeared, and then she stopped. Again, there was silence for a very long time.
The bad air and the heat were taking their toll. I was having a harder and harder time staying focused. I must have faded out for a second or two because when I looked again, the rope was gone!
Nightmare scenario after nightmare scenario played through my brain as I lunged for the access to the pipe. I reached inside as far as I could, feeling for the end of the rope. What had happened. Had something grabbed her. Had she fallen into an intersecting down-pipe?
I stared dumbfounded. Then I shouted into the pipe. No good. We had tried that before, the overall ambient noise and the echoey nature of the environment made understanding our distorted voices impossible.
Petchy suggested she might have found a grate she could open, and now be inside the complex. I had seen so many that were so impossible to move, I doubted it, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I could not go after her.
We waited a while. Then we waited some more. Petch said something; I didn't understand him at first. The heat and bad air were taking their toll on us both, but I was pretty well wiped out.
“Maybe we should head for a portal,” he finally got my attention. I shook my head. “When you're going through hell, keep going.” I quoted, “Let's at least give her a few more minutes.”
He shrugged.
We probably sat there in the muck and mire, covered in mud and crud for an hour. Actually, I don't know how long. Hard to judge, no way to mark time. I wished for a simple wristwatch. I wished for lots of things.
I stuck my head into the pipe. Listening for any sound, any indication as to what had happened. Petch was again making the case that we should go, and I still refused. I was having more and more difficulty staying cogent, and so was Petchy. If we did not go soon, we would probably die here, and rather soon I suspect. We were overheated, dehydrated and had ever increasing difficulty breathing. I realized we were very likely to die right where we sat. Soon.
Just as I was coming to terms with having failed, I heard a banging! It was hollow and echoey, but definitely, someone was banging something on the other end of the pipe. Or was it gunfire? Hard to tell, but there was life of some sort in that pipe.
A few minutes later I could hear a voice. I could not understand the words, but it was unquestionably Teena. I couldn't make out what she was saying. Neither could Petch. We heard more banging, then silence for a time. Several minutes elapsed, then we heard a grinding sound much closer at hand, apparently not weapons, more like metal on metal scrunching and squeaking.
Suddenly we heard her voice clearly, but no
t from within the pipe. She was above the grate behind us, the one that had seemed almost loose. We scooted over to her and gaped at her in astonishment.
“I think I managed to undo the clamps. It's too heavy for me though, can you lift it?” Petch and I together raised the grate and pushed it aside, then climbed through to the upper level. We were in!
Teena was a bloody mess. She explained that she had found a grate that was loose and managed to open it and crawl out into the complex. Teena had succeeded in making her way from secure area to secure area, thanks to the security over-ride software in her implant. She was searching for a connection to the internal network when a security bot found her. She had managed to disable it and take its weapon. She brandished a formidable piece of artillery!
She was excited, hopped up on adrenaline, but success had not come without a price. She had taken two bullets and had a nasty burn on her leg as if a powerful laser beam had raked it. Her wounds seemed non-life threatening, but bloody, messy and very serious. She was bleeding and virtually unable to walk, a makeshift rope tourniquet stemming the worst bleeding from her leg wound somewhat.
Weapon or no, a hasty retreat and urgent medical care seemed in order, but we still had to find and connect to the secure internal network, the Encrypted Core she had called it, and download that database!
We ventured further into the facility; I carried Teena so as not to aggravate her bleeding. We still left a trail of her blood. At each nodal cluster we passed, I cocked an eyebrow questioningly at her. Any signal? She shook her head. With no way to track time, it seemed as if we spent hours exploring deeper and deeper, searching for a connection.
Twice we were accosted by a bot. They were indeed like something out of a bad Science Fiction TV show, and I would have laughed at them if they weren't firing real, deadly weapons at us. As it was, I almost imagined I could hear a high-pitched 'Exterminate' echoing the corridors. Fortunately, we were armed and able to defend ourselves. Each time we were able to take their weapon, re-arming ourselves and dropping our spent ones. They turned out to be quite easy to 'kill' with their own style weapon if you hit them just right. Surprisingly fragile really, though if they came at us in significant numbers, they could be very bad news. Their primary strategy seemed to be to swarm any threat as a coordinated phalanx of attackers. Individuals alone were more dangerous than comical. Barely.
So far the ones we had seen were few and solitary. However, our luck was due to run out soon. The AI was aware of our existence and had a fair idea of where we were. Frankly, we were amazed at encountering so few internal forces. Even though the frontal attack occupied most of its forces, it was only a matter of time before it could mobilize enough bots to overcome us with sheer numbers.
Our only hope was to move quickly, despite our fatigue and Teena's worrying bleeding which we were unable to stem entirely. Petch and I took turns carrying our wounded warrior, but we were both tiring fast, and Teena herself was fading due to blood loss. If we did not find a signal soon, we faced dying here in abject failure, or else abandoning our mission and retreating. Neither option was palatable.
We came to a huge security gate, unable to proceed further. We could see past it into the corridor beyond, which housed cluster after cluster of server pods.
Suddenly, the gate opened. Teena's over-ride had worked once more; luck was still with us. We hobbled down the corridor, following the curving pathway, deeper into the bowels of the machine, deeper into the massed hardware clusters.
As we rounded one bend, Teena hoarsely whispered: “Stop!” We froze. She pointed ahead. There ahead of us was what I could only describe as a communications hub. Massive numbers of fiber optic cables converged into a multi-tiered conglomeration of hardware. It seemed a candidate to have the communications access we sought, but a camera and gun emplacement covered it!
