Othella (Arcadian Heights)

by Therin Knite

  "Whoa, McClain! What the hell are you into?" Something, like a plate of reheated Chinese takeout, shatters on the floor of Alex’s one-room apartment. He swears. Some of the words are in Russian. Some are in Spanish.

  "Story of the decade, honey. Get your ass in gear."

  "Okay, fine." He inhales. "List of recruits. Max I can have it is a week in advance. That’s when they hand it over to the White House. Can’t get it off the community servers."

  "A window is a window no matter how small. I can work with that."

  "What else?"

  "After you get the list, I want you to narrow it down to the one who looks the most like me."

  He doesn’t respond, but his breath rushes out of his chest, clawing at the microphone.

  "Then, I want you to forward me her specs. Height. Weight. Facial shape. Colors. Lengths. Muscle tone. Plus all the pictures you can find. I don’t care if you have to break into her home computer. Get everything."

  "What about her prints?"

  "Those, too."

  "All right. I can hack that. But I’m curious, Georgie. This girl, when she gets recruited, how are you going to convince her not to go?"

  "I have my ways. Now get it done, and it better be the best job of your life."

  "What if I can’t find a good match?"

  "Get as close as you can. I can change it up a bit on my end, but you know the limitations."

  He swallows and smacks his lips. "Why the sudden interest in the Heights?"

  "I’m on a ‘mission’ for someone."

  Alex fidgets in his squeaky desk chair, voice falling to a whisper. "Marco Salt?"

  "Maybe."

  Alex has never spoken to me about the Heights, but I can hear the hesitation in his voice, hear the heavy knowledge weighing on his shoulders until he lets it slip and break the ground at my feet. "I’ve heard things. Rumors. From some hackers that work with the Anti-Heights movement. Rumors about some weird-ass shit that goes on there."

  "Weird, huh?" Are dead bodies weird? We all die in the end, so I would say no. Dead bodies are perfectly normal. Unless you hide them in your closet.

  "Yeah. Weird. And dangerous."

  "Oh? Do you know how dangerous?" The corkboard falls from the wall and crashes to the floor. Through the gap between the bathroom door and the frame, I see Clarissa Salt’s photo glide across the room and land on the frayed carpet that skirts my bed. "Because I do. And if you fuck this job up, Alex, I’m going to run straight into a pit of spikes. So don’t let me down unless you want to be responsible for my cold and gorgeous corpse."

  ... [ Chapter Three ] ...

  1

  Marco

  ( 4 Years Ago )

  I’ll say it was an accident tomorrow. If anyone asks when I’m in the grocery store buying another load of food I won’t eat. It was, too. An accident. I meant to break the mirror, not my hand.

  The stream of blood has already slowed to a sticky trickle. I’m not dying. The gash isn’t deep enough. So I lie there in a black room on my antique carpet and let the bleed run its course. A first aid kit is waiting for me in my bathroom—I don’t remember exactly where. Clarissa bought it years ago and stowed it away herself to make sure I didn’t stick it with all the junk in the attic.

  The tablet buzzes again. It lights up the room from the corner where I chucked it with a high-pitched whine fifteen minutes ago. I know the message. I don’t need to read it. It’s always the same fucking four words. Over and over. Twice a day, every day, for the last three hundred sixty-five days. On my tablet. On my workstation screens. On every piece of tech I own with an internet connection.

  Dad, I’m in trouble.

  When I reply, no one answers. When I attempt to track the origin of the message, nothing comes up. I had Reggie take a crack at it eleven months ago. After the fiftieth iteration, after the uncomfortable it’s-a-prank belief had been rubbed raw and aching. But Reggie couldn’t locate the sender. Reggie, one of the top computer scientists on Earth.

  The sender is someone better.

  So it could be Clarissa, who coded circles around college kids at the ripe old age of ten.

  But logically, she is safe and working tirelessly to improve humanity’s prospects. There is nothing wrong with her. She is in no danger. Arcadian Heights is everything it purports itself to be. An exclusive haven for smart, science-minded boys and girls.

  Logic. I live on it. I breathe it. So why can’t I buy it now?

  Is there something wrong with my brain? Incurable cancer? A degenerative disease? A latent mental illness surfacing at last?

  I sit up from the bloody carpet, dizziness weighing down my mind. I can’t think straight. The pressure behind my eyes makes my fingers itch to rip them out and toss them in the food disposal. Listen to them grind away to mush.

  The migraine has taken control of my life. Four pills at breakfast. Another three at lunch. No luck. The tiniest hint of light burns like I’m the undead resurrected.

  Fuck.

  I haven’t been to work in a week.

  South Sydian’s stock price has slipped in my absence.

  I promised the Board I’d return to my fancy high-rise office tomorrow, lounge on my throne again and inform the press a nasty flu knocked me for a temporary loop. Hey, everybody! It’s Marco Salt! Back in business and ready to release another knockout product or ten, to cream the competition with my puffed-up superiority!

  When I stand, swaying, a sharp throb in my skull shorts my thoughts out, and it’s all I can do not to collapse on my bed and ruin that, too. With my bloody arm and tears half dried on my face and neck. With my impending insanity.

  I dare to glance at the broken mirror. Zombie CEO stares back at me from fifteen cracked and jagged pieces. Raccoon eyes. Pale face. Hair like I stuck my finger in a socket.

  I’m a joke. A paranoid joke. The whole world is going to laugh me to my grave as soon as the media gets wind of this. I should give up and run while the going’s good and—

  There’s a knock on my front door.

  2

  Quentin

  ( 4 Years Ago )

  If supercomputers could have seizures, this would be the result. I’m plastered to the wall of the broiling room that houses Howard’s CPU, watching a digital acid trip unfold. Ten alarms are shrieking at different tones. All the emergency lights flash on and off, on and off. Data in every color of the rainbow zips across the enormous screens mounted to the walls. And in the middle of the circus-like nonsense is a 3D projection of Howard’s furious face.

  His mouth is open as if he’s screaming. But I don’t hear his voice. I suspect the alarms are the angry replacement for his naturally soft computer pitch.

  "Howard!" I call out. "Howard, calm down!"

  He pays me no mind. Wonderful.

  I roll up my sweat-drenched sleeves and traverse the minefield of cords and wires and steaming—steaming!—computer elements. When I reach the floating face, I walk right through it, hop over a dusty chair that no one has sat in since Howard went digital, and check the readout from the main terminal.

  There’s a report on the screen that claims someone from inside the community sent a message to an outside network. Which should be impossible given Howard’s firewall.

  Oh. That’s why he’s so upset.

  I scroll through the report to find the recipient of the message, but there isn’t one listed. The sender is skilled. The message was relayed through more countries than I can count on one hand, scrambled at every stop, and then reassembled as a folder full of images "somewhere" in the United States.

  Since I can’t determine the recipient from the data, I’ll have to locate the sender first and infer—or rip the information from the unfortunate rebel’s memory drive, if he or she turns out to be not-so-forthcoming. Should be simple. There aren’t but so many droids running around, and the delinquent will be easy to spot. It’ll be the one that doesn’t act like a drooling sheep.

  I send the report to my office work
station and turn to face Howard’s frantic floating head. "Hey! Stop acting like a complete tool, would you?"

  His mouth snaps shut. The alarms cease. "What did you call me?"

  "You heard me. You’re not eight. You can’t throw temper tantrums anymore, Howard. Especially about something so trivial." I maneuver around his image this time and head for the exit.

  His face trails behind me but stops at the edge of the circular area marked with red paint on the floor. The boundary of the hologram sensors. "This isn’t trivial. My system was breached. Christ, Quentin, you know how hard I worked on that firewall? Nothing and no one should’ve been able to break it. Yet she did. And she did it right under my nose."

  "She? Who are we talking about?"

  "Three guesses. Sharp as a whip and twice as bold."

  "Oh, God." I feel a headache coming on. "Not Salt."

  "Who else? And this isn’t the first time she’s slipped by the wall either. I didn’t catch her until now because her previous files were so tiny. She sent them bit by bit—short text messages. The only reason I caught her this time was the file size. Tripped my defenses. But it was still too late to stop it. The folder and its contents are out in the world now, in the hands of someone who might very well use it to ruin us. We could be royally screwed, Quentin."

  I pat my wet thigh, and a scalded patch of skin stings at the pressure. Great morning I’m having. Reading community updates. Sipping my seasonal blend. Jumping three feet into the air at Howard’s panicked banshee wails and spilling a hot beverage all over my lap. The now cold coffee smell invades my nostrils.

  I click my tongue. "Let’s handle this one step at a time. Salt can’t escape from the community, right? Because you put that failsafe into the droid hardware? She’ll shut off if she passes the grid line?"

  "Right." Howard’s head scrunches its enormous nose. "She’s trapped. We should be able to capture her."

  "Good...and also bad. I have a feeling she’ll default to havoc-wreaking now that we’re onto her. We need to institute damage minimization efforts immediately. Send a patrolman contingent to head her off, wherever she is or wherever she’s going. Also, put out a general alert for the other droids. Tell them to lock themselves in wherever they are and avoid Salt at all costs."

  "Done," Howard says two seconds later.

  "Well, there you have it. The patrolmen can destroy her, and that will be—"

  "We can’t destroy her, Quentin."

  "Um, pardon me?"

  Graphs and charts appear on the screens along the left-hand wall. Several numbers are highlighted. One of them is the community productivity measure. Howard glances at the screen and frowns. "We can’t destroy Salt. She has one of the highest droid output levels. If we scrap her, it’ll set us back almost two years. We’ll have to reorganize the plan again, expand again. And every time we do that, our exposure risk quadruples. It’s too dangerous. There’s a better solution."

  I smack my cheeks with sweaty palms and groan. "And what might that be?"

  "Well, if she’s acting outside the standard programming, there are only two possible reasons why. Either she has a virus, or there was an error in her initial coding. Probably during her transfer. She was an atypical case, after all. We’ve never had someone go down with that kind of fight before."

  My neck aches. "So, what, you want to fix her?"

  "Yes. Once we shut her down, I’ll access her code and debug her. Hopefully, I can have her up and running again before our output breaks down. A few days at best. Maybe a few weeks. Worst case, a few months. If we do lose some ground, we can pull in an extra recruit or two in the future to make up for it. But we definitely can’t decommission her permanently. It’d take too many new resources to make up for one Clarissa Salt. We’d diverge too far from the plan, put ourselves at too much risk."

  "Naturally. She’s a special child." The door is wide open, so I trudge across the threshold, sweat drenched and exhausted.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To watch a battle. I figure it’ll be the most exciting event that’s ever happened on community grounds." An irksome outlier getting what it deserves. A good, old-fashioned beat down.

  Clarissa Salt. Always the exception.

  Until now, little girl.

  3

  Marco

  ( 4 Years Ago )

  The knock is loud. Clear. With intent. The sound echoes through the house, and the hair on the back of my neck rises. I told everyone I’d be down in Florida this weekend to recuperate from my "illness," so who’s at the door? Is someone following me?

  I eye the crinkled flex tablet in the corner. Its screen is dark again.

  Staggering to my nightstand, I slide the drawer open with my good arm and remove a Glock I bought for self-defense during my college days in a bad city in a bad time that’s only gotten worse. Riots. Destruction. Young people full of hate. Old people full of resentment. It’s loaded. I flip off the safety, close the drawer, and begin a slow, wavering shuffle toward the hallway.

  The knock sounds off again. Harder. More frantic. Someone’s knuckles rapping against my faded red front door. I lean against the wall as I approach. Light filters in through gaps in my window shades, and every square inch of it scorches my corneas, fueling the agony in my head. I have to stop and screw my eyes shut. A prayer for relief passes my lips, but it makes no sound.

  God’s not listening anyway.

  I push forward.

  Another three knocks. Even harder. Quicker. Agitation building in the person behind the panel. Whoever it is. Whoever’s been following me. Is it the sender finally coming to scream got you, bitch into my face, spit cruel laughter at me?

  I’ll shoot the bastard. I’ll splatter the fucker’s demented brains all over my front porch, and I won’t feel a hint of regret as the ants drag the squishy bits away, devouring every twisted intention. I will gladly go to prison for the rest of my life.

  Just make the messages stop!

  I reach the door. Wrap my bloody fingers around the knob. Unlock it. Haul it open. Whip the gun out through the gap. Point it at the stalker behind the threshold. The man on the other side starts at the movement but freezes when he perceives the gun.

  And for a brief second, I’m not at my cozy suburban home. I’m on the porch of another man’s home in another time and place. And I’m pointing a gun at the man at the door, who is frozen, horror growing on his face when he recognizes mine. My face. Twenty years younger and warped with rage. And this man with his hands raised in surrender parts his lips to plea, but I don’t listen because I can’t. I can’t hear anything but the roar of a vengeful fire in my chest. So I tighten my grip on the trigger and—

  "Marco, don’t! It’s me!"

  Reggie. On my porch. At my house. Now.

  I blink furiously, trying to drown out the brightness of the cool spring day. But I can still see Reggie’s carrot orange mop top. The fear in the hazel eyes that usually crown the laughter on his freckled face. The same man I’ve known since childhood, since we were stupid, reckless brats playing pranks on neighbors. Reggie, who’s stood by my side through thick and thin, win and loss, commendation and humiliation.

  I almost shot Reggie.

  4

  Quentin

  ( 4 Years Ago )

  Eighteen shots. That’s how long Clarissa Salt’s traitorous droid body lasts.

  When the patrolmen track her to the Sims Center lobby, she’s waiting for us. Equipped with a burst rifle. God knows where she got it. She must have raided the armory.

  She doesn’t budge from her place in the middle of the room as the patrolmen advance. She’s aware that flight is not an option. The chase was nothing but a brief respite before the final storm. There is nowhere she can run. There is nowhere she can hide. So it appears she has decided the best end is a kamikaze blaze of glory routine.

  Her first target is me. She fires a single round at my chest. But I’m ten feet behind the patrolmen, so one of them takes the bullet. Bec
ause I’m listed as a priority—protect at all costs. The subsequent burst shatters the patrolman’s chest plate, rendering its movements awkward and jerky. As it’s recovering from the hit, the others charge Salt.

  For a noncombatant droid model, she puts up a hell of a fight.

  Leaps over her enemies like an honest-to-god ninja. Shoots a patrolman’s head off using a trick shot, complete with backflip. If she hadn’t put the entire community at risk, I’d be impressed.

  Mid-battle, Howard usurps command of the patrolmen from their main programming. Since they’re wholly machine, Howard has nothing to fear from tampering with their systems. None of that "core pattern integrity" bullshit he yaps about. His added power at the helm, the patrolmen become more unpredictable. Quicker. Smarter. They possess a wider range of strategies with Howard’s endless algorithms in charge.

  Salt loses the upper hand.

  Two burn rounds melt through an arm and a leg. A burst bullet tears a chunk out of her torso. One of the patrolmen breaks a wrist in half. And finally, a well-placed kick knocks her artificial spine out of commission. She falls. Game over.

  The patrolmen surround her broken body and train their weapons on her. But not on her head. That remains unscathed, untargeted. Howard doesn’t want to risk damaging her false, corrupted droid brain.

  Around the group, the lobby resembles a condemned hotel. There are holes in the ceiling, walls, floor. The front desk is on fire where an errant burn round buried itself in the polished wood. Plaster rains from the ceiling in a fine mist. Several windows are cracked.

  I’ll have to reallocate funds to pay for repairs. And they’ll have to be expedited. The next orientation is a month away.

  I swallow my irritation and approach the warzone.

  Clarissa Salt is still twitching, trying to force her body to do things it isn’t capable of. Determined. Like a human being. Far too much like a human being. The droids are not designed to possess that level of self-awareness.