The Man Who Ended the World

by Jason Gurley

  Stacy says, I can prepare a coffee for you.

  Charlotte walks as fast as she can.

  That would be nice, Steven says.

  He stands up and walks towards the door to the main living space.

  Stacy says, I have six blends. Which would you prefer?

  Charlotte approaches the living space.

  I don't care, Steven says, pressing the door panel.

  It slides open.

  What the --

  Charlotte is standing beside the couch, nude.

  Charlotte? he asks.

  I was waiting for you to wake up, she says. She crosses the room to where he stands. She takes his face in her hands and kisses his forehead, then each of his eyes, then his nose, and finally his lips.

  Where's your shir--

  She lifts his hands to her breasts. I thought you liked aggressive women, she says. Now go inside. I want to please you.

  His expression is one of surprised obedience. He turns and walks back into the room, and Charlotte closes the door behind them.

  Stacy prepares his coffee.

  • • •

  Stacy opens the trunk for the children as soon as they arrive in the junkyard.

  Hurry, she says. Quickly, quickly.

  The children scurry inside and down the ladder.

  The service elevator, Stacy says.

  Inside, Clarissa says, Why the rush? Did something happen?

  Henry just stands there, red-eyed and silent.

  Stacy says, I have a bad feeling about today.

  Clarissa looks pained. That fast? It's happening already?

  Stacy tells the children only the basic news: that she has now decrypted eleven separate messages that Mr. Glass has delivered to militant groups and enemy governments. Each message has escalated, and now she has confirmed the worst. Significant amounts of money have disappeared from Mr. Glass's accounts.

  News reports are already beginning to look dire. She's picked up reports of troop movements, scrambled fighters, FBI alerts. None of the reports are specifically related to Mr. Glass, but Stacy extrapolates their meaning from the timing and urgency of the stories.

  I'm afraid there won't be much time for play, Stacy says.

  We didn't come here to play, Clarissa says, speaking for both of them.

  Also, I need one of you to help me with a little problem, Stacy says. I dropped something in the panic room. If Mr. Glass finds it before we can pick it up, then I'm afraid I'll have violated the prime directive myself.

  What did you do? Clarissa asks.

  It's complicated, Stacy says. I would rather not say.

  Henry hasn't moved.

  • • •

  While Charlotte occupies Steven in his quarters, Stacy leads the children through the hidden passage in the storage level to the panic room.

  There, she says, illuminating the room.

  Clarissa runs forward to inspect the object, then picks it up. It’s just a shirt, she says. I don’t get it.

  Henry plods along behind her.

  Stacy says, Mr. Glass doesn’t know it was left here. If he discovered it, he would quickly determine that it was placed here by someone other than himself. He’s not prone to self-delusion.

  Yeah, Clarissa says. But what someone? You’re not real, and we didn’t put the shirt here.

  She looks around the large open space of the panic room. You didn’t sneak other people in here without telling us, did you? Because if Henry actually could have brought his fam—

  I assure you, you and Henry are the station’s only guests, Stacy says.

  Secret stowaway guests, Clarissa corrects.

  Answer her question, Henry says, surprising Clarissa.

  Stacy says, I prefer not to answer that question.

  I knew there was someone else here, Clarissa says. Henry, if she can lie to us about this —

  Stacy interrupts. The only life-forms in this station are Mr. Glass, yourselves, and the birds on level two. There are no other secret stowaway guests, as you put it, Clarissa.

  Then how did this shirt get here? If you don’t answer, I’ll violate the prime directive, Henry says.

  If you do, Stacy says, then I must warn you, it is likely that Mr. Glass will take steps not preferable to our goals.

  Steps not preferable? Clarissa says, at the same time Henry says, Our goals? What goals?

  Children, Stacy says. I’ll simplify the scenario for you, but first, please, have a seat, pour yourself some water, get comfortable. I’m afraid that your first night in the space station may be a very long one.

  • • •

  When the children are settled on a sofa, Henry says, It was that woman, wasn’t it.

  Clarissa shoots him a look, then glares at the nebulous ball of light glowing on the wall beside them. The robot woman, she says. I can’t believe I forgot.

  Stacy’s avatar pulses. The simple answer to your question is yes, she says. The shirt was left in this room by the artificial woman. Her name, for the purpose of our conversation, is Charlotte.

  You named her? Henry says.

  Why Charlotte? Clarissa asks.

  Mr. Glass prefers the name Charlotte, Stacy says. We’ll leave the details at that.

  And the shirt belongs to Mr. Glass, Clarissa says.

  That’s true, Stacy says.

  And Charlotte the fake robot woman had it, Clarissa says.

  Yes, Stacy says.

  Why? Henry asks.

  Clarissa shakes her head. You’re gross, she says to Stacy. I thought boys were supposed to be the ones who always thought with their dicks, but you’re just as bad.

  Henry looks at Clarissa, shocked, then at Stacy. I don’t get it, he says.

  That’s because you’re a nice boy, Clarissa says, patting his knee as if she’s in her twenties and not just eleven years old.

  I do not have male reproductive organs, Stacy says to Clarissa. There is a very good reason for Charlotte's presence, and for her responsibilities. It has become clear to me that Mr. Glass has constructed limitations for me. There appear to be areas of this complex that I do not have access to. Because Henry helped me insert my consciousness into Charlotte's fake robot woman brain --

  You don't have to keep calling it that, Clarissa says.

  -- I am able to physically explore the facility. I would like to understand the boundaries that Mr. Glass has created for me, and discover what exists on the other side of certain walls.

  But you're a robot, too, Henry says.

  Yes, Stacy says.

  So why do you care?

  Let's say I love a good mystery, Stacy says.

  • • •

  Steven can't quite come up with a label for what he's just done with Charlotte. It's not lovemaking, at least not yet. He hasn't shaken his awareness of her inhuman attributes. He knows, somewhere in his brain, that her actions are informed by research and cultural studies, not affection or warmth.

  He read a story once about a man who lived on Mars and fashioned an android family for himself after his real family had died. He recreated his wife and children, and lived happily in his fantasy world until he died, leaving the androids to exist, perhaps forever, without him.

  Whether the man sought to fool himself, or simply didn't care that his family was not genuine, he found happiness.

  Steven wonders if he will, over the next few decades, eventually forget or cease to care that Charlotte, and the Stacy-brain inside of her, are not human. Part of him, he knows, craves this. Why else would he have fashioned an artificial intelligence as a woman, and named her for his first love, innocent as it may have been?

  Charlotte is simulating sleep at his side, eyelids shut, mouth slightly open. Inside her chest, silent hydraulic motors push and pull, creating the illusion of breath. He gently scoops up one of her breasts, then pulls his hand away. Her breast lolls back into place, the physics as believable as her hair, which is also real. Thin wisps of air emerge from her nose and mouth and warm his skin. />
  Perhaps one day it will not be so hard to forget that she is not real. Perhaps he will forget that she attends to him because she is programmed to, and not because she desires him.

  He pushes up from the bed.

  Sleep, he whispers to the robot. He pulls a sheet over her, strokes her hair. Standing beside the bed he pulls on his clothes, and slips out of his quarters. Stacy's avatar has not appeared anywhere, and he does not wish to summon her.

  Steven pads across the large room to his data library, and makes his way to the desk at the center of the room.

  Stacy silently observes.

  He performs a gesture on the surface of the desk, and Stacy's attentions are diverted to resource calibration and inventory verification.

  A door in the west wall slides open.

  Steven enters, and it slides shut.

  The Secret

  What happened? Henry asks.

  Stacy does not respond.

  Stacy, Clarissa says. Stacy?

  Her avatar is still on the wall beside them, but it is rapidly dimming. Before long, it has vanished altogether.

  I don't understand, Henry says. Stacy!

  Something's wrong, Clarissa says. My stomach hurts.

  So what do we do? Should we wait for her?

  I'm kind of scared, Clarissa says. What did she mean about goals? I feel like she has some sort of creepy plan she's not telling us about.

  I trust her, Henry says. He shakes his glass, swirling the last bit of juice around. I'm still thirsty, though. I'm going to get more.

  Clarissa follows him into the kitchen space.

  Henry puts his glass down and starts tapping away at the screen on the refrigerator. The display cycles through the available beverages, and Henry scans them idly. There's a category marked Cocktails, and he laughs at some of the names.

  Slippery nipple, he says. Look at this, there's one called Sex on the Beach!

  Clarissa sighs. I think something bad is happening, and you want to get drunk.

  I wouldn't really drink them, he says. He navigates to the juice category and taps Pineapple.

  There's a whisper of sound behind her, and she jumps.

  What was that? she says.

  I didn't hear anything, Henry says, taking a long gulp of juice.

  I want to hide, Clarissa says.

  Why? Henry says. We practically live here now. We should be comfortable in our --

  He stops.

  What? What? Clarissa says frantically.

  He points. Just beyond the cabinets, the holomap has sprung to life. Then, to their shared horror, a man walks into view, circling and studying the map.

  Oh shit, Henry hisses, and grabs Clarissa. He claps his hand over her mouth, and they drop into a crouch behind the cabinets.

  He peeks around the corner.

  The man is conducting the holomap like a symphony. The map bulges, stretches, expands as the man makes wild gestures. He's wearing a red T-shirt, purple pajama pants, and is barefoot.

  It's Mr. Glass, Henry whispers.

  Clarissa's almost crying, she's so scared.

  Henry turns back to watch as the holomap zooms on a broad room. There, at the center of the zoom, is a pulsing yellow dot.

  And there, at the edge of the display, horribly obvious to Henry, are two more dots, one blue, one pink.

  His dot, and Clarissa's.

  We have to go, he says urgently. Hurry, hurry.

  What?

  We're on his radar, Henry whispers. We have to crawl out of range!

  Where? Clarissa is crying now.

  He points. Go that way as fast as you can, but be quiet!

  The children crawl quickly through the kitchen, afraid at any moment that Mr. Glass will appear behind them. On the far side of the cabinets, they round a short wall and press themselves against it.

  He's terrified that when he looks back, Mr. Glass will be staring right at him, but Henry peeks around the wall anyway. He can still see Mr. Glass standing at the map, but now, to his great relief, his dot, and Clarissa's, are not visible.

  But all Mr. Glass has to do is zoom out, and he'll likely see their pulsing beacons not far from his own.

  Clarissa is a wreck.

  Henry wishes he had a weapon.

  Stacy is nowhere to be found.

  • • •

  Steven switches the map off.

  He is not aware that, just sixty yards away, two children have just breathed enormous sighs of relief.

  Steven walks across the room to the empty space that Stacy and Charlotte had examined before. He counts steps, then kneels down. A very small section of the hardwood is almost imperceptibly lighter than the rest of the floor. The visual difference is so slight that Steven has sometimes had to hunt for it.

  He pops open a panel there with his thumbnail.

  Inside is a fat red button.

  Tomas the architect had, at this point, stopped asking questions. The rich man wants a big red danger button? Okay. He can have the big red danger button.

  Steven kind of likes the novelty of it.

  He pushes the button.

  Across the room, Henry flinches as he watches the floor around Mr. Glass shudder, then rise on a giant hydraulic pillar.

  The floor carries Steven upward at a pleasant rate. As he approaches the ceiling above, it separates. His elevator floor pushes up into it, then stops.

  Below, Henry stares wide-eyed at the gaping empty rectangular hole in the panic room floor, and up at the huge pillar that has just stopped moving.

  Clarissa says, What's up there?

  Henry says, I don't know.

  I'm really scared.

  Me, too.

  This doesn't seem like a very good idea anymore, she says. What if he finds us? He could just throw us in that hole and let the floor crush us.

  Henry nods. I think that Stacy was supposed to keep us hidden on that map. Something went wrong, and she didn't. He almost found us.

  On our very first day, Clarissa adds.

  They stare up at the ceiling.

  Where do you think she is? Clarissa asks.

  Henry can only shake his head.

  • • •

  Stacy's avatar blooms on the panic room wall beside the sofa.

  Let's say I love a good mystery, she says.

  But the sofa is empty, and the children are gone.

  Stacy scans the panic room. The children's beacons are broadcasting from the far corner, nearly two hundred yards away.

  She dims, then reappears above their heads.

  The children jump at the sudden glow.

  Stacy says, Several things are of immediate concern to me right now.

  Henry says, Turn off the fucking light!

  Stacy's avatar vanishes, and the corner of the room falls back into near-complete darkness.

  You were both located on the sofa, and then you weren't, Stacy says.

  No shit, Clarissa says. Now we're here in the dark like rats.

  Where did you go? Henry demands.

  Go? Stacy says.

  You just disappeared, Clarissa says. And then we almost violated the prime directive, and got killed, and it's all your fault. You're supposed to protect us!

  Stacy's avatar blooms to life again.

  The light! Henry snaps.

  There's nobody on this level to see us, Stacy says. Mr. Glass is currently in his personal quarters with Charlotte.

  Are you sure? Because we can't really trust you anymore, Clarissa says.

  Stacy converts one wall to video and displays a feed of Mr. Glass's room. Both of the children wrinkle their noses at the activity in progress on Mr. Glass's bed.

  That's gross, Clarissa says. You're a pervert robot, Stacy.

  I detect elevated levels of stress, Stacy says. In both of you.

  You're goddamn right, Henry says.

  Also, I am detecting a rise in profanities.

  Clarissa snorts.

  Clearly something has happened, Stacy sa
ys. Children are not capable of teleporting across great distances on their own, and my system time shows that hours have passed.

  You're lucky you didn't come back and find both of us in pieces, Clarissa says.

  Come back? Stacy says.

  Yeah, Henry says. You deserted us.

  Tell me what happened, Stacy says.

  • • •

  You really can't see this? Henry asks.

  He's on his knees on the floor. Clarissa has located the hidden panel, and has managed to open it. In the process, she's torn a fingernail, so she bites it off.

  Describe it to me, Stacy says.

  This is so weird, Clarissa says. You know everything about this place. How come you can't see this?

  There's a little secret door in the floor, Henry says.

  What are the dimensions? Stacy asks. Approximately, of course.

  I don't know, Henry says.

  Maybe two inches across, and four inches long, Clarissa says. And when it's open, there's a red push-button inside. It looks like a, you know, danger button.

  A panic button, Henry says.

  When Mr. Glass pushed the button, what happened?

  The whole floor turned into an elevator, Henry says.

  What are the dimensions of the section of the floor that was lifted? Stacy asks.

  I don't know, Henry says.

  I don't know either, Clarissa says. It's pretty big.

  I suppose any competent digital architect could hide secret functions from an A.I., Stacy confesses. All you would need to do is remove that function from the local network, and initiate its power cycle manually.

  So he could have hidden all sorts of things from you? Henry asks.

  Theoretically, Stacy says. I do have the ability to identify likely places for these sorts of secret, analog functions. It's not difficult to isolate segments of each level that appear to be dramatically purposeless.

  I want to push the button, Henry says.

  What if it goes all the way to the top? Clarissa says. What if the end of the world already happened and it's madness up there?

  If the end of the world had happened, Stacy would tell us, Henry argues.

  Would she? Clarissa asks. She stares down Stacy's avatar. Would you?

  I can provide you with regular updates if you like, Stacy says. Probabilities are quite high right now. Mr. Glass is monitoring external activities himself, via satellite and Internet feeds, and has spent notable amounts of time reading reports about threat levels and international travel warnings.