Petch raised the weapon commandeered from our last encounter. I shook my head, vetoing it. “Too noisy!” I whispered hoarsely. No reason to advertise our presence more than necessary. Besides, we had limited ammunition. Rocks were reusable!
The camera was scanning a cyclical surveillance pattern, covering the entire corridor, each direction one at a time and oscillating back and forth. I unlimbered my sling and waited just out of sight behind a rack until it scanned our direction then turned away. Holding my breath until it was pointed directly away from us, I stepped out, wound up and let fly. My hard-flung missile caught the camera squarely, knocking it from its mount and smashing it to pieces.
Blind it may now be, but the machine apparently deduced the direction of the threat. The weapon whirled around and opened fire in our direction. We dove back around the bend and watched as the weapon scanned the area, spraying bullets until we heard its magazine spin emptily. It was out of ammunition, and blind. No doubt it knew we were here now, guaranteeing reinforcement bots were on their way.
I carried the weak and injured Teena to the hub, and she smiled weakly. A few seconds and she began nodding. Petch and I abandoned her briefly as the download commenced and placed ourselves down the hallway in either direction from her location, to guard against incoming bots.
We waited for what seemed like ages. Periodically, we would raise a questioning thumb at Teena, and she would give us a weak thumbs up. Still going. It was too noisy to communicate otherwise. I never imagined computers could be so noisy.
Again and again, we repeated this cycle. Once Petch engaged fire with a solitary bot that had come from his direction. He knocked it out and ran over and pulled its weapon. He tossed it to me, and I stuffed the revolver and its four lonely pips into my vest. It felt good to have a real firearm. It was meant to be used by a robot and not a human, but although it was awkward, we could manage. Humans are much more flexible than any robot.
The download continued. We knew it was a massive amount of data; we didn't know how long to expect it to take. We only knew we were going to hold this position as long as it took, or until we died. As long as we secured the data, we were expendable. Subsequent forces could extract the data from Teena's corpse if necessary, but needless to say, that would not be our preferred outcome.
We expected more bots to appear, but our luck was still holding. Our brethren making the frontal assault must be taking all of the machine's attention and resources. We could occasionally hear distant thunder that must be weapons fire. Despite our fears, bots had been few and far between. I was astonished that we had not seen more flying drones.
After an eternity, Teena circled thumb and forefinger in the universal sign of success. We ran to her, I scooped her up and headed back the way we had come.
We retraced our steps at a dead run, following the trail of Teena's blood left as we came in. We were virtually running now, heedless of the danger. We were leaving a fresh trail of her blood. After an eternity we reached the gigantic barrier I had blown up, how many hours ago?
Bad news.
Three security bots had stationed themselves outside the opening. How to cope with them, I wondered. I set the now unconscious Teena down inside the grate. I carefully checked her breathing and pulse. She was fading fast. Petch took our one useful revolver with its four shots, removed two shells and loaded them into the empty one, handing it to me. We each took a purloined automatic rifle, mine nearly half-full, Petchy's nearly empty.
We could not hope to crawl out through the grate. We would be attacked immediately, with fatal results. We could sit inside and shoot at them from there until they returned fire. Once they knew we were there, it would be hard to do anything but duck and run. Worse, their bullets would ricochet off the concrete walls, making almost anywhere unsafe, even if they couldn't get a direct shot.
Teena's burn confirmed they had beam weapons too. Even mere light can be deadly with enough energy behind it.
We couldn't sit there forever. The unconscious Teena was still bleeding! We all needed medical attention, but Teena’s need was far more urgent. We couldn't go out there because they would shoot us. If we s
hot at them, they would shoot back. We were at an impasse for the moment, only because the bots had not yet detected our presence.
Petch and I talked it over and decided to go for whatever we could do. The worst-case scenario was now that a rescue party would eventually find our bodies, with the precious database information intact in Teena's implant. We had succeeded, kinda. Some might argue that success called for returning alive, and I tended to agree, but a pyrrhic victory was marginally better than abject failure and defeat.
We planned to position Teena far back in the tunnel and then carefully position ourselves at the grate. We would fire on the two bots nearest us simultaneously and try to disable them, and then run for it before the third one could hit us.
It almost worked to perfection. Almost. We waited until one bot had moved further away from the grate and then opened fire on the two closest to us. The third one came rapidly toward us, firing on the move. Petchy had emptied the revolver into his target, and it went down, though not before firing several shots in our direction. I got off my two shots as well before incoming fire from the third bot forced us to retreat. We dropped the revolvers, ducked and ran, but a ricochet creased my shoulder. It wasn't bad, missed the bones, didn't damage the joint, but I lost some tissue. I would heal, but it hurt like hell and was bleeding. Even so, compared to Teena I was barely scratched!
The third bot fired several rounds into the grate, but not seeing us and with no target in sight, it soon retreated and again took up position outside the grate. We surmised it had called for reinforcements and would not attack until it had support. We had moments to escape before those reinforcements arrived.
After the fire had settled down, we again sneaked up to the grate and peered out. The bot had stationed itself a few feet from the entry and was keeping watch. Either it hadn't noticed us behind the massive grate, or it interpreted our movements as non-threatening. Perhaps it was merely watching, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. Petchy and I took positions either side of the opening, each of us with one of the same weapons the robot possessed. Petch had one round left in his weapon. I had not counted mine, but I had more than he. We were sure it had a laser weapon too, but so far had not used it.
Chromosome Quest- a Hero's Quest Against the Singularity Page 22
