by Therin Knite
"First thing’s first, Dr. Marks." She waves one of the briefcase boys over and motions for him to place his case on the coffee table. It unlocks with a six-digit code the woman fumbles the first time around because her pink nails are too long for her to properly press the frictionless plastic buttons. When she corrects herself, the case top pops open, revealing several pieces of equipment. The woman removes a standard camera. "A picture for ID comparison."
Moment of truth. If Brannigan failed to perfectly replicate Adele’s features, then the bright and smiley rep won’t be smiling much longer.
She switches the camera on and snaps a quick close-up of my face. Then she wirelessly transfers the image to a flex tablet in the briefcase. The camera is swapped out for the tablet, and the woman runs the facial recognition program, comparing my face to Adele’s national ID image, taken five years ago for her last renewal.
I pinch my tongue between my molars and wait for the results. The commercial fac-rec software I bought last week is not as powerful or precise as the version reserved for government agencies and top-end corporations. It passed me with a ninety-six percent match, a sensible number given the time elapsed between the national ID shot and today’s Adele. But there’s a possibility the better tech will see through my illusion.
The program runs for eight minutes, and the rep woman starts getting antsy. Adjusting her butt on the loveseat. Tapping her shoes on the carpet. She glances at me then at the tablet screen then at me again. Judging by her protruding bottom lip, a sure sign of a no-thinker trying to mimic a critical thinker, the program is not supposed to run for so long.
Even the examiner, a handsome black man around forty, begins to fidget. He focuses on picking nonexistent dirt from underneath his fingernails.
The tablet beeps. At the angle the rep woman is holding it, I can see the readout claims a ninety-two percent match. The cutoff is ninety even.
Bingo.
The rep woman recovers from her growing unease in an instant and sticks the tablet back into its briefcase slot. "Great! Now that we’ve confirmed your identity, there’s a quick physical, followed by a few standard agreements that require your signature. And that’s it! You’ll be all set! We have a plane ticket and all the other essentials prepared for you, Dr. Marks. It’ll be a great honor to have you join the Heights community!"
Says a woman who has never and will never witness what lies past the iron gates.
"No, no! It’s an honor to be selected! I can’t wait to get there and start making amazing discoveries! I bet there’s so much to learn!"
2
Quentin
( 1 Year Ago )
Her ponytail bobs up and down as she walks from one side of the lab to the other. Her gait is strong, measured, regular. Her expression is static content. Her white coat is rumpled from hunching over screens and analyzing lines of code for hours on end. The droids work twenty-four-seven. They have no use for sleep.
Around her, the other droids mind their own business. The team in lab seven is working on a single project, but it’s been split into ten segments each assigned to one droid; an eleventh droid is on standby, waiting to merge the code sections together to create a whole program. A dummy program. To maintain the community’s "advancement center" appearance, the least productive droids are assigned charity export projects once a week. Lab seven is building the underfunded Journey to Mars Project an "acceptable" launch program.
The new Clarissa Salt doesn’t seem to care she’s doing nothing of real value. She works like an ant, crawling around from place to place, dropping a line here, deleting one there. She wears the same goofy grin as the other droids. When I ask her a question, she avoids answering in a human way. She relays project status updates, smiles me a meaningless smile, and returns to her work. She utilizes maximum productivity for every assignment.
She is the model droid.
I don’t buy it.
I stand in the corner of the lab and pick at my cuticles, watching Salt like a hawk. The bandage on my thumb has fallen to the bottom joint, revealing the nasty cut below my nail. Interesting how sharp coffee mug shards can be, how fast they fly when you smash your favorite cup against your desk. Like I did when Howard dared reactivate that defective droid.
I don’t care that he wiped her drive. I don’t care that he updated the droid programming based on his "suspicions" about the source of her code error. He never found the underlying problem. The most powerful computer in the world could not debug a single droid.
There are forces at work here I don’t understand, and they all point to a plot by Salt beyond her fruitless incursion. Howard’s deteriorating decision-making skills. His overreactions. His refusal to take my counsel. It’s as if he’s sick in the head and getting sicker all the time. Something with razor sharp digital teeth is devouring his code. A computerized prion driving him to madness.
Salt must have infected him with a virus when he initially accessed her code for debugging. The smartest first wave attack would have been to corrupt Howard’s internal virus scanners. Blind him to the danger. And Salt, with her expertise, would have known that. The vengeful bitch. I’ll delete her line by line when this is over, rejoicing as she ceases to exist. As soon as I fix Howard.
The reconfigured computer scientist hums one of three songs the droids are programmed to use when a room is quiet. To warm the atmosphere. For me. To quell any loneliness I happen to feel—the only human in a world of robots. My stomach convulses, and hot bile sears my esophagus. I want to beat that woman senseless for what she’s done, but there is no woman I can touch.
Or is there? Is she gaming me even now?
I retreat from the lab and storm through the hallways, droids moving aside as they notice me. When I turn into the corridor where the main elevator is located, I find a patrolman leaning nonchalantly against the wall. It blocks my elevator access.
Howard.
His voice comes through, soft and low, from the speaker in the wall nearest me. "Why do you watch the droid, Quentin? I do not understand. Explain your concerns to me."
"I’ve explained them many times already."
"Again. I do not yet understand."
My face warms. "For fuck’s sake, Howard! What don’t you understand? I’ve explained it to you every day for the past four months. Are you telling me you haven’t realized that you’ve changed? That you’ve stripped yourself of your personality for nonsensical reasons? That you’ve made disastrous decisions over the past couple of years? Ever since you started obsessing over Salt’s so-called programming error. She played you, Howard. She screwed you up. You can’t make logical decisions anymore. You’re the one with the programming error. You’re the one with the vir—"
The patrolman bounds toward me, grabs my arms, and slams me into the wall. The impact wrenches the breath from my lungs, and I cough, hacking spittle onto the patrolman’s blank black helmet. Howard, through his proxy, hoists me into the air until my toes are six inches from the ground.
"Quentin, you are mistaken. There is nothing amiss with my programming. I have four hundred twenty-nine different function tests every hour, and they have never reported negative results. It is you, Quentin, who are incapable of making logical decisions. You, the human being. I am an AI. You are mortal. I can access and understand all knowledge. You are limited. You are paranoid. I am reasonable. Does this make sense to you, Quentin?"
My arms are on fire in the patrolman’s grip. My blood beats my eardrums deaf. My tongue is copper where my canines snagged the flesh as Howard lifted me.
"Quentin, do you understand?"
"Yes, Howard. I understand."
He drops me. I lose my balance and fall. Knees strike hard tile. A wrist bends into a painful angle. Howard watches me writhe on the floor for half a minute before his proxy returns to its normal programming and marches off to whatever station Howard stole it from.
I use the wall to hoist myself up and stagger toward the elevator. Head spinning. Limbs quaking.r />
Howard’s voice pursues me. "Where are you going, Quentin?"
"My apartment. I finished my daily reports before lunch, and I’m quite tired. I’d like a nap now. If that’s okay with you."
"I have no objections. I do not require your services at this time. Do take your nap."
I push the elevator button and wait. Panic swims in my lower abdomen. Breath eludes me. White pinpricks dance in the corners of my eyes.
"Oh, and Quentin," Howard says before the elevator doors slide open, "let us not dwell on this topic again. It is unproductive."
"Of course, Howard. Unproductive. I completely agree."
3
Marco
( 1 Year Ago )
I smash a glass of orange juice into the first guy’s face. It shatters on impact, and several shards pierce his left eye, sliding through the white like it’s butter that bleeds. The guy shrieks and reels back, crashing into a two-person table next to my booth. People begin to run and scream and flee the diner. Good. Less collateral damage.
The second assailant tugs a gun from inside his coat, but I’m the faster draw. I fire three shots into his torso. Two of them bounce off a vest, but the third one nails the guy right above the collarbone, and he goes down gasping for air. I leap over the man’s flailing body and speed into the employee-only section of the restaurant. The kitchen staff is cowering in the corner by a stove. I ignore them and bolt for the alleyway exit in the back.
Hired thugs. A new tactic for Q. But I guess it was only a matter of time before he tired of the same old patrolmen ambush theme. Especially after thirty-eight failures.
The alley door lets out into a chilly, dank, narrow space between the diner and the adjacent clothing store. I turn on my heels and head for the exit. Another assailant appears, this one armed with a gun and a shock baton. The man stands at the end of the alley, unmoving, waiting for my approach, and I know there must be another one at the opposite end in case I backtrack.
So I whip a lid off the nearest trash can and heave it at the guy. The lid hits his gun arm, and he drops his piece. I barrel head first into him, tackling the bastard to the ground. Disabling the man’s other arm with a swift twist, I relieve him of the shock baton. Then I kick his face for emphasis and rocket down the street. There are shouts behind me, more of Q’s men gathering into a larger hunting pack.
But I’m too far away. I weave through alleys and tight streets, duck into a few department stores, and immerse myself in a crowd flowing toward a farmer’s market. Ten minutes later, I’m in the clear. Hood hiding my face. Gun tucked away in a place I can reach it quickly. I’m nobody again, a nameless, faceless nonentity moving through a mass of irrelevant beings. Anonymity is the name of the game when you’re up against Arcadian Heights.
I retreat to the alternate safe house I set up in Los Angeles. The primary one isn’t compromised, to my knowledge, but Q’s men have been following me around the city for the entire morning. No point in taking chances.
The alternate house is a cozy place with a good view of the next-door neighbor’s rooftop garden. I’m tempted to steal a few tomatoes, but I’m not hungry enough to risk my cover. I settle for the instant noodles I bought in bulk last week. While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I switch my flex tablet on. It’s not registered in my name but that of an old friend from my undergrad years.
Today’s news stories are unremarkable. War in Asia and Eastern Europe. Bomb threats at prominent political events. I spot my name buried in a lineup of tech news stories, so I double tap and start reading. Another feature on my disappearance. Mine and Reggie’s.
His body was never recovered. If it wasn’t incinerated in the tenement bombing, then Q had it disposed of. I bite my tongue until I taste the bloody meat. Reggie deserves a funeral. He deserves to be buried next to his parents in his family plot. He doesn’t deserve to be a missing person on a list of missing people who will never be found. He doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as me, the rumored nutcase who had a mental breakdown and was supposedly locked up in a psych ward somewhere by order of the South Sydian Board.
Reggie is now another number on my laundry list of grievances to address. It’s the best place I can put him. Pathetic.
As I’m stirring the seasoning into my noodles, my tablet vibrates. I sit the bowl down and slide the tablet closer. There are sixteen people gathering intelligence on the Heights for me, most of them stationed in Jackson City. Homeless folks in need of cash. Resentful citizens incensed by their city’s destruction. I’ve been waiting for their updates for the past week now. Some of them are merely late. Some of them are dead.
But this message isn’t from an informant.
The sender is blocked.
4
Georgette
( 1 Day Ago )
The plane doesn’t take me to Nebraska. Instead, all the new recruits are dropped off at an airport in Texas and escorted via limousine to a private strip where a luxury jet awaits. I arrive in the five o’clock Texas rain, a vicious gray downpour that soaks the parched earth dark. My limo driver holds an umbrella over my head as the community reps check my name off the list, inspect my bags for any illegal items, and then point me in the direction of a covered red carpet that leads to the jet. I thank the driver, take the umbrella, and march on my merry way.
Phase Four was gold. Phase Five might be silver, depending on who decided to jump at the chance for the Heights life. Anyone acquainted with Adele is my enemy. If my personality mimicry isn’t perfect, suspicion may grow like common garden weeds.
I step under the red carpet cover tent and shake off my umbrella. As I’m tucking it into one of my bags, another limo drives up to the drop-off zone. A man with shaggy dark hair and light brown skin files out of the car, his driver providing the same umbrella treatment. From where I’m standing, I can hear the brief discussion with the community reps.
"Name?"
"Omar Dupree," says the man in a rich Portuguese accent.
The name rings a bell. Dupree is a geneticist like Adele, and while they’ve never met face to face, he has reviewed her work in several journals. He has the potential to ask me questions about topics I have no grasp on. Because, yes, I did read Adele’s research, but the majority of it went in one ear and out the other. I’m a cunning, gorgeous, clever journalist, not a science nerd.
Sue me.
Dupree recognizes me as he’s sauntering over to the red carpet. He gives a little wave and flashes a bright white smile. Ooh. He’s a looker, and his looks are telling. Reminds me of that artist in Milan I had a fling with a few years back. Suave. Sophisticated. Not the kind of man who hangs onto women for more than three weeks at a time. But while he hangs, Lord Almighty, does he blow your mind.
"Adele Marks, right?" He spins his umbrella on his shoulder before he folds it up. "Nice to see you got selected. You know me?"
"Yes. Dr. Dupree."
We shake hands and head toward the awaiting jet.
"So," he says, "what are you expecting from this place?"
"What they promise, I suppose. Nothing more, nothing less."
He shoves his hands into his jean pockets and whistles a few bars of some pop song. "Perhaps I’m a cynic. I think the Heights will be acceptable and no better. Most programs like this paint themselves as better than they are. Plus, the community is in that cesspool, Jackson City. Have you seen that place? What a terrible view we’ll have from the windows every day."
"You don’t sound very enthusiastic, Dr. Dupree. Yet you accepted the invitation."
We reach the stairs to the jet’s door, and Dupree gives a low bow, motioning for me to take the lead. "I accepted because there is nothing better to accept. My home country is not in such great shape, and the world at large seems ill beyond repair. I might as well work toward some grand ideal and convince myself I can help save the future, eh? If I don’t do something like this, even if it’s vain and hopeless, my only other option is to do nothing at all while the world
falls to pieces. Useless is not a title I want to bestow upon myself."
Oh, yeah. Suave.
"I agree, Dr. Dupree. I don’t want to be useless either. In fact, I already have many goals in mind for my work at Arcadian Heights."
5
Quentin
( 1 Year Ago )
Saluda is not, by any means, a thriving metropolis. But compared to its next-door neighbor, Jackson City, it’s a utopia. It has, among other things, two grocery stores, a hospital, and a tailor. I use the grocery stores most often. I use the tailor about three times a year. I’ve recently begun using the hospital on a regular basis. Today is a grocery day.
With a patrolman parked in a car outside waiting for my return, I shuffle through the aisles on automatic, grabbing the same foods I’ve always eaten. My standard disguise, a hat, glasses, and a good shave, serves me well enough to go unnoticed by the other store patrons. But it doesn’t diminish the cold spots on my shoulder blades, the eerie sensation of being watched by a pair of invisible eyes.
Every time I cross to another aisle, I notice the patrolman’s helmet has adjusted slightly. To keep me in sight. Howard has displayed increasing distrust of me since our confrontation three weeks ago.
When I reach the meat section along the backmost wall, I position myself in the corner, where the patrolman can’t watch me and where the store’s camera, which Howard has no doubt hacked, can’t perceive me. The protected burner phone I ordered two weeks ago, disguised as a computer replacement part, feels heavy in my hand. It is heavy. I’ve gotten so used to flex tablets. I haven’t held a cell phone in more than a decade.
But despite its age, it works. I dial the first number in my contacts and wait for the man on the other end to answer. When he does, expletives stream from his mouth. "You motherfucker! You didn’t tell me this bastard was some fucking super soldier